CILT,Brasília, Brazil, Teacher Marcia, 3C

Culture   Sep 22, 2017 by Juliana Pereira

                                                                                  Colonization in Brazil

Before the Portuguese arrived in Brazil there were already several indigenous groups living in our country. The indigenous did not know what the Portuguese people were doing in Brazil. When Portuguese people arrived, there were several wars but Portuguese treated indigenous like slaves. The name “indigenous” was given to the Brazilian native people because the Portuguese thought they had arrived in India, not in Brazil. By that time, there were more than 1.000 groups, about 2 and 4 million inhabitants. Nowadays, there are just 245 groups, speaking about 150 different languages

The contact of the Brazilian Indians with the Portuguese crown was extremely harmful to the formers. The people from native Brazilian tribes were deceived, exploited, enslaved and, in many cases, massacred by the Portuguese Empire. They lost land and were forced to abandon their culture in favor of Europe. Although, many indigenous nations faced the Portuguese through wars, they were disadvantaged because they had no firearms like the Portuguese people. As we said before, several indigenous peoples inhabited Brazil long before the arrival of the Portuguese Empire in the 1500s. Each native Brazilian Indian tribes had their own culture, religion and customs. They lived mainly from hunting, fishing and agriculture. They had total contact with nature, for they depended on it for almost everything. The rivers, trees, animals, herbs and plants were of extreme importance for the life of those Indians. Therefore, the Indians respected nature very much.The indigenous religion was based on the belief in the ancestors’ spirits and forces of nature. The Indians had parties and religious ceremonies. On those occasions, they performed dances, sang and painted their bodies in honor of their ancestors and the spirits of nature.

Slavery in Brazil has many different aspects that we are not proud at all. For example, in the state of São Paulo, there were people like the “four hundreds”: a term used to designate members of the Brazilian elite families descendant from the early settlers and explorers. Those descendants were responsible for the expansion of the Portuguese Empire in South America and for the maintenance of slavery in Brazil. That is one reason why Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. About four-to five-million men, women and children were captured in west, central, and southern Africa and taken to Brazil as slaves. Their religion, music, languages, and dance remained with them. By that time, sugar gradually became one of the first luxuries consumed by the masses in Western society; it also became the main incentive for transporting millions of Africans to the New World. At the beginning of the Sugar Cycle (second half of the sixteenth century), many farmers used indigenous labor in sugar production. However, with strong opposition from the Jesuit priests, the indigenous native people were replaced by the African slaves.

When Brazil's 'golden age' began, the Portuguese crown was securely established on the coast and immediate surroundings. European rivals like the Spanish, French, and Dutch people had been repelled by the Portuguese crown, and the expansion into the vast interior had begun. By the end of the 'golden age', the Bandeirantes (who were the Portuguese settlers and fortune hunters in Brazil), missionaries, miners, planters and ranchers had permeated deeply into the continent. In 1750, by the Treaty of Madrid, Spain recognized Brazil's new frontiers. The colony had come to occupy an area slightly greater than that of the ten Spanish colonies in South America put together. Despite conflicts, the fusion of Portuguese, Amerindian and African into a Brazilian entity had begun; and the explosive expansion of Brazil had laid the foundation for the independence that followed in 1822. 

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