Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:50:08.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Migrant Behavior and Elite Attitudes: Brazil's Great Drought, 1877-1879*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Gerald Michael Greenfield
Gerald Michael Greenfield*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Parkside, Wisconsin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

If banditry and mysticism represents one classic formula summarizing the historical reality of the Brazilian Northeast, its companion image is one of devastating droughts and concomitant migrations out from the parched backlands to regional capitals like Recife and Salvador and on to the great national metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Reports of drought in the Northeast appear from the times of early settlement; succeeding centuries witnessed repeated dry periods. While some of these proved relatively moderate in intensity, others, sparing only the lush coastal strip, assailed the entire region and reigned for several seasons. Of this latter type, none provoked greater suffering than the so-called Grande Séca which embraced the winters from 1877-1879, devastating the cotton and cattle complexes, the mainstays of the backlands' economy, and setting in motion an enormous migratory stream which ranged from the Amazon rubber lands to those of the booming coffee culture in the Southeast. Moreover, with the outbreak of epidemic diseases, it generated a mortality estimated as exceeding two hundred thousand persons. By this measure, then, the Grande Séca stands as “the most costly natural disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , July 1986 , pp. 69 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Part of this research was presented at the Eighth International Symposium on Urbanization in the Americas. The author acknowledges helpful commentary by Richard M. Morse and Linda Lewin.

References

1 Fernão Cardim writes of a drought in the Northeast as early as 1583. See his work Tratado da Terra e da Gente do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, 1925. Significant droughts are recorded for the years 1605–6; 1614; 1692; 1711; 1721–25; 1736–37; 1745–46; 1754; 1777–78; 1790–93; 1804; 1816–17; 1824–25; 1830; and 1844–45. Alves, Guarino, Janela para o Nordeste, (Fortaleza: 1960), p. 24 Google Scholar.

2 Cuniff, Roger L., “The Great Drought: Northeast Brazil, 1877–1880,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1970, p. 283 Google Scholar. This assertion rests on Cuniff’s statement that a conservative estimate yields 220,725 deaths. His conclusion is based on statistics for 1878 for Ceará and for selected places throughout the drought area, and estimates for 1877 and 1879.

3 A precise definition of sertão as “backlands” does not convey its larger connotations and richer meanings, for the sertão in Brazil long has stood as an area of mystery, almost a land separate from the more settled nation. Reference to this point will be made later in this essay when considering attitudes about the sertanejos, the residents of the backlands.

4 The term Southeast, as used in this essay includes the dynamic triangle of Minas Gérais, Rio de Janeiro, and Sâo Paulo which became increasingly important throughout the latter portion of the nineteenth century and dominated Brazil during the Old Republic.

5 Hardoy, Jorge Enrique, “City and Countryside in Latin America: An Analysis of Social and Economic Relations,” in Tulchin, Joseph S. ed., Latin America in the Year 2000 (Reading, Mass., 1975), p. 232 Google Scholar. Hardoy observes: “Recife, Natal, Salvador and other Northeastern cities were administrative and service centers for a lightly settled and little known interior, but primarily acted as points of exchange and contact with Portugal and Europe, where Brazilian sugar became a monopoly.”

6 For a good discussion of urban development see Morse, Richard M., “Cities and Society in 19th Century Latin America: The Illustrative Case of Brazil,” Proceedings of the 37th International Congress of Americanists, Vol. 1, 1968, pp. 303–322 Google Scholar.

7 In addition to those already mentioned, other processes, which include the growth of Northeast cotton agriculture and decline in ranching, the creation of a new geo-economic zone, the agreste, the Amazon rubber boom, and changing patterns of political and social organization as reflected in events like the Quebra-Quilos, and, later, in Joaseiro and Canudos, form important parts of the context in which the Great Drought occurred. On changing patterns of land use and the emergence of the agreste see Barman, Roderick, “The Brazilian Peasantry Reexamined: The Implications of the Quebra-Quilo Revolt, 1874–1875,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 57, no. 3 (Aug., 1977), 401–424 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Fundamental for understanding such patterns and their associated processes is Manuel de Andrade, Correira, A Terra e o homem no nordeste, 2nd ed. (São Paulo, s.d.)Google Scholar. On the Quebra-Quilos, a disturbance in the Northeast ostensibly prompted by an attempt to introduce the metric system, but more recently interpreted as representing more fundamental social protest, see, in addition to Barman, Maior, Armando Souto, Quebra-Quilos, Lutas Socias no otoño do Imperio (São Paulo, 1878)Google Scholar. The so-called miracle at Joaseiro do Norte in Ceará occurred in 1889, when a communion water turned into blood in the mouth of a communicant. The local priest, Padre Cicero Romão Batista, ultimately became a potent political figure. See Cava, Ralph Delia, Miracle at Joaseiro (N.Y., 1970)Google Scholar. The famed episode of the mystic Antonio Conselheiro and his followers at Canudos is the subject of Euclides da Cunha’s masterpiece, Os Sertões.

8 Cuniff, , “Great Drought,” pp. 132–133 Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., p. 142.

10 From Comissão Central de Socorros to Dr. Manoel dementino Carneiro da Cunha, Presidente da Provçncia, 15 outubro, 1877. Arquivo Publico Esladual de Fernambuco, Recife (hereafter, APEP), Da, 33.

11 From Comissão Central de Socorros to Dr. Manoel dementino da Cunha, Presidente da Província, 1 setembro, 1988. Comissão Central de Socorros to Dr. Manoel dementino Carneiro da Cunha, Presidente da Província, 2 novembre 1877, APEP, Da 33.

12 Various newspaper reports note ships arriving or departing with large numbers of retirantes and slaves. For example, the Jornal do Recife, July 7, 1878, notes the arrival of the packet ship Bahia bound for Rio with 476 slaves for sale, the largest single shipment to that date “from the north of the Empire to the court.” That same ship carried some 150 retirantes, of whom 17 disembarked, while the rest took passage on a French ship bound for southern ports. Another representative newspaper notice (Jornal do Recife 9 maio, 1879), reported a ship departing with 327 slaves for sale in Rio and remarked: “Decidedly, the north of the Empire will be without slaves because necessity and the commerce of selling people has them migrating towards the south.”

13 The Jornal do Recife, December 15, 1877 reprinted the following from the Folha Oficial of the Provincial President: “Acceding to the repeated requests of the President of Ceará, grappling with the extremely high number of about 30,000 retirantes in the capital and its vicinity, I have just arranged with the Manager of the Companhia Pernambucana for two of his ships to bring the greatest possible number of retirantes … to Pernambuco or Bahia.”

14 Information on Recife’s role as a commercial center at this time is in the various Relatorios of the Asociação Commercial Beneficente. An impression of this function may be gleaned from a report of the Provincial President in 1876 [Relatorio com que o Exam. Sr. Dr. Jôao Pedro Carvalho de Moraes Passou a Administração de Provincia ao Exm. Sr. Dr. Manuel dementino da Cunha no dia l° de maio de 1876 (Pernambuco, 1876)], when he notes that: “Recite boasts an active foreign commerce and it provides foreign items directly to the provinces of Alagoas, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará.

15 For a succinct discussion of Recife’s nineteenth-century development see de Andrade, Manuel Correia, Recife: Problematica de Uma Metropole de Região Subdesenvolvida (Recife, 1979), pp. 85–97 Google Scholar.

16 To Dr. Jõao Alfredo Correa de Oliveira Andrade, Ministro do Imperio from Dr. Pedro de Atahyde Lobo Moscozo, 31 janeiro 1873, APEP. Saude Publica.

17 These figures are calculated from population statistics reported in de Estatística, Brasil Directoría Gérai, Relatório e Trabalhos Estatísticos Apresentados ao … Ministro e Secretario de Estado dos Negocios do Imperio pelo Director Cerai… em 31 de dezembro de 1876 (Rio de Janeiro, 1877)Google Scholar. Budgets are taken from lei provincial 1,291,30, set., 1878. Out of a total budget for cámaras muncipaes of 323:833$490, Recife received 199:5505524. Telling indeed is the fact that the amount budgeted for Recife’s cemetery—17:688$000—exceeded the total budget authorized for any of Pernambuco’s municipalities.

18 To Sr. Desembargador Francisco de Assis Oliveira Maciel, Presidente da Provincia from the Comissão Central, 1 fevereiro 1878, APEP, Da 35, vol. 2.

19 To Dr. Adelino de Luna Freire, Vice Presidente da Provçncia from the Comissão Central, 1 março 1878. Ibid., 13 abril 1878, APEP, Da 35, vol. 2.

20 The official founding date was April 7, 1878. The initial population of 600 reached some 3,000 by the following month. Cuniff, , “Great Drought,” p. 253 Google Scholar.

21 To Adelino Antonio de Luna Freire, Vice Presidente da Provçncia from Comissâo Central, 10 maio 1878; ibid., 16 maio 1878, APEP, Da 35, vol. 2.

22 Ibid., 1 maio 1878.

23 To Adolpho de Barros, Presidente da Provçncia, from Comissão Central, 22 julho 1878, APEP, da 35, vol. 2. The commission reported that it had “used all efforts to ensure the success of those measures suggested by Your Excellency to hastén the return of the emigrants to their former residences.” Ibid., 9 agosto, 1878.

24 Relatorio da Comissão Central de Socorros aos Indigentes Vítimas da Seca (Pernambuco, 1878), pp. 4–8.

25 In October, 1878, the Minister of the Empire sent a circular to provincial presidents in the Northeast, which noted the lessening of the drought and increase in supplies available in areas afflicted by it and ordered, therefore, among other things, that all retirantes still maintained at public expense be returned to their original dwellings; that all requests for food be directed to the government as opposed to the commissions; and that only expenses which have “the most intimate link with the drought” be authorized. Relatório apresentado a Assembléa Cerai Legislativa na prìmeira sessão da décima sétima legislatura pelo Ministro e Secretario de Estado dos Negocios do Imperio Conselheiro Carlos Leoncio de Carvalho (Rio de Janeiro, 1878), p. 120. The suspension of imperial relief also impelled the cessation of mostly all drought-related projects, as well as the dissolution of the Comissão Central. Jornal do Recife, July 1, 1879. Cuniff, , “Great Drought,” p. 255 Google Scholar. Emergency credits granted through special extensions permitted some relief spending in Pernambuco, though at a greatly reduced level, until May of 1880. Ibid., p. 265.

26 Jornal do Recife, July 13, 1879.

27 Ibid., September 28, 1878.

28 Ibid., September 30, 1878.

29 A list of persons buried at public expense for one six-month period in 1878 shows a total of 1,589 of whom 20 percent were ten years of age or younger. Approximately 8 percent were sixty or older. Empreza Funeraria, Relação dos retirâmes fallecidos e conduzidos em carros fúnebres para o cemeterio público … , APEP, Santa Casa, 16. A representative example of a newspaper report from 1877 (Jornal do Recife, July 17) notes the existence in a tumbled down house in Recife of “forty persons from the sertão, among them men, women and children.” Cuniff, Great Drought, Ch. 5, passim, also stresses the strength of family ties.

30 For example, the Provincial Vice President spoke of the need to build a new hospital on the Isle of Pine for those sick people who could not be accommodated in the city’s overcrowded major hospital Pedro II. In so doing, he also averred the need for building provisional housing on that Island to lodge the families of those sick people. Relatòrio com que o Exm. Sr. Dr. Adelino Antonio de Luna Freiré l° Vice-Presidente Passou ao Exm. Sr. Dr. Adolpho de Barros Cavalcante de Lacerda Presidente.

31 For example, the Jornal do Recife (4 junho 1878) reported the arrival of the ship Dantas from Csará carrying 1,424 retirantes, and noted that in addition twenty-four others had died on the voyage. The paper further observed: Without space sufficient to accommodate so great a number of people, they came so to speak piled upon one another in the midst of a repugnant pig stye.” In another such instance involving the ship Marquez de Caxias, the city’s chief port official described the ship’s captain as “hungry for money,” in that the captain had taken on 1,448 retirantes when the ship’s capacity at most, and only in the case of “great urgency,” could accommodate 800. To Adolpho de Barros Cavalcanti Lacerda, Presidente da Província from Manoel Ricardo da Cunha Couto, 5 junho 1878, APEP, Porto do Recife, 15. The captain asserted that he had contracted for 800–1,000 retirantes, but had been forced to take on the remainder, including sick persons, by the authorities at Aracatí. Jornal do Recife, June 8, 1878.

32 To Adolpho de Barros Cavalcanti de Lacerda, Presidente da Província from o Juiz de Direito e Presidente da Comissão de Palmares, 17 junho 1878. Ao Presidente da Comissâo, Juiz de Direito de Palmares do Director da Colonia Socorro, 17 junho 1878, APEP, da 35, voi. 2.

33 Salaries were paid only monthly and during that time workers were forced to buy food from the company store. To Dr. Manoel dementino Carneiro da Cunha, da Commissão Central, 1 setembro 1877, APEP, Da 33. The impresario also was accused of paying in vales rather than in cash. To Dr. dementino Carneiro da Cunha, da Comissão Central, 25 maio 1877. Ibid.

34 For one instance of fraud regarding food rations and other abuses see the Provincial President’s Relalório for 1879 (Recife, 1879), p. 9. The Province’s Health Inspector complained to the Provincial President [Ao Dr. Adolpho de Barros, do Dr. Pedro d’Attahyde Lobo Moscozo, 12 julho, 1878, APEP Sp 4.] that retirates sold their extra rations “for whatever price so as to devote themselves to gambling and drunkenness; it is not rare to encounter them at every step, in a deplorable state.” On “false” retirantes see Ao Presidente do Moscozo, 18 junho 1878, APEP, SP 4, and Jornal do Recife, August 29, 1877.

35 The Provincial President’s Relatorio for 1877 [(Pernambuco, 1878), p. 6] noted that in 1876 public crimes totaled 283; while from January to November of 1877. the number was 486. He observed: “property crimes rise. And that is what is to be expected in the province’s present conditions.”

36 It should be noted, however, that outrage also was expressed toward profiteers and other entrepreneurs who took advantage of relief efforts, including traffickers in farinha and beef, and people who inflated the number of retirantes under their care so as to receive supplements.

37 The Municipal Council of Recife appointed commissions headed by various prominent citizens to solicit donations throughout the city’s parishes, and then published their names and the amounts collected. As reported, for example, in the Jornal do Recife (September 27, 1877): “The municipal Council, making public this act of philanthropy and charity, thanks the distinguished citizens who so worthily fulfilled this mission, thus becoming worthy of praise and honorable mention.” Similarly, a letter from the Central Commission to the Provincial President (9 junho 1877, APEP. Da 33) reporting the influx of donations observed that neither the commercial and monetary crisis with which the province had been afflicted nor the fact that monies had only recently been collected to aid flood victims in Portugal as well as drought victims in other northern provinces “could prevent the Pernambucaifs charity from being manifested on behalf of the afflicted.”

38 One good example of such attitudes is an editorial from the Jornal do Recife (23 junho 1879) which observed that while the Constitution made it one’s duty to prevent the sertanejos from starving, it was those who worked who would have to pay the bill. Therefore, considerations of justice—economic, moral, and distributive—demanded that free relief go only to those “who find themselves incapable of working and given to the able-bodied only when and in exchange for services given to society.”

39 Directoria da Colonia Orphanológica Isabel, 31 de janeiro de 1878, O Director Frei Fidelis Maria de Fognano ao Presidencia de Pernambuco. [Appended to the Relatório of the Provincial President for 1878 (Pernambuco, 1878), pp. 17–23], p. 20.

40 Falla com que O Exm. Sr. Dr. Adolpho de Barros Cavalcante de Lacerda Presidente da Provincia Abrio a Sessão da Assemblea Legislativa em 19 de dezembro de 1878 (Recife, 1879), p. 52. See also a story titled “Povoado da Preguiça” in Jornal do Recife, September 24, 1878.

41 For an example suggesting the use of force, see Ao Adelino Antonio de Luna Freire, Vice-Presidente da Provincia da Commissão Central, 10 maio ࡸ, APEP, Da 35. Discussion of the need to make work a requirement so as to avoid “idleness” abound. For a representative example see the Provincial President’s Relatório for 1878, p. 4. The minister of Empire, reviewing policy for 1878 observed instances of conflicts provoked by retirantes and ascribed these to the fact that they had “lost the habit of working.” Relatório… Pelo Ministro e Secretario tie Estado dos Negocios do Imperio (Rio, 1878), p. 120.

42 Brazil, Congresso Nacional, Senado Federal, Anais do Senado do Imperio do Brasil, 1–20 legislatura, June 25, 1877, v. 1, p. 220.

43 For example, see Jornal do Recife, July 1, 1879. The above cited Relatório of the Minister of the Empire (p. 121) spoke of work as the only thing that could give the sertanejos “days of happiness and fulfillment.”

44 Clearly, exhaustive treatment of the genesis and development of elite attitudes exceeds the more modest aims of this paper. The author is engaged in a long-term project focusing on that subject.

45 Cuniff, , “Great Drought,” p. 69 Google Scholar.

46 Jornal do Recife, December 31, 1878, reporting on the Congresso Agrićola Session of October 7, 1878.

47 Cuniff, , “Great Drought,” p. 96 Google Scholar.

48 Again, the best overall discussion of patterns of labor in the Northeast is Manuel Correia de Andrade, A Terra e O Homem no Nordeste. See also Menezes, Djacir, O Oulro Nordeste: Ensato Sobre a Evolução Social e Politica do Nordeste da Civilizaçao do Couro e Suas Implicações Históricas nos Problemas Gerais, 2° ed., refundida e aumentada (Rio de Janeiro: 1970)Google Scholar.

49 For example, see To Dr. Manuel dementino Carneiro da Cunha, Presidente da Província, Da Commissão Central, 16 julho mi, APEP, Da 33, 1877.

50 The classic original statement of this theme, of course, was Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Facundo.

51 A contemporaneous recognition of this “development gap” appears in the form of a letter from the Pernambucan interior town of Pesqueira published in the Jornal do Recife, June 9, 1877. “When I see our capital with such lighting, streetcars, … and see our counties without a road, without a building … without a butcher shop.… Freyre, Gilberto, “Social Life in Brazil in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century,” Hispanic American Historical Review 5, no. 4. 1922: 597–630 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 605, remarks that interior towns remained virtually untouched by progress—“truly medieval”—until railways penetrated the country. His observation on the backlanders entering town is in this same essay, pp. 603–4. He remarked also that the sertanejo of the fifties was even more picturesque than the sertanejos of today.

52 Social Darwinism suggested a strong association between race and achievement, influencing many theories on civilization and development. Good discussion of these theories specific impacts on nineteenth-century Brazil is in Skidmore, Thomas E., Black Into White, Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (N.Y. 1974)Google Scholar and Burns, E. Bradford, Nationalism in Brazil: A Historical Survey (N.Y., 1968)Google Scholar. Also see Burns, E. Bradford, “Idealogy in Nineteenth Century Latin American Historiography,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 58, no. 3, 1978: 409–431 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 On the development of national institutions and culture, see Azevedo, Brazilian Culture.

54 Ibid., p. 381.

55 For discussion of these distinctive viewpoints see Perlman, Janice, The Myth of Marginality, Urban Politics in Rio de Janeiro (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976)Google Scholar, and Portes, Alejandro and Walton, John, Urban Latin America. The Political Condition from Above and Below (Austin, 1976)Google Scholar.