11 - The cane farmers

Summary

O life of the farmer

If only well they knew

their disadvantages are but few

and with their sainted efforts

themselves and this world support.

Sá de Miranda

Here, no one is interested in dealing with me about anything except having his cane milled first.

Francisco de Negreiros (1588)

From its earliest days, Brazil differed from other New World sugar economies in that a large proportion of the necessary raw material–sugarcane–and the labor force of slaves were controlled not by the producing mills but by cane farmers. This structure had existed on the Atlantic islands of both Spain and Portugal and appears to have been transferred to the Spanish Caribbean islands Cuba and Puerto Rico in the sixteenth century as well. But until the nineteenth century, only in Brazil did cane farmers form an essential part of the sugar economy. Perhaps in the Caribbean there were too many other economic activities, or the attractions of Mexico and Peru were eventually too strong to make cane farming appeal to poorer colonists. Brazil in its early years presented fewer distractions. Early royal efforts to stimulate the sugar economy had been designed to provide aid for colonists who lacked the capital or credit necessary to establish an engenho but who wished to participate in the export economy. The earliest engenhos in various parts of Brazil depended on these cane farmers, and the instructions to Tomé de Sousa on the establishment of royal control in Bahia contained specific references to them.