Family, Church, and Crown: a Social and Demographic History of the Lower Xingu Valley and the Municipality of Gurupa, 162 3-1889
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FAMILY, CHURCH, AND CROWN: A SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE LOWER XINGU VALLEY AND THE MUNICIPALITY OF GURUPA, 162 3-1889 By ARLENE M. KELLY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1984 Copyright 19 84 by Arlene Marie Kel! , This dissertation is dedicated to my parents Patrick Joseph. Aloysius and Katherine Louise Roberts Kelly ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am greatly indebted to the Fulbright-Hays Program which supported my research during 1977-78; to the Ford Foundation (Brazil) which provided financial backing for this research during 1978-79; to the Associa9ao Brasileira de Estudos Populacionais (ABEP, at the Centre de Desenvol- vimento de Planejamento Regional in Belo Horizonte) for grants received from 19 79 to 19 81; and to the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq) of the Brazilian Government for research support extended from 1981 to the present. Without the assistance provided by all these foundations, the completion of the study would have been impossible. I am grateful also for the institutional support re- ceived from the Nucleo de Altos Estudos Amazdnicos (NAEA) at the Federal University of Pard (UFPa) since 1978, and for that of the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, where I have been an associate researcher since July 19 82, and which graciously granted a year's leave of absence from my posi- tion there to finish writing this study. Emergency aid granted me by the Amazon Research and Training Program of the University of Florida ensured its completion, and I thank those responsible very much for this help. iv During the six years in which the research for this study was underway, many, many people contributed in various ways to its success. My heartfelt thanks go to the Bou9ao Viana family in Belem for their gracious hos- pitality and affection; to the Cabral Rebelo family from the Xingu and Belem for their friendship and material support in facilitating transportation to the study area; to the Marques Queirdz family of Iturama for their support and invariably warm welcomes; and to colleagues and friends at both NAEA and the Goeldi Museum for their encouragement and advice. To name individually everyone who at some time or other helped me continue with the research would require many pages. Two individuals, however, must be mentioned. Dr. Charles Wagley provided the first stimulus for my interest in the Amazon region. That stimulus was reinforced with constant encouragement during the years of research in Brazil and heightened by his personal interest shown during his brief visits. I owe him many thanks. Dr. Neil Macaulay, chairman of my dissertation committee, gave me continual assurance through the years of research; his un- ceasing advice, criticisms, and hard work ensured that the results of this study would be the best possible. He de- serves particular credit and has my deep gratitude for faci- litating the successful completion of this dissertation. Any errors evident in this study are my responsibility. V PREFACE During the summer of 19 74 with the support of the Tropical South American Summer Fellowship Program, I was able to do primary research for my master's thesis con- cerning the rubber boom in the Xingu River valley. While seeking background material for Amazonian historical de- velopment prior to the onset of world rubber demand, I discovered a lack of continuity in secondary sources re- ferring to the region as a whole; there were no comprehen- sive studies of the Amazon's history. Available studies focussed on events during the eighteenth century or during the reign of rubber in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, without exception, presented a macro-view of the Amazon Region, giving no attention to the micro-regional variations of geography and demography. The sources for these studies were archival collections stored in capital cities such as Manaus, Belem or Rio de Janeiro; other sources of documentation in smaller cities and towns were neglected. At the same time I was collecting data about the rub- ber boom and the Xingu River's leading rubber baron, Jose Porfirio de Miranda, I traveled between the city of Alta- mira and the municipal seat of Senador Jose Porfirio vi (formerly, Souzel) to check on documents stored in the municipal archives. In the clerk's office at Senador Jos4 Porfirio I was shown a trunk full of yellowed paper tied together in bales, which were civil registrations of births, marriages and deaths from the 1890 's. Untying one of the bales, which contained marriage registers, I began reading and was impressed by the volume of information each regis- ter contained: place of birth, date of birth, occupation and place of residence for the couple with additional in- formation concerning their parents. Since Senador Jos^ Porfirio's municipal history was shorter than that of two other towns in the micro- region of the lower Xingu Valley, Porto de Moz and Gurupa, I assumed that earlier registra- tion material existed in the latter two places. With the support of the Fulbright-Hays Program I re- turned to the Amazon Region in 19 78 to explore the history of the geographic unity comprised of the lower Xingu Valley and the municipality of Gurup^, using docioments stored in the various municipal and ecclesiastic archives in Gurup^, Porto de Moz, Senador Jos^ Porfirio and Altamira, as well as those in the capital cities. I began using church and civil registers in Gurupa in May 19 78 and remained there until the end of August, without being able to finish re- searching either baptisms or births. To complete the phase of data collection, more than a year of research was neces- sary. After successive data collecting trips, I finished work in Gurupa by October 19 79 and proceeded to Porto de vii . Moz , Senador Jose Porffrio and Altamira. The last field trip occurred in November 19 82 when I recovered some data which had been lost through faulty film processing (I micro- filmed much of the registration information and transcribed it in Belem) Through the phases of research I became aware of in- stitutions in the historical evolution of the study area: the family, the Church, and the State. Since the earliest stage of conquest, the Portuguese Crown and the Roman Catholic Church had been uneasy partners in the enterprise of American assimilation. The first military expedition into the Amazon Basin, in the early seventeenth century, was accompanied by a Franciscan missionary. By the mid- seventeenth century, the Jesuits had begun their Amazonian missionary activity in the lower Xingu River valley, and soon v;ould clash seriously with the Crown officials who rescinded the Jesuits' authority over a strategically im- portant part of the Xingu River and put it in the hands of Franciscan missionaries. After the expulsion of the Jesuits and other regular missionary orders in the mid-eighteenth century. State do- cuments concerning the secularized missions revealed the importance of the concept of family for the colonization process. Only Europeans or whites were included in the of- ficial concept of family; all other inhabitants, Amerin- dians and black slaves, were outside it. Religious and social reforms emanating from the Reformation and the Counter viii Reformation reinforced strict monogamous marriage and legal interpretation of the family, in which the father, or head of household, dominated all others. Since Amerindians did not respect the institution of monogamous marriage, and the slaves, as chattel, were property of the head householder, both groups remained outside the legally interpreted domain of the family. They also formed the bulk of the labor force during the colonization process and after independence. From the 1823 census data for the study area, it was obvious that the organization of the population by families and labor force continued—only servile racial categories were included in the summaries which followed the nominal population listing for each place— and there was overriding concern on the part of both imperial and provincial autho- rities to organize exploitable labor pools. Their efforts had little effect and failed altogether when the region be- came a supplier for the foreigners' demands for rubber. During the imperial period in the Xingu River valley, baptismal records were kept continuously, and the earliest records preserved detailed baptisms in Porto de Moz beginning in 1824. Other parishes have preserved baptismal registers from later dates: Souzel, from 1856; and Gurupa, from 1866. Unfortunately, civil documentation of births, which began in 1876, was haphazard and unreliable as demographic data. Minute analysis of the information provided in the baptismal registers, however, showed it to be reliable and revealing. The high niomber of illegitimate births (about 50%) implied ix that post-Reformation concepts of family and marriage were not assimilated by the general population in the study area by the nineteenth century, and that application of methodologies derived from European models would not be adequate for analysis of Amazonian demographic-historical events. The marital pattern presented in the study area during the nineteenth century was overwhelmingly Amerindian. The distinct seasonality displayed by the movement of monthly baptisms in the area during the Empire indicated that the population tended to reunite twice a year in towns and cities, while during the rest of the time most persons worked or resided elsewhere. The continuation of this pat- tern until 1889 contradicts claims that the rubber boom drained population from the cities and towns. Most economic activities carried on, at least after the eighteenth century, were seasonal and took part of the male population away once or twice a year; therefore, the extraction of rubber only intensified an on-going process.