Brazil-Portugal, Gold and Silver.

I'm just sick and tired of writing so much about Latin America(and this aversion really does not have anything to do with the fact that I'm having one of those "episodes" with my "lover" who just happened to be half Latino..or does it? Scherzando) anywho, I'm still reading the book by Eduardo Galeano. And you better believe that I'm scrutinizing the hell out of this book like there's no tomorrow. And you know that death is certain, uncertain is the hour. I just can't wait to get back to my anatomy stuff.

1. In the first period of coastal colonization, timber, Brazilwood exploited.
2. In the Northeast, began the sugar plantations.
3. The Portuguese couldn't find gold or silver in contrast to Spanish Latin America (Since there were no developed/organized civilizations to inquire about the gold/silver, the Portuguese had to find the gold on their own)
4. The bandeirantes - A band of Portuguese slaves/gold hunters.(paramilitary)
5. The Minas gerais (the gold forest) enters history with a rush with all its gold.

6. In the 18th century, Brazilian production of the coveted metal exceeds the total volumn of gold extracted by the Spanish from its colonies.
7. Adventurers and fortune hunters poured in.
Brazil had 300,000 inhabitants in 1700; a century later the population had multiplied eleven times. No less than 300,000 Portuguese emigrated to Brazil in the eighteenth century, a larger contingent than Spain contributed to all its Latin American colonies. Some 10 million blacks were brought from Africa.
8. The capital moves from Salvador de Bahia to Rio de Janeiro (after the golden age in Minas Gerais)
9. The sinful life in Ouro preto - Miners wasting money on black musicians or mulatto/mulatta prostitutes.
10. "handsome" churches are built and decorated in the baroque style characteristic of the region.
11. "The’ capitaes do mato of Minas Gerais collected rewards in gold for the severed heads of slaves who tried to escape. Disease was a blessing from heaven because it meant the approach of death." This is a string of hilarity. HOLD ON A PINCHE SECOND!
Here comes more hilarity.

Angola(the Portuguese colony of Angola) exported Bantu slaves and elephant tusks in exchange for clothing, liquor, and firearms, but Ouro Prêto miners preferred blacks shipped from the little beach of Ouidah on the Gulf of Guinea because they were more vigorous, lasted somewhat longer, and had the magic power to find gold. Every miner also needed a black mistress from Ouidah to bring him luck on his expeditions.
"(In Cuba, medicinal powers were attributed to female slaves. According to onetime slave Esteban Montejo, “There was one type of sickness the whites picked up, a sickness of the veins and male organs. It could only be got rid of with black women; if the man who had it slept with a Negress he was cured immediately.”"

Good GRIEF! What about THIS ONE! Can this get more outrageous?

Chica da Silva, also incorrectly written as Xica da Silva (Francisca da Silva de Oliveira, c. 1732-1796) was a famous Brazilian slave. Her life has been a source of inspiration for many works in television, films, theater and literature. She is popularly known as the slave who became a queen.

In the past, Chica was used as a symbol of the "racial democracy" in Brazil. Currently, however, scholars report that she used miscegenation as a way to achieve a higher social status, as did many other African Brazilian slaves of that time. Historian Júnia Ferreira Furtado reports that concubinage and marriage between white male and black female in colonial Brazilian society was a way found by the slaves to change their social position and to escape race stigma:

Manumission, rather than the beginning for the formation of a positive black identity, was the beginning of a process of acceptance of values of the elite, in order to insert them (former slaves) as well as their descendants in this society.
Sex was decisive to the relative facilitated access to freedom and concubinage with white men offered advantages to black women because, once free, they reduced the stigma of color and of slavery for them and for their descendants.
João Fernandes and Chica da Silva's relationship was a scandal in colonial Brazilian society. Chica da Silva, a mulatto former slave, had become one of the richest and most powerful women in colonial Brazil. The local community banned Chica from entry into their church (in Brazil, people of African descent were not allowed to attend churches reserved only for whites). To show the locals Chica's power, João Fernandes built a church attended just by herself. By the other side, Furtado reports that Chica attended brotherhoods exclusive to white people, as a way to fit in the white society.

Contrary to what was propagated, she also had slaves and only one reference was found that she had granted freedom to a slave. Historians view this as the main difference between the blacks in Brazil and those in the United States. While in America the blacks had a unified movement, in Brazil they tried to integrate themselves into mainstream society. Mixed-race people saw that "whitening" themselves was a way to escape from their slave past. The exclusion of blacks from Brazilian society for this extended period of time had damaging effects on the group's self-esteem.

Chica, as the other freed female slaves, achieved her freedom, loved, had children and raised them up socially sought to reduce the mark that the condition of Parda (brown) and former slave had to herself and to her descendants

- wikipedia

Sick, sick, sick.


12. "England and Holland, the leading gold and slave contrabandists, amassed
fortunes in the illegal “black meat” traffic and are said to have illicitly garnered
more than half the metal the Portuguese Crown was supposed to get from
Brazil in quinto real tax." HILLARIOUS!

Only the explosion of artistic talent remains as a memento of the gold
delirium, apart from the holes in the ground and the abandoned cities; nor
could Portugal salvage anything creative except for the aesthetic revolution.
The convent of Mafra, pride of Dom João V, lifted Portugal from artistic
decadence: in its carillons of thirty-seven bells and in its solid gold vessels and
candelabra, there still glints the gold of Minas Gerais. The Minas churches
have been extensively plundered and few sacred objects of portable size remain
in them, but monumental baroque works still rise above the colonial ruins—
façades and pulpits, galleries, reredoses, human figures designed, carved, or
sculpted by Antonio, Francisco Lisboa— ”Aleijadinho”----”Little Cripple,” genius son of a female slave and a famous artisan. The eighteenth century was coming to a close when “Aleijadinho” began carving in stone a group of large sacred figures in the
garden of the Born Jesus do Matosinhos church in Congonhas do Campo. The
work was called “The Prophets,” but there was no longer any glory in
prophesying. The gold euphoria was a thing of the past; all the pomp and
gaiety had vanished and there was no room for hope. This dramatic final
testimony, like a grand monument to the fleeting gold civilization that was
born to die, was left to succeeding generations by the most talented artist in all
Brazil’s history. “Aleijadinho,” disfigured and crippled by leprosy, created his
masterpiece with chisel and hammer tied to fingerless hands, dragging himself
on his knees to his workshop every morning.

Yep, I just had to add that one right below the tourism(promotion)video. Because I'm cruel like that. Aleijadinho at 0:50.


Reference (Conio, do I really have to do this)
:Eduardo Galeano - Open Veins of Latin America.