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$Unique_ID{bob00118}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Brazil
Chapter 1A.   Historical Setting}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Jan Knippers Black}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{portuguese
political
brazil
portugal
first
century
system
indians
de
new
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1982}
$Log{See Statue by Aleijadinho*0011801.scf
}
Title:       Brazil
Book:        Brazil, A Country Study
Author:      Jan Knippers Black
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1982

Chapter 1A.   Historical Setting

[See Statue by Aleijadinho: Statue by Aleijadinho (Little Cripple) outside
church of Congonhas do Campo, Ouro Preto]

     Brazil, even more than most nation-states, is a land of stark
contrasts-contrasts not only among cultures and ecological zones but also
among perceptions and interpretations of the national experience. Literary
works of the eighteenth century lavished praise upon the indigenous peoples,
while predatory explorers, pushing inland from the vicinity of Sao Paulo,
hunted them like animals. The institution of slavery was said to have been
less brutal in Brazil than elsewhere in the Americas, but it was condoned by
law longer there than in any other Western Hemisphere state. Gilberto Freyre
and other renowned Brazilian writers have depicted Brazilian society as
racially and socially homogeneous, a consequence of several centuries of
miscegenation. But there is no mistaking the gradations of color from dark to
light as one moves up the socioeconomic pyramid.

     Formally claimed for Portugal by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, Brazil is
the only country in South America to have existed until late in the nineteenth
century as a monarchy. It gained its independence in 1822 without violence and
was spared the major civil wars that wracked so many states of the Western
Hemisphere in the nineteenth century.

     There was some truth to the view embraced by middle and upper class
Brazilians, at least until the inception of military rule in 1964, that their
society was uniquely blessed with tolerance and humaneness. Brazilian elites
had proved adept at finding nonconfrontational means of resolving conflict
among themselves. But the means employed through the centuries to ensure that
peasants and workers did the bidding of the great landowners and corporations
have often been brutal.

     Maldistribution of wealth and opportunity and the unequal responsiveness
of the political system to the various levels of the social pyramid have, of
course, resulted in differing perspectives on the part of nonelites. The gulf
between the literate and nonliterate elements of the population has generally
confined political dialogue to the upper and middle classes. The nonliterate,
excluded from the electoral rolls since 1881, have been unable, even in the
best of times, to participate directly in political decisions.

     The strongest influences upon the standards aspired to or accepted by
Brazil's ruling classes have been the ideologies and interests of colonial or
hegemonic powers. Such foreign ideologies have been adopted and adapted,
however, in accordance with the interests and perspectives of domestic elites.
Even those members of the colonial aristocracy who most vigorously opposed
domination by Portugal were strongly influenced by Portuguese political and
social values. The Portuguese legacy in the New World indeed differed from
that of Spain in its greater tolerance of racial and cultural diversity. But,
like the Spanish, the Portuguese inculcated in their New World offspring a
rigid sense of social, political, and cultural hierarchy. The patriarchal
view, deriving from Portuguese monarchism, maintained that culture and
personality were functions of education and that the uneducated man was
incapable of interacting with the dominant political culture. (The role of
women, educated or otherwise, was not even an issue.) He was expected to
accept his status in society as a function of a divinely ordered hierarchy.
However, because the uneducated were not expected to be responsible for their
own welfare, the dominant class was obligated to contribute to the
amelioration of their suffering. Public morality was an integral part of the
political culture, and the Roman Catholic Church shared with the institutions
of government the responsibility for the maintenance of the political and
moral order.

     To the patriarchal tradition that dominated political thought under the
empire was added an overlay of legalism inspired by the French Encyclopedists.
Eventually, that which was considered the natural hierarchy and the
obligations inherent in it were formalized by a constitution and by laws. The
emperor was not expected to direct the course of political development but was
to serve as a "moderating power" among the conflicting aims of participants in
the political system.

     The positivistic philosophy of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, as
interpreted by Brazilian intellectuals, was the predominant influence on the
political values of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It
tended to modify some aspects of the patriarchal system while it reinforced
others. The philosophy stressed education as a prerequisite to responsible
political participation, but it held that through a gradual process of
cultural co-optation, individual members of the lower classes could be
incorporated into the ranks of political participants. It also stressed the
inseparability of order and progress.

     Brazil's political system evolved through the first half of the twentieth
century by a process of sedimentation rather than metamorphosis, giving rise,
by the early 1960s, to a political collage. The patron-client relationships of
the rural areas that underpinned the First Republic (1894-1930) were not
dismantled when the locus of political initiative was transferred to the
cities and to the central government in the 1930s. The explicitly corporatist
aspects of the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas (1930-45) and the populist
aspects of political expression nurtured by the government simply coexisted
with the patriarchal system in separate parts of the national terrain.

     The long rule of Vargas introduced new forces into the political equation
and new ideas into the heretofore virtually unchallenged value system. The
success of his paternalistic regime in amassing a popular following revealed
to the politically ambitious the potential value of appealing to the
underprivileged and to the representatives of vested economic interests the
potential dangers of such appeals.

     The multiparty electoral competition ushered in after the overthrow of
Vargas in 1945 became another layer in the political system rather than a
wholly new system. Interest groups continued to be dependent, in corporatist
fashion, on government recognition. Rural and urban patronage networks
accommodated themselves to the new currency-votes. Mobilized sectors that
could not be accommodated by these networks emerged as a populist movements,
coalescing around leaders who pledged to include them in the distribution of
benefits.

     Since deposing the emperor in 1889, the armed forces had served as the
final arbiters-the moderating power-of all major political disputes, but the
overthrow of President Joao Goulart in 1964 initiated the first period of
actual military rule in the twentieth century. The system they established has
differed from more traditional authoritarianism in Latin America in that it
has facilitated the modernization of infrastructure and the means of
production and has promoted rapid economic growth. Authority has rested in the
military establishment, rather than in a single caudillo, and presidential
succession, although not institutionalized, has been managed with minimal
disruption.

     Social and political control became increasingly rigid during the first
decade of military rule. By the early 1970s virtually all traces of popular
political participation and semiautonomous interest representation had been
eliminated. Political prisoners were tortured, and death squads operated with
seeming impunity.

     The government of General Ernesto Geisel, who assumed power in 1974,
began a gradual and cautious easing of repression, and since 1978 freedom of
expression has become all but complete. Political exiles have returned, and
both candidates and voters have come to take seriously local, state, and
congressional elections. The military, however, has neither relinquished the
presidency nor dismantled its pervasive intelligence apparatus; and the
system remains essentially authoritarian.

Portuguese Exploration and Settlement

     Upon the establishment of the Avis Dynasty in 1385, Portugal had a
centralized state administration that was supported by a growing commercial
elite behind a strong monarchy. Shortly thereafter, Prince Henry (the
Navigator) founded a school for navigation in order to exploit the country's
strategic maritime position vis-a-vis the Atlantic and North Africa. During
the fifteenth century the Portuguese explored the west coast of Africa,
occupying enclaves that served to promote trade, especially in slaves. By
the end of the fifteenth century, Portugal was the leading European colonial
power.

     At this time Spain was occupied with the last phase of its reconquest of
the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors. Columbus reached the New World under
Spanish auspices, and Pope Alexander VI moved to head off the prospect of
conflict between Spain and Portugal over the ownership of territories in the
New World by issuing a bull that divided those territories. Portugal was to
acquire any lands to be discovered east of the line fixed originally 100
leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. The Portuguese king, Joao II,
apparently more familiar with the distances involved than the pope's advisers,
complained of the inadequacy of the ruling. Thus, the bull was replaced by the
Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal, agreed to by the papacy,
which moved the line of division to 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde
Islands. This put the part of the Brazilian coastline first explored by
Europeans within the area assigned to the Portuguese. The frontiers of Brazil,
which extend to the west far past the Tordesillas line, were later determined
on the basis of the actual occupation of the land by settlers.

     Credit for the "discovery" of Brazil is conventionally given to Pedro
Alvares Cabral, who reached the coast in April 1500 commanding a fleet of
ships and 1,500 men. In fact, the first European to reach present-day Brazil
was apparently the Spaniard Vicente Yanez Pinzon, who landed four months
before Cabral. Actually, the Portuguese had been aware of the configuration of
the easternmost portion of the the South American continent for some time; the
shoreline of Brazil had been depicted on maps made in 1436.

     The Portuguese initially made little of their new Western Hemisphere
territory; their colonizing efforts were directed at India, Vasco da Gama
having arrived at Calicut in 1497. Nevertheless, various exploratory
expeditions were sent to Brazil. The first of these, in 1501, was captained
by Gaspar de Lemos. One of the participants on that expedition was Amerigo
Vespucci, who wrote accounts of his exploits. His name was later given to the
two continents.

     The main product of interest to the Europeans was brazilwood (Caesalpinia
echinata), which gave its name to the territory. The wood, from which red and
purple dyes were derived, was cut and transported by the local Indians, who
bartered it for trinkets and novelties of various kinds. This rudimentary
economic activity was enough to arouse the interest of French pirates and the
Portuguese crown attempted to halt contraband activity by the French by
sending expeditions to Brazil in 1516 and 1526, producing negligible results.

     In 1532 the first colonizing expedition, commanded by Martim Afonso de
Souza, founded the first permanent settlement in Brazil, Sao Vicente, in the
far south of the territory assigned to Portugal. Near it was founded the port
of Santos.

     The first European settlers in Brazil were the so-called degredados,
prisoners convicted of crimes in Portugal who were set ashore by the first
expeditions in the hope that they would learn the local languages and customs
and thus prove of value when permanent European settlements were established.
Indeed, several of these men did survive, and when the early settlements were
established there were already a considerable number of mestizos.

     Many of the earlier settlers, especially in Pernambuco and Bahia, were
New Christians (also known as conversos), that is, Jews recently converted,
most of them forcibly (see fig. 1). Some of the New Christians went to Brazil
so they could continue to practice Jewish rites. Others had been expelled from
Portugal as undesirables. It was their skill that was largely responsible for
the success of the sugar industry, together with Dutch capital to which many
New Christians had access; when Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and
from Portugal in 1496 and 1497, many relocated in the Netherlands, where
religious toleration was practiced.

     Lacking the resources to undertake a thoroughgoing colonization by
itself, the Portuguese crown established in 1534 a system of captaincies (see
Glossary), under which land was assigned to individuals, who could pass it to
their heirs. These lords-proprietor (donatarios) had the right to share crown
revenues and to impose certain taxes within their jurisdictions, as well as to
found their own economic enterprises. All of Brazil was divided into 14
captaincies. On the whole, the system was not successful in developing the
country, with the exception of two captaincies, that of Martim Afonso de
Souza, Sao Vicente, and that of Duarte Coelho Pereira, Pernambuco. The other
captaincies generally did not prove to be economic successes, although the
system was not extinguished completely until 1759.

     Sugar became the major export succeeding brazilwood. By 1600 there were
120 sugar mills functioning in Brazil; the Spaniards had not yet undertaken to
produce sugar on a large scale in the Caribbean.

     Sugar was produced by African slave labor in the northeastern
captaincies, especially Pernambuco and Bahia. Slaves were imported principally
from west and central Africa: Nigeria, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, and the Congo.
Portuguese sea captains bought the slaves from the Africans who had enslaved
them in return for tobacco, rum, and other goods. Most slaves were brought to
Salvador, the principal port of Bahia, or Recife, the main port of Pernambuco,
although others disembarked at Sao Luis, near the mouth of the Amazon, or at
Rio de Janeiro. Rio had been founded by the Portuguese in 1567 to fortify the
area against French incursions; between 1555 and 1560 there had been a French
settlement there. Eventually, the sugar industry in Sao Vicente was unable to
compete with that in the Northeast, and the southern region turned to other
products.

     Brazil's occupation was not the process of conquest that the occupation
of the Spanish colonies was. The indigenous population was not numerous, nor
was it organized for effective warfare. This is not to say that the Portuguese
always had an easy time; in fact the local Indians were cannibals-which
several men of Cabral's expedition discovered the hard way. Huge number of
Indians died of a smallpox epidemic after making contact with the Portuguese,
however, and the remainder were easily enslaved.

     In 1570 the crown issued an edict prohibiting enslavement of the Indians,
but the practice continued. Most Indian slaves for the Portuguese settlements
were captured in raids conducted by the inhabitants of Sao Paulo (paulistas).
The paulistas were a rough-and-ready frontier people who made expeditions into
the interior looking for gems and precious metals, as well as for slaves.
These expeditions were known as bandeiras (flags) and the raiders as
bandeirantes. Something of a romantic legend has grown up around the
bandeirantes, which glosses over their more unsavory practices. They are
credited with opening up the western frontier and marking the trails that
later became the roads along which permanent settlers moved.

The Colonial Period

The Colonial Economy

     All along the frontier, cattle were raised, although the southern
captaincies became the center of cattle raising. Mules were extensively used
as pack animals, and mule raising was itself an important economic activity.
Tobacco was grown in the Northeast for local consumption and for export.
Precious and useful metals were mined, especially in Minas Gerais; major gold
strikes finally occurred at the end of the seventeenth century.

     Social status in the early colonial period depended on race,
wealth-determined primarily by holdings of land and animals-and occupation.
The original recipients of crown land grants had retained for themselves large
estates. They had also granted to other settlers lands of varying size.
Because of the importance of grinding sugarcane and manufacturing sugar, the
key economic distinction soon became that between the landowners who had their
own sugar mills and those who did not, since the latter had to pay usually
one-third of their crop in order to get their cane ground. In addition to
sugarcane, some cotton was raised. The principal food crop was manioc, which
had been the main staple in the diet of the Indians.

Government and Administration

     Except for the captaincies of Pernambuco and Sao Vicente, the system of
land grants did not seem successful in developing the colony, and as a result,
a more centralized administrative structure was created in 1548 under the
first governor general, Tome de Souza (1549-53). The seat of the general
government was in Bahia, where de Souza had founded the city of Salvador.
This was also the seat of the first bishopric in the colony. The
administration of the colony under the governor general was divided into
several branches. The ouvidor-mor was in charge of the administration of
justice. The defenses of the colony were in the charge of the capitao-mor. The
provedor-mor was the official in charge of financial matters, while the
alcaide-mor was head of the internal militia or police system. At the local
level the municipal authority was the camara, a local body representing
property holders and, in some cases, artisans' guilds. The local authorities
also appointed a capitao-mor as chief military and administrative officer. In
many cases it was a capitao-mor who in effect ruled a locality.

The Jesuits

     Alongside this political structure governing the Portuguese colonists
were some Indian villages governed by missionary priests, most of them
Jesuits, who were critically important during the colonial period. Six
Jesuits, led by Manoel de Nobrega, had accompanied the first governor general
to Bahia, where they founded the first college in the colony. The second
governor general, Duarte da Costa (1553-58), was also accompanied by a group
of Jesuits, among them Jose de Anchieta, later noted for his written accounts
of life in the colony.

     Anchieta and Nobrega also founded the Colegio do Sao Paulo. It was
subsequently moved to Sao Vicente in 1561 and to Rio de Janeiro in 1567. In
addition to the colegio (academy or seminary) at Rio, there were at this time
Jesuit colleges in Pernambuco and Bahia. Education in the academies was
classical rather than scientific, stressing grammar, philosophy, and theology.
Graduates of the Jesuit colegios who wished to study law or medicine went on
to the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

     In addition to their role in education, the Jesuits had their own
plantations (fazendas) and played a missionary role among the Indians. At the
missions the Jesuits taught the Indians agriculture and handicrafts, along
with the Christian faith, using the local Tupi-Guarani language, which was
generally spoken throughout the colony. The Jesuits also attempted, with
limited success, to put an end to Indian practices of cannibalism and
polygamy.

     The Jesuits were unpopular with many colonists because they opposed the
enslavement of the Indians, and they were expelled from Sao Paulo and
Maranhao. Some priests did not maintain the high standards of their calling;
it was not uncommon for priests to have children. Franciscans and other orders
were active in Brazil, but the role of the Jesuits was predominant and indeed
significant in the development of the colony. Despite the Jesuits' opposition
to the enslavement of the Indians, however, the bandeirantes continued their
slave raids, and the effects of slavery and disease diminished the Indian
population. Sometime during the seventeenth century the number of African
slaves exceeded that of the surviving population of Indians.

The African Presence

     In 1600 Brazil's settled population was estimated at 57,000; 25,000
whites, 18,000 Indians, and 14,000 Africans. It was this African component
that gave Brazilian life much of its distinctiveness, especially in music and
religion (see Afro-Brazilians, ch. 2). Religious elements of African origin
were combined with customs brought from the Iberian Peninsula and those
inherited from Indians; Indian styles contributed much to Brazilian diet,
housing and furniture, hunting and fishing, and vocabulary. Slavery allowed a
great deal of sexual license to estate owners and the males in their families,
and venereal diseases were widespread.

     Some escaped slaves set up independent territories, or quilombos, which
maintained their autonomy for some time. The largest and most famous of these
was Palmares, in the captaincy of Alagoas. Under their leader, Zumbi, the
20,000 residents of Palmares held out against one expedition after another
until, in 1694, a reluctant governor called in a force of paulistas, who
destroyed the settlement and reduced the inhabitants to slavery again.

The Frontier in the Eighteenth Century

     Despite their savagery, the bandeirantes are credited by Brazilian
historians with having opened up the interior of the country by their
expeditions. Antonio Raposo Tavares led what was probably the greatest of
these explorations, leaving Sao Paulo in 1648 and in a three-year trek through
the interior following the Paraguai, Guapore, and Madeira rivers to the mouth
of the Amazon near Belem (see fig. 3).

     The paulistas were also responsible for the discovery of gold in Minas
Gerais. The first strike was made in 1693. Other discoveries followed, and a
gold rush ensued. The violent life of the mining towns of Minas Gerais led to
the so-called greenhorns' war (guerra dos emboabas), and it was not until some
years later that law and order were established in the region. The
bandeirantes were also hired by landowners in the Northeast as Indian
fighters, runawayslave catchers, and the like. Vestiges of that tradition
remain today; it is not unknown for landowners trying to expand their domains
at the expense of Indians or squatters to hire gunfighters, as in the old
American West, to intimidate or assassinate those who stand in the way of
their occupation of new territory (see Rural Society, ch. 2).

     Other skirmishes mark the history of eighteenth-century Brazil. The
"peddlers war" (guerra dos mascatesi) was fought in 1711 between the
landowners of Pernambuco and traders and businessmen of Recife over debts and
the domination of local politics by the planters. French pirates attacked Rio
de Janeiro and held it for ransom. Attempts to collect the "royal fifth"-the
crown's share-of the gold mine in Minas Gerais led intermittently to riots in
that region. The discovery of diamonds at Cerro Frio in Minas Gerais led to
further disturbances. Clashes also broke out between Portuguese- and
Spanish-speaking settlers over control of present-day Uruguay, the frontier
region between the two empires.

Disputes over Borders with Spain

     When Portugal became free of Spanish rule in 1640, it began attempts to
establish Portuguese sovereignty in its border regions in Brazil. The
bandeirantes conducted slave-raiding expeditions into Spanish territory in
present-day Paraguay, and in 1680 the Portuguese colony of Sacramento was
founded just across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires. It became a center
for the transit of contraband goods to the Spanish dominions and a perpetual
source of friction. Relations between Spain and Portugal were not improved by
Portugal's siding with its ally, England, in the War of the Spanish
Succession. At the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht (1715), which ended the
war, Portugal acknowledged the victory of the French candidate for the Spanish
throne, whom it had opposed. Partly in return, the Spanish recognized
Portuguese possession of Sacramento. The Spanish colonists, displeased at this
decision, founded Montevideo nearby, and friction continued between the two
populations.

     Various additional treaties attempted to demarcate the line between
Spanish and Portuguese holdings. The Treaty of Madrid (1750) accepted the
principle of uti possidetis (ownership resulting from occupancy) as a basis
for sovereignty. This was favorable to Portugal, because the bandeirantes had
pushed far past the original Tordesillas line of demarcation. Sacramento was
ceded to Spain in exchange for Misiones, the area of seven Jesuit missions of
Guarani Indians north and east of the Brazilian provinces (the system of
captaincies ended in 1759) of Rio Grande do Sul. However, the Guarani, advised
by their Jesuit rulers, refused to relocate to new lands as the treaty
envisaged; a combined Spanish-Portuguese army took from 1753 to 1756 to subdue
them, in the so-called Guarani War. In 1759 the Portuguese crown, partly in
retaliation for the Jesuits' refusal to cooperate on that occasion, expelled
all Jesuits from territories under Portuguese rule.

     As a result of the difficulties in Misiones, in 1761 the Portuguese
withdrew their offer to cede Sacramento to Spain. Britain's difficulties
during the American War of Independence meant that it was not able to aid its
Portuguese ally effectively, however, and France backed Spain in bringing
pressure on the Portuguese to relinquish control of Sacramento without
getting Misiones in exchange. Nevertheless, Portuguese settlers pushed on into
Misiones and achieved effective occupation of the region, which was
acknowledged by Spain in the Treaty of Badajoz in 1801. At this time Portugal
and Spain were allied against the French, which made it possible for them to
reach an amicable settlement. The settlement included Spanish possession of
the Sacramento region, finally reaffirming the Madrid agreement reached 50
years earlier.

The Economy in the Eighteenth Century

     The colonial economy remained primarily that of a producer of raw
materials. By the Treaty of Methuen in 1703, Portugal had committed itself to
import British manufactures in exchange for the export of wine; manufacturing
therefore never became a principal activity, and manufactured articles used in
the colony came primarily from Britain. The main export was still sugar, the
production of which gave form to the society of the rural Northeast, with its
plantations, sugar mills, and slave quarters.

     Brazil's sugar markets were limited by the development of sugar
production in the Caribbean. However, because of declining production in Haiti
after that colony achieved independence in 1801, the market improved. Later,
cotton became a major export item in the Northeast as the textile industry
grew in Britain and as exports of cotton from North America were interrupted
by the American Civil War. The center of cotton production was in the
province of Maranhao. At times during the eighteenth century, however, tobacco
cultivation was the second largest export activity after sugar. Tobacco,
raised principally in Bahia on plantations, was used as a barter item in the
slave trade.

     Gold and diamonds were extracted in the province of Minas Gerais and also
to a lesser extent in Mato Grosso and Goias. Mining was also based on slave
labor and was closely regulated by the crown. In addition to the royal fifth
that was supposed to be paid, in 1710 a "capitation tax" on the number of
slaves owned by the mining operators was assessed. Because of the primitive
techniques used in the mines, however, many were soon worked out as far as
the existing technology allowed. Some mine operators thereupon abandoned
their efforts and freed the slaves involved. At its height, the mining
industry had contributed to the development of cities and to the population
of the Minas Gerais region. It also led to the growth of ranching to provide
meat for the mining areas. In 1771 the crown finally established a royal
monopoly on diamond-mining because it had proved impossible to collect taxes
from the industry.

Literature and Art During the Colonial Period

     In the sixteenth century, colonial literature consisted of travel books,
narratives, and letters written by Portuguese traveling to Brazil. In addition
to the letters of Pero Vaz de Caminha, who came with Cabral, and the log of
the voyage written by Pero Lopes de Sousa, there appeared in this period three
literary documents of major interest: Tratado da Terra do Brazil (Treatise on
the Land of Brazil) and Historia da Provincia de Santa Cruz (History of the
Province of Santa Cruz) by Pero Magalhaes Gandavo, and the Tratado Descritivo
do Brasil em 1587 (Descriptive Treatise on Brazil in 1587) by Gabriel Soares
do Sousa, who came to Brazil in 1567 and settled in Bahia as master of a sugar
mill. The content and style of these works expressed the Portuguese spirit in
their detailed description, taste for the picturesque, and lyric quality.

     In the eighteenth century, Brazilian writing, imitating the popular
poetry of Italy, France, and Portugal, was intended for an elite that lived in
luxury, educated its sons at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, and
followed Portuguese modes. In Bahia, the colonial literary and artistic
center, songs of love, satires, elegies, and sonnets were dedicated to kings,
governors, and great ladies. But the Brazilian reality was the mining fever
sweeping the country, the exploits of the bandeirantes fighting and capturing
the natives, and the nature of the arid interior zones.

     Literary prominence soon passed to the inland mining city of Ouro Preto
in Minas Gerais. A small group of poets, called the mineira school, initiated
the first coalition of politics and letters. Jose Basilio da Gama, born in
Brazil and educated in Portugal and Rome, wrote Uruguay, considered the best
Brazilian epic. It dealt with the war against the Paraguay Indians in 1756 and
attracted much attention by its indictment of Jesuit policies. Santa Rita
Durao wrote the famous epic poem Caramuru (Dragon of the Sea), which is known
to every Brazilian schoolchild. It relates the discovery of Bahia in about the
middle of the sixteenth century by Diego Alvares Correa, who married
Paraguassu, the daughter of an Indian chieftain.

     In the eighteenth century, colonial art forms developed, particularly in
architecture and the related arts, which were all put to the service of the
church. The architecture was exclusively in the baroque style, imported mainly
from Portugal and Spain. The early churches were too poor to follow this
style, and baroque in Brazil achieved its highest level of development as
ornamental interior decoration. Lavish use was made of gold, diamonds, and
emeralds, and wood carvings and sculpture decorated the interiors of colonial
churches.