The Brazilians and their country

Front matter

HE BRAZILIANS

^ND THEIR. COUNTRY

CLAYTON SEDGWICK COOPER i

Preface

The purpose of this book is to present a somewhat comprehensive idea of the life and work of the present-day Brazilians. As no people can be known without a knowledge of the land in which they dwell, and also of the historical sources from which they have drawn their traditions and customs, attention has been given to the character of the largest of the South American Republics, and to the debt that Brazil owes to Europe, especially to Portugal, for its growth and development.

It is the common impression of those who visit Brazil, that here a natural stage is set for a great world drama. Already the curtain has fallen upon the two first acts, the Colonial and the Imperial periods. In the year 1889, the curtain began to raise on the third great modern Republican scene. It disclosed members of almost every nationality extant among the players. The background of national temperament is not radically different, but the foreground is filled with the denizens of a new Brazil — races of men blending into a new amalgam, under the fires of new activities. It is a fascinating picture of men becoming conscious of themselves, and aware for the first time of the almost unlimited physical and industrial riches of a gigantic country.

The Brazilians of to-day are awake and moving forward. As Walt Whitman once said of Americans :

**They go! They go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,

But I know that they go toward the best — toward something great."

V vi

PREFACE

It goes almost without saying that a book recording impressions, with some attempt at interpretation, written by a North American of any people in South America, lacks what Mr. Clemons would call the ^ ^ unconscious absorption'' that a lifetime of residence in a country affords. Nevertheless in a period when territorial barriers are being so rapidly dissolved and when national and social conditions are being so deeply stirred by the greatest human conflict of all the ages, isolation and localism are no longer possible for any thoughtful or patriotic citizen. To-day truly, the whole world is a stage and all men are players, and any attempt to make any part of this world citizenship more clear or meaningful finds a new audience of interested beholders. It is my hope that this book may add something to the knowledge and understanding of a people who share with us a large and very important portion of the Western Continent, but of whose existence we, as a nation, have been in the past strangely unfamiliar.

My indebtedness to Brazilians, to foreigners resident in Brazil, and to a wide circle of men and women who have helped me in many ways in connection with this book, is gratefully acknowledged.

Clayton Sedgwick Coopeb.

Westcolang, Pa.

July 1st, 1917.

PAOB

Preface v

Chapter I

A trait needed to understand Latin America — Historical contrasts with United States — Traces of visit of Elihu Root — The two Americas as complements of each other — Reasons for lack of contact — Competition with the English and German trader — Too little attention to a strong diplomatic service— Present agencies to eliminate ignorance of Latin America.

CHAPTER II Brazilian Traits 16

Danger in sweeping generalisations — What Brazilians say of themselves — Hospitality and conservatism — Traces of the royalist— Slavery and Constitutionalism — State pride, Portuguese language and individualistic culture — Officialdom — *'Boom" crops — Absence of colour lines — The new type in the making — ^Domestic conditions.

Chapter III

Portuguese inheritances — Early settlers contrasted with Pilgrim fathers and Spanish American adventurers — The descendants of heroic discoverers and knights of chivalry — Portuguese poetry — Attitude of Brazilians toward the mother-country — Sacredness of old family ideals — The contribution of the Jesuits — The effect of the strong immigration from Portugal in the beginning of the sixteenth century — The Portuguese contesting with the Indians and Europe for Brazil — The Capitanias of King Joao III — The settlements of French Huguenots, the first Protestant colony in the New World—- Brazil's evolutionary struggle for Independence — Opening of Brazilian ports — Influence of the French Revolution — Prince Regent Dom John VI bringing the Royal Court of Portugal to Brazil — Imperialism and democracy do not mix — • The bloodless revolution and the young Brazilian ruler, Prince Dom Pedro I.

CHAPTER IV The Brazilian Empire 46

* * Independencia ou Morte,'' watchword of the Brazilian Revolution— The birth of democracy in Brazil — Brazil's Boston Tea Party in a coffee city — A Government ''Monarchical, hereditary, constitutional and representative" — Contrast vii

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with Mexican constitutionalism — The Emperor versus the Republicans — A fateful night — The farewell of the * ' Washington 01 Brazil" — Dom Pedro II and his forty-eight years of benevolent emperorhood — Industry and commerce awakening— Dr. Ruy Barbosa's reasons for the last bloodless political upheaval bringing in the Eepublic — Dom Pedro's "place in history.''

Chapter V

The conquering of the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century by the Moors— -^igns of Orientalism in treatment of women,

family clans, hospitality, love of colour and display, form and etiquette — Attitude to deportment different than in North America — ''Manners maketh men" — Eastern mental traits — Attitude to labour — Oriental regard of poetry politics and literary excellence — Eastern freedom seen in treatment of social engagements — Beauty and pleasure before business — A needful counterpart to our civilisation of ' ' efiiciency. ' '

CHAPTER VI Republican Government

No two Republics alike in traditions and beginnings — United

States compared with Brazil as a Eepublic — Too much satire concerning South American Revolutions — Government in transition— Three notable decades of representative Government — Some "splendid names" of Brazilians — The weak side of politics in Brazil — The powers of the Federal Government — Positivism and the Republic— ^Absence of political parties — Separation of Church and State — Need of ballot reform — Dominance of old families in politics — States Rights — The Constitution, modelled on that of the United States, beginning to march.

CHAPTER VII A Leviathan Country

Brazil's size and natural resources demand a peculiar destiny — A land of vast areas of unoccupied territory, without deserts, with unexampled water-courses and all the climates save that of the frigid zone — The Amazon Valley as a future cattle country — Variety of productivity — The cry of Brazil, ''Give us men to match our country! " — The North American opportunity for Investment — Capital more eloquent than Monroe Doctrines.

Chapter VIII

No nation-wide laws for compulsory education — The learned professions of law, medicine and pharmacy carry prestige — No university and no graduate schools — Students go abroad to finish education — Special need of primary education to combat illiteracy which is 70% of the total population— Effect of Portuguese traditions and slavery on the school-life — Monastic schools — Modern education inaugurated in 1808-— Revolutionised in 1878 — Abolishing degrees as undemocratic — Government control of schools— Broad and liberal professional training — Sao Paulo leading educational cohorts — Enviii ix gineering, military, and arts and crafts institutions popular — Schools of foreign missions — Characteristics of students — Practical and technical training needed to meet growing industrialism— Students returning from abroad bring new visions— Generalisation strong — Application of knowledge needs strengthening.

CHAPTER IX Brazilian Home Life , 118

The nation revealed in the home — Brazilian home making compared with English and Teuton — Moorish influences seen in partial seclusion of women — Homes vary with the diverse sections — An ethnological congeries — Influence of foreign marriages — The Brazilian woman, wife and mother — Middle-class homes in the making — No modern fads — Training of children — Amusements and outings — Bachelors so rare as to be almost suspicious characters — Anniversaries — Coffee and not spirits the reigning beverage — ^Attitude of men toward the home, Latin, not Anglo-Saxon — Men's clubs — High premimn placed on relatives and friends.

CHAPTEE X

Thb Triumph op the Engineer 132

Dr. Frederick Pearson, and his contribution to Brazilian engineering— The transformation of mule cars and gas plants to electric traction and incandescents — The romance and reality of electric energy applied to Sao Paulo and Eio de Janeiro since 1900 — The people said, **nao pode'* (you can't do it) — The Federal Government granting rights in 1905 to The Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power Company Limited — The first electric car in Sao Paulo — The first great light and power service in South America — Seventeen years of accomplishment — Brazilian co-operation and progressiveness — American leadership — Kind of men needed for such enterprises in Brazil — A great gas plant — Labour problems — Telephone systems.

CHAPTER XI Seeing Rio de Janeiro by Tramway 147

If you would know a people study their tram-car behaviour — Brazilian politeness in public — Street-transportation, ancient and modern in the Federal Capital — Sightseeing by tramways — As democratic as a Parisian omnibus — Femininity at the windows of Brazilian houses — Tropical splendours — Where the **bond" cars take the traveller — **If there be a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here ! ' '

CHAPTER XII Electric Energy Transforming Brazil 161

Thomas Edison 's prayer — Electricity the servant of usefulness and beauty — No electric lights in Rio de Janeiro in 1905; now the best electrically lighted city in the world — How it was accomplished — Lages^ the dynamo of hydraulic power — The beauty of the Brazilian lake-country — Mountain rain-fall-— In the land of power houses and transmission lines — A great dam and a great tunnel— **Fazen da" and Brazilian country life in the matta — Fifty miles of pipe-lines — Fighting the Brazilian mosquito — Team-play in a big business family.

CHAPTER XIII The Racial Melting Pot 178

Colonisation vicissitudes and victories — The Europeanisation of Brazil — Early Portuguese colonists and their racial mixtures with Brazilian Indians, African Negroes and European immigrants — Influence of the Catholic Church doctrines —Feudal aristocracy — The evolution from mediasval conditions— Absentee landlordism — Colonisation becoming serious in the last half century — The strong and flourishing German colonies in South Brazil — Things seen in German-Brazilian towns and cities — The one and a half million Italians in Brazil— Colonisation by other nationalities — Mixed marriages with colonists — Government, State and railway colonisation, laws, propaganda and the results- — Visiting colonies on horseback along the lines of the Brazil Railways — Agriculture — Moving crops — Conditions similar to those in the United States, fifty years ago.

CHAPTER XIV In the Land op the Paulistas 195

Arriving in Brazil at Santos, the coffee port — The Santos and Sao Paulo Railway— Sao Paulo the ''Voice of the South*' — Population, property and progress — The military and police — A bit of history — The Automobile Club where successful business men and gamesters are synonymous — The stimulation of coffee in the Paulista State — Visiting coffee farms — Brazilian coffee, how it came to Brazil, and how it is grown and exported — Cattle breeding as a side issue on the fazenda — Sao Paulo the land of vast water power — A description of the way this energy has been harnessed to light the cities electrically and run the power plants — Industrious, scientific, liberty-loving Paulistas, the ''Yankees of Brazil."

CHAPTER XV The Awakening of Southern Brazil 213

The Indians of the Brazilian forests— Water-roads giving way to railroads and woods to waving cornfields — The riches of Parana, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul — An interview with the President of the State of Parana — Fighting the men of the ' ' bush ' ' — A visit at a big lumber camp — Business openings — Suspicions of towns where every one speaks German— Ranching lands — Brazilian Gauehos, or cowboys — The world's great future cattle country — Frigorificos — Manufactures— Agriculture, the coming ''Middle West" — Brazilian farmers and plainsmen — The notable Cattle Congress — A ranch-man's home — Greater cattle possibilities in Rio Grande do Sul and Matto Grosso than in Argentina.

Chapter XVI

The United States Steel Corporation as an American steamship pioneer for trade with Brazil — North American favorxi able geographical advantages for Brazilian commerce — Reciprocity of products — Patriotism as well as good business to build merchant ships for South American trade — What Europe has been doing — Her steamship lines with Brazil — "Give us ships \" the cry from Panama to Patagonia, from Patagonia to Para — ''Vain regrets" — Brazilian coastwise shipping — Passenger and freight service by European lines to all parts of the Old World — River transportation — Brazilian railroads, history and problems — The ''intoxicating influence of space" — Co-ordination needed — Inter-state and transcontinental plans — Railroads double mileage since 1900 — Easy money from Europe — After the War, What? — The Government railroads — Roads organised and managed by foreigners — Travelling over three thousand miles of the Brazil Railway in Southern Brazil — Diverse enterprises carried on by railroads — The desire for foreign capital — Future trade limited only by transportation facilities.

Chapter XVII

Aeroplaning over the Brazilian mountains — ^Water-planes in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro — Boat-clubs and rowing — Association football and horse racing — Influence of English and Americans in outdoor sports — Motoring, the Brazilian feminine idea of open air exercise — The gambling temper of Latin America — Lotteries an amusement and also a big business — Endless varieties of games of chance — The prestige and practice of the daily Government Lottery — The "Bicho" even more popular though *' illegal" — Gambling clubs — Effect upon the people — special hardship to the labouring man.

Chapter XVIII

Eio DE Janeiro, City oj* Enchantment . . . . . . 267

The discoverer of Brazil — The City and the Bay exert an influence resembling that of personality — The Bay of Guanabara — First impressions — A miracle of natural beauty to which man has added — Avenida Rio Branco and the great Minister for whom it was named — An Avenue revealing Brazilian characteristics— The Monroe Palace, modelled from the St. Louis Exposition, where the Chamber of Deputies meets — Arts and architecture — The *' movies" — Rua Ouvidor is sui generis — Shops and shoppers — Old Rio with her memories and miststained buildings — Street-vendours — The tropical garments of a city of seductive charm.