FREEDOM IN AMAZONIA: THE BLACK PEASANTRY OF PARÁ, BRAZIL, 1850-1950 by Oscar de la Torre Cueva BA (Licenciado) in History, Universitat de Barcelona, 1997 MA in History, University of Pittsburgh, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2011 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Oscar de la Torre Cueva It was defended on August 8, 2011 and approved by George Reid Andrews, Distinguished Professor of History Alejandro de la Fuente, UCIS Research Professor of History John Frechione, Associate Director, Center for Latin American Studies Lara Putnam, Associate Professor of History Dissertation Director: George Reid Andrews, Distinguished Professor of History ii Copyright © by Oscar de la Torre Cueva 2011 iii FREEDOM IN AMAZONIA: THE BLACK PEASANTRY OF PARÁ, BRAZIL, 1850-1950 Oscar de la Torre Cueva, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2011 More than 40,000 enslaved Africans were brought to Amazonia between the late seventeenth century and the 1840s. By the second half of the nineteenth century their cultural and economic adaptation to the region had become very visible: the slaves acquired knowledge of Amazonian agriculture, learned the opportunities for collecting forest and river products, and forged bonds of kin and culture. When slavery was abolished in 1888, the freedmen took advantage of the gradual impoverishment of plantation areas to appropriate plots of land that had belonged to their former masters, creating numerous peasant communities. This implied not only re-configuring residential, work, and leisure spaces, but also crafting new narratives of owning and belonging to the land. Outside of plantations, groups of escaped slaves proliferated along the Amazon‘s tributary rivers. Like their enslaved counterparts, by the second half of the nineteenth century the runaways gradually abandoned the hard life of marronage. They maintained relations with itinerant merchants, missionaries, and political patrons to gain stability and establish themselves as autonomous rural producers. In the early 1900s local elites sought to buy the lands where the maroon-descendants lived in order to subject them to coerced labor. Some black peasants accommodated to the new situation but others resisted it by employing varied individual, iv collective, and confrontational strategies, which included participating in multi-racial protests against land privatization. Local modes of production and trade in Amazonia impinged upon the history of Afro- descendants in complex and contradictory ways. While under slavery the regional economy facilitated the conversion of slaves into peasants and the viability of marronage, in the early- to mid-twentieth century local elites perfected new ways of curbing peasant autonomy. In turn, black peasants tried to maintain themselves as autonomous producers, asserting their right not only to reside on the land and to cultivate it, but also to gather its resources freely. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... XII 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 STRUCTURE ..................................................................................................... 14 2.0 THE ORIGINS OF AFRICAN SLAVERY AND MARRONAGE IN THE AMAZON, 1750-C.1850 ............................................................................................................. 17 2.1 REFORMULATING THE INDIAN’S ROLE ................................................ 19 2.2 IMPORTING AFRICAN SLAVES ................................................................. 25 2.3 LOCAL NETWORKS BEYOND ETHNIC AND LEGAL BORDERS ....... 32 2.4 AMAZON MAROONS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION .................... 38 2.5 WARTIME NETWORKS: THE CABANAGEM REVOLT ........................ 44 2.6 RECOVERY AND CHANGE .......................................................................... 49 3.0 FREEDOM IN THE TROMBETAS RIVER, 1850-1920 ....................................... 54 3.1 UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE WATERFALLS, 1840-1870S ....... 57 3.2 EXCHANGING GOODS, EXCHANGING FUTURES ................................ 65 3.3 MAROONS WITHOUT SLAVERY: 1888-C.1930 ........................................ 70 4.0 RURAL SLAVERY IN PARÁ, C.1850-1888 ........................................................... 80 4.1 A “WILD AND DIVERSIFIED SCENERY”: SLAVES IN THE AMAZON ECONOMY ......................................................................................................................... 83 vi 4.2 LEARNING LOCAL AGRICULTURE.......................................................... 88 4.3 PRACTICING LOCAL AGRICULTURE ..................................................... 92 4.4 “CHILDREN OF THE HOUSE”: BUILDING FAMILY BONDS .............. 97 4.5 A “LARGE FAMILY OF CHILDREN”: PATERNALISM IN AMAZON PLANTATIONS ............................................................................................................... 102 4.6 TRANSFORMATIONS .................................................................................. 108 4.7 ENTERING THE PATHS OF FREEDOM .................................................. 112 5.0 “CITIZENS OF TAUAPARÁ”: APPROPRIATING LAND IN CACAU (VIGIA, PARÁ), 1874-C.1960.................................................................................................. 115 5.1 ORGANIZING SPACE AT THE SANTO ANTÔNIO DA CAMPINA PLANTATION ................................................................................................................. 117 5.2 CAMPINA IN TRANSITION ........................................................................ 123 5.3 CAMPINA TRANSFORMED ........................................................................ 128 5.4 “THEIR BIRTH CRADLE” ........................................................................... 134 5.5 CUSTOMARY LAND TENURE AND THE LAW ..................................... 140 5.6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 147 6.0 WINNERS, LOSERS, AND IN-BETWEENS IN THE BRAZIL NUT TRADE, LOWER AMAZON, 1920-1960 ............................................................................................... 150 6.1 GOING NUTS .................................................................................................. 153 6.2 CONTROLLING LAND ................................................................................. 158 6.3 CONTROLLING LABOR .............................................................................. 165 6.4 OPPOSITIONAL RESPONSES .................................................................... 172 6.5 “FATHERS OF THE PEOPLE” AND “BOOTLICKERS” ....................... 177 vii 6.6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 184 7.0 COLLECTIVE PROTEST, 1921-1943 .................................................................. 187 7.1 “THE SENTIMENT OF REVOLT THAT DOMINATES THEM”: ALENQUER, 1921 ........................................................................................................... 189 7.2 ETHNICITY, LAND, AND POWER ............................................................ 196 7.3 INSTITUTING PRIVATE PROPERTY IN THE CASTANHAIS .............. 201 7.4 “A PEOPLE ZEALOUS OF ITS RIGHTS” ................................................. 206 7.5 “BARATISMO”: “VARGUISMO” IN PARÁ ............................................. 215 8.0 CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................... 221 8.1 PLANTATION SLAVERY, CABOCLIZATION, AND AUTONOMY .... 221 8.2 CURBING PEASANT AUTONOMY............................................................ 225 8.3 STRUGGLING OVER LABOR, GIVING MEANING TO FREEDOM .. 226 8.4 THE AFTERMATH OF THE BRAZIL NUT RUSH .................................. 228 APPENDIX A : SLAVES OF THE SANTO ANTÔNIO DA CAMPINA PLANTATION, 1874............................................................................................................................................. 231 APPENDIX B : SLAVE FAMILIES AT THE SANTO ANTÔNIO DA CAMPINA PLANTATION, 1874 ................................................................................................................ 234 APPENDIX C : BRAZIL NUT PRODUCTION AND EXPORTS FROM PARÁ AND SELECTED COUNTIES, 1877-1935 ...................................................................................... 237 9.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 240 9.1 ARCHIVES ...................................................................................................... 240 9.2 INTERVIEWS ................................................................................................. 242 9.3 NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS.......................................................... 244 viii 9.4 PUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES ............................................................ 245 9.5 SECONDARY SOURCES .............................................................................. 253 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1. Slaveholdings in Pará, 1856-1886 ............................................................................... 85 Table A.1. Slaves of the Santo Antônio da Campina Plantation ...............................................