>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Georgette Dorn:
Good afternoon.
My name is Georgette
Dorn, and I'm the Chief
of the Hispanic Division.
And I'm very pleased to
welcome you to this library
that has the largest
collection of Brazilian books
in the United States by far.
One reason is that they have
an office in Rio de Janeiro,
and they send us books directly
from Rio, off Brazil, Uruguay,
and the Three Guianas.
The other reason is that
the U.S. had an interest
in Brazil ever since the
times of Thomas Jefferson.
In the [inaudible] is a letter
from Jefferson, where he says,
I look forward to the day where
the American Navy will sail
with the Brazilian Navy
up and down the continent.
And Jefferson always looked
at the Americas as one unit.
So he was looking forward
to having a Republic
of South America, which,
of course, never happened.
Now, it is my great pleasure
to introduce Mary Karasch,
a leader of the Hispanic
Division, whom they have known
since about the 1980s
when she was teaching
at the Catholic university
for about three years, right?
And she's a Professor
Emeritus from the University
of Oakland in Michigan.
And she now resides
in Tempe, Arizona,
which is a suburb of Phoenix.
Mary's first book has won the
prestigious Albert Beveridge
Prize for the Americas.
So the American Historical
Association also looks
at the Americas as one unit,
because the Beveridge Prize
is for American history.
So Brazil, at that moment,
became American history.
And her current book
has, of course,
garnered the honorable mention
for the Warren Dean Prize,
which was an onset of
the American Historical
about two months ago
here in Washington.
So her current book, of
course, is a fantastic book
about Before Brasilia, Central
Brazil in the Colonial Period.
And here is Mary.
[ Applause ]
>> Mary Karasch: Okay,
it is my great pleasure
to speak here today, because I
feel like I owe an enormous debt
to the Library of Congress,
because of the excellence
of their collection, even on
a place as remote as Goias
and Tocantins, two
states in Central Brazil.
But they have amazing
books here.
And the reference librarians,
and, of course, Georgette,
have been able to point
me in the right directions
when I could not find them.
They were listed in the catalog.
But some way, somehow, they
had disappeared in the library.
So, again, I especially
thank everyone here
that has made this
book possible.
I could not have written it out
the assistance of everyone here
at the Library of Congress.
All right, now, if you've got
a copy of today's handout,
Talia is passing them out, okay,
let's go to the map, because,
first of all, it's
always a problem
in discussing this region that
no one knows where the State
of Tocantins is, or
even the State of Goias.
All right, now, find Brasilia.
Everybody got Brasilia?
Okay, so Brasilia was built
between 1957 and 1960.
The first documents I have--
and again, I'm not talking
about archaeological
records-- begin in the 1590s.
So people were out there,
you know, in the 1590s.
And there was no Brasilia
at that point in time.
All right, now, the second place
to locate is west of Brasilia.
It is Vila Boa.
And this is now called
Goias Value [phonetic].
And it's old Goias.
The first capital of the
region, and the reason
for its existence is that
they found gold there,
and this brought in all
the gold prospectors
and enslaved Africans.
And, of course, because
there was gold there,
the Portuguese established
a capital to try
and capture the gold for the
king or crown in Portugal.
All right, now we're going
to turn to the rivers.
On the west, you'll
see the Araguaia River.
And the Araguaia
River flows from,
you can see from the far
south, all the way north
to join the Tocantins River.
So that is one specific
locale that's very important.
The second, the Tocantins
River, a tributary,
also the term is used Maranon
River, begins near Brasilia,
flows north all the way to
Beling [phonetic] de Pera.
It is the second longest
river in all of Brazil,
and it's an amazing river.
The picture that you
see on the handout is
of the Tocantins River.
And it comes from the
Library of Congress collection
of the artist Tomas
[phonetic] Ambor [phonetic].
So I think the University of New
Mexico Press did a lovely job
of using that as the cover.
One problem I have to notice,
however, about the river,
is the image suggests that
it's a very large river.
It may have been in the 18th
century a very large river.
I have crossed the
Tocantins River.
I've gone swimming in the river.
It is not a large river.
At present, that is probably
due to climate change.
Okay, so just a basic
geographical orientation.
And we're going to begin with
a question I often get was,
how long did it take
you to write this book?
I would have to say from
1969 until 2016 in terms
of the collection
of experiences,
the median of diverse
peoples, and just going
around the interior,
looking for documents.
Okay, so I'm going to share some
of these experiences with you,
but also some of my
findings as well,
some of the surprising findings.
Okay, so my first contact
with the indigenous peoples
of the region was
with the Karaja.
Again, they're on
the Araguaia River.
And this is a people who
have maintained lands there
for at least a thousand years.
In Portuguese discourse,
people were, you know,
indigenous peoples were nomadic.
They moved from place to place.
But certainly not the Karaja.
So we went swimming in the
beautiful Araguaia River.
I spoke with some of the Karaja
who were camping on the beach.
And just a lovely experience.
But I never thought I'd be
writing a history of the Karaja.
So it was just a tourist trip.
And then another tourist
trip followed that one
up by taking a trip on
the Trans-Amazon Highway.
And we crossed the Araguaia
River way to the north.
It's beyond just the--
what you see on the map.
And at that time, in 1975, it
was a gorgeous, beautiful river.
And as I said, you know, people
used to go camping on the river.
They still do.
But it is now dealing with
problems of deforestation,
all kinds of strange things
floating in the waters.
All right, so when it came
down to apply for a Fulbright,
there was one that appeared
at the University of Brasilia.
So I applied, and
to my surprise,
I actually got it
on the first try.
So that led to teaching
at Brasilia
for three semesters,
1977 and 1978.
So I really began my research
when I was in Brasilia.
In between classes, of course.
What I found of interest,
my students were carrying
out fascinating research.
One of my students would
disappear from class,
and she would go and
meet the Chivante
and make contact with them.
And I was thinking, this is a
young woman, and she's out there
in an allegedly dangerous
place, contacting the Chivante?
But she always came back
safely, resumed the class,
and taught me a lot
about the Chivante.
And then also the history
of pacification campaigns
to contact them.
So they were very important
in getting me started
on my project.
The other thing that happened
was there was a fine geographer
there, and he took me out
to the area around Brasilia,
and showed me the canyons
that had been carved
by the heavy rains.
And we literally, what
had once been very flat,
was now deep canyons.
So already by that
period of time,
a lot of the erosion
was taking place.
And this is the environments
he showed me,
the environment of the savannah.
The term in Portuguese
is Cerrado.
So I was able to see a lot
of the beautiful landscape
around the City of Brasilia.
Now, at that time,
the bus station used
to sell beautiful
baskets that came
in from the indigenous reserves.
And so when I was
teaching at the university,
I had to take a bus to the bus
station, then take another bus
to get out to the university.
But I saw this wonderful store
that sold exquisite basketry,
or things such as this,
such as a necklace,
although I got this directly
from an indigenous woman.
So I started collecting baskets.
And then I went up to
the tower in Brasilia
where there's a fera
[phonetic] in which they sell,
you know, artesanato, folk art.
And the Chivante, a couple of
them decided they were going
to skip the bus station
because that was all directed
through the Indian agency,
and they were very unhappy
about the fact they were
not getting paid enough
for their fine baskets.
And so I met some Chivante for
the first time, and, of course,
built, bought a basket.
Now, the story of this basket
is particularly interesting
because it was a very
basic design that they used
to carry soap to
the river, you know,
when they bathed in the river.
When I went to the Vienna
Museum, ethnographic museum,
I saw an exact, the same
thing collected in 1819.
And that's in my book.
All right, so baskets
are in the book, again,
because of this basket
experience.
All right, then because
the University of Brasilia,
also known as UnB,
had a good library.
There was no national library
in Brasilia at that point.
I started doing research.
And I found some
secondary sources
on this rather extraordinary
woman, Donna Damiana daCunha.
She was a Caiapo woman.
You'll see the Caiapo located
on the map in the south.
And she had been entrusted
by the Governor of Goias
to lead five expeditions
to contact
and allegedly pacify
the Caiapo, her people.
And, of course, you begin
to ask the question, well,
why would an indigenous woman do
what usually the Banderas did,
which was to go out and
conquer and pacify a people?
But the other question
that's important, I think,
is why would a Portuguese
governor entrust an indigenous
woman to make contact?
And again, I was thinking,
you know, specifically
with reference to Arizona.
What if an Apache woman
had been given the job
of leading an expedition
to contact Geronimo?
I mean, we would laugh
at the idea because it's
so strange for our frontier.
All right, so Damiana was,
again, one of my entries
into writing this book.
And, of course, you know,
I begin with the book
with raising that question.
Then in addition, I went around
visiting the old mining towns.
Barbara will appreciate
this because I used to go
down to Cristalina and buy
beautiful, semi-precious stones.
And so I began to look
for other mining towns
because this was the foundation
of the wealth of the region.
It was gold, and
later, diamonds.
Okay, so I did that exploration.
And then I went to Goias Velho.
Goias Velho, for any of you who
planned to do a trip to Brazil,
at least last time I saw,
still pretty much not developed
into a tourist center
like Ouro Preto.
You get much more a
sense of the real Brazil
and the way it used
to be in Goias Velho.
I was very fortunate
on that visit
to meet an Italian
missionary who had been going
around the interior, picking
up, receiving donations
of parish registers, and
also lay brotherhood records.
And this was Fray
Simon Dorvi [phonetic].
He has long since returned
to Italy in his retirement.
But he showed me
fabulous documents,
many from the indigenous
missions.
Also, others from the black
brotherhoods of the region.
And I also learned
about the sales taxes.
Now, when I was writing
and finishing Slave Life
in Rio de Janeiro, one
of the great frustrations was
I hadn't located extensive tax
records on slaves.
Still, my idea that these
are the ones that were burned
at the time of abolition,
I know that in Goias Velho,
the governor receives the order
to burn all the tax records.
He had a little bonfire.
He burned the ones for Vila Boa.
But all the other
tax records survived.
And so why these became
so important to my book is
that these tax records record,
you know, who the individual was
that we're having
to pay the tax on.
By name, then you can get, of
course, gender, age, ethnicity.
And as I found out,
in the north,
most of the Africans were being
imported from coastal ports
like Salvador, Recife, or
from the mouths of the Amazon.
So in other words, individuals
who were being brought
from Africa, and then put on
smaller boats, and they had
to travel the whole long
distance of the Tocantins River
to the mining towns,
such as Vila Boa.
I even had found one
baptismal registry
in which the mother explained
to the priest why she hadn't
baptized her child earlier.
It was about three years old.
And she said, well, the baby
was born on the journey,
down the Tocantins or
up the Tocantins River.
And it was only at that point
where the baby could
be baptized.
Now, the other trade I also
worked on, trying to pin
down the internal slave
trade from the coast,
how did those Africans get
from the coast all the
way to the mining towns?
They walked them.
So, again, Africans who
came, you know, to the coast,
then had another
long journey by foot
after surviving the Middle
Passage, after long treks
to the coast in Africa.
Absolutely amazing
that they survived
to work the gold mines
of Central Brazil.
Now, the Africans in the south
of the captaincy came
from Congo Angola.
And they were probably
mostly being brought
up by the trade route that ran
from Rio to the mining towns.
Now, while I was doing this
kind of preliminary work,
I did not have much of the
sense of the popular culture
of the region, which
is exceptionally rich.
But then just being able to
establish these characteristics
of ethnicity, then I understood,
when later I was able to see it
in the 80s, why they still
honored the King of Congo.
The Congoda [phonetic] is
still danced in Goias Velho.
And so you have the
procession of the King
of Congo with his retinue.
All right, so the
cultural traditions
that survived there are
very, very important as well.
So after this initial
introduction to the region,
I knew what I was going
to do in the future.
But meanwhile, I had
to finish slave life.
And then I came to
Washington and taught
for two years in the 80s.
And this, of course, is when
I began to work at the Library
of Congress and begin to locate
even materials for slave life
in Rio, and as I began
the next project.
When I returned to Oakland,
I began to teach a film
with my students, The
Tribe That Hides From Man.
And this was directly related
to the fact of my student
who had taught me about
pacification programs,
because here, they were
doing this in the 1970s,
and recording it then on film.
It's an excellent
film by Adrian Cowell.
I would still use it at present
because it really helps someone
to stand what they
were doing in Brazil,
both in the 18th century, the
19th century and the 20th.
Anyway, the film
concerns the attempt
to contact the people they
called the Kreen-Akrore
in the movie.
The Kreen-Akrore
were hiding out.
They wouldn't make contact,
like many of the peoples
that my students contacted.
And one of the themes of
the film is the great fear
of the Kreen-Akrore, why
they wouldn't come forward.
Well, this book can
demonstrate it,
the history of their treatment,
because these were one
of the Caiapo groups,
Caiapo Panara.
Their ancestors had suffered
immensely at the hands
of the Portuguese, or the
newly national government.
So the film is available
on YouTube.
So I recently checked it out.
So if you haven't seen it
and want to understand that,
I really recommend it.
Now, the big grant that
enabled my research
in Central Brazil was
the National Endowment
for the Humanities Grant.
And this enabled me
now to really get
at the manuscript sources.
So I worked in Rio at
the Biblioteca Nacional,
which has a fine
collection of documents
from the colonial period,
mainly because when the royal
family returned to Portugal,
they left a lot of paper behind.
And so that's at the
Biblioteca Nacional.
Especially things that they
didn't think as very important,
like correspondence from
the governors of Goias.
But, of course, for me,
it was really essential.
Then, the Arkeba [phonetic]
Nacional had exactly what
I needed.
Censuses. Now, the
Portuguese did a series
of censuses from 1779 to 1832.
You know, again, why
am I especially focused
on that period of time?
It's because of the censuses.
What they clearly
show was the decline
of legal slavery in the region.
But also the decline of the
white population, and the rise
of the non-white population.
Now, the people the
Portuguese called the pardos,
or the browns, another
way to see it.
In other words, in this
area, you get the division
between blacks, pardos
or mulatos, and whites.
Sometimes they used
the term moreno.
So decline of legal enslavement,
clearly demonstrated
in the censuses, and the
rise of the free population
of color of African descent.
So once I did the censuses,
and again, the results are
in the book, you know, I
had to try and explain why
and how did this happen.
Why do you have a free
population of color by 1835
that is larger than an
enslaved African population?
Because it's contrary
to what it was going--
what was going on
in Rio or Sao Paulo.
All right, now, at the
Institute of Historico
that I've abbreviated here IHGB,
the most valuable find there
was a narrative of a voyage
on the Araguaia and
Tocantins Rivers
by Tomas de Soso
Vila Rial [phonetic],
a pardo of African descent.
Elsewhere, mulatto.
All right, now, this is if, you
know, Jefferson gave the job
of exploring all the way
to the far west, you know,
to see what was there, to
someone of African descent.
Again, this would be
improbable in our history.
All right, now, what
was also extraordinary
about his narrative
and his experience,
besides leading these
expeditions, he wrote an account
of it, which was published
in the Institutus
Revista, or Journal.
He was even received
in Rio as a great hero.
Imagine that happening
in Jefferson's time.
All right, so this has now
been my brief biography
that I was able to put
together, has now been published
in the Dictionary of Caribbean
and Afro-Latin American
Biography.
All right, the next phase
of the research then
took me to Brasilia.
In Brasilia, I found that
there was no national library.
There is now.
So to collect materials on
the region, I had to wander
from ministry to ministry
and check their small little
library, often no larger
than this room, to try and
locate essential sources.
I also was able to
correct reports,
or relatorios [phonetic],
of the governors of Goias,
which were critical to writing
my study of Indian policy.
But now those are all online.
You can get them so easily.
But it took a lot of work,
just wandering from ministry
to ministry, to collect them.
And the Senate.
And then finally, in
Brasilia, on that visit,
I was able to go
to FUNAI's library.
And FUNAI, at that time,
the National Indian Agency.
And the most interesting
part was meeting people
who came from the reserves.
And they brought video
cameras with them.
And they took them to
the National Congress
to record the white man's
promises about their lands.
So some also came to
check out the library.
And so I was able to
meet them at that time.
The actual sources there were
not very rich at that time.
But a few were very useful.
Now, finishing in Brasilia
then, I moved on to Goiania
and I encountered
another surprise.
In the United States, we think
of these well-stocked state
archives or libraries.
Talia may have worked at
the University of Wisconsin,
both the university library,
but also the state library.
It's huge.
When I got to Goiania, the
Capital of the State of Goias,
I couldn't find the library.
So I went to the
Ministry of Education
and started asking people.
Nobody knew where it was,
until finally I made contact
with someone, and he pointed me
to a very unpretentious
building.
Looked like a former school.
And in that room where I was
directed, there were piles
of documents, allegedly
being sorted and organized.
So that's where I started
that manuscript resource,
going through piles
of documents.
It has now moved to
its own building.
Fortunately, it's much
better than it used to be.
In more recent visits,
I was able to collect the
military records, particularly
on the black militias
of the region.
They are called enriques
[phonetic] in Brazil.
And the enriques [phonetic]
were being carefully counted
by the Portuguese because
they wanted to find
out how many they could use
to fight in the Indian wars,
or to find and destroy
quilombos.
The quilombo in Brazil, a
fugitive slave settlement,
there were many during
the mining period
in the 18th century.
One of the problems of research
was simply to locate them,
find documents on
them so, you know,
I wanted to use the
military, those who were
out there destroying them.
And what did I find?
That blacks and pardos were
involved in that process.
So the question is, why?
Well, as I found out
doing household lists,
blacks and pardos were
also slaveholders.
And so they were-- they
assisted the Portuguese
in recapturing people
who lived in quilombos
and fighting the
indigenous nations.
Then I went to the church
archives in Goiania,
got permission from the local
priest to find manuscripts
on the history of the
missions in the region.
And the priest pointed to
a small room and a pile
of documents once again.
You know, when I returned
from initial research
in Brazil the first time, I
came to the Library of Congress,
put in a request for a document,
and I got it immediately.
I was amazed.
In this case, once again,
I had to go through the
piles of manuscripts.
But in that pile, I found
an illuminated manuscript,
meaning painted in
red, decorated in gold,
as if it were a medieval
manuscript.
And this was the charter of
the black lay brotherhood
of a tiny gold mining
town in Goias.
And the identity they proclaimed
was that they were Ethiopians.
Fascinating.
Okay, so I've written about
this by this point in time.
But, I mean, it really
does pay to go
through piles of manuscripts.
Okay, so then I went
to the Museu das
Bandeiras in Goias Velho.
More piles of unsorted
documents.
At the time I worked there,
it was kind of half-organized.
There was a catalog
to half of it.
So using that, I was able
to find the materials
on the Indian militias.
Because the Portuguese used
one nation, such as the Caiapo,
then to fight against
their enemies.
And so the Caiapo were
in these militias.
The paid militia of
the Caiapo, however,
often never had any
payment for their services.
Any blacks that joined, or
racially mixed individuals
or whites got paid, but the
Indians did not get paid.
Then, again, as I've
mentioned before,
I worked the tax records there
that clearly showed the
distinctions in ethnicity.
Now, one of my most
valuable finds at the Museu--
or in Goias Velho, was the death
registries of the mining town
of Nativadaji [phonetic]
that Fray Simon [phonetic]
had brought there.
They were very valuable,
because again,
once you're recording gender,
ethnicity of the Africans,
but also of the indigenous
children, the Chivante
who were being brought in,
and as so often happened,
died shortly thereafter.
So we can count the
Chivante children, you know,
who were brought to the town,
and then died, as well as,
of course, the enslaved
Africans.
Now, I had a particularly
compassionate priest who,
before he buried Africans,
would often comment
on their treatment
by the slaveholder.
And he had some awful
cases to narrate.
Then I was trying
to figure out, well,
what made this priest stand out?
Because most priests didn't
record that kind of information.
And I later learned he was
a pardo of African descent.
And this was another surprise
for me to find so many people
of African descent of
priests in the region.
Because of the shortage
of priests,
the Portuguese permitted
them to be ordained
and to serve in the region.
All right, then probably just
about the final issue I would
like to deal with
is then manumission,
or the process of
getting freedom.
Because this cuts back
to my earlier question,
how did so many people
escape slavery?
Well, this is a gold
mining region.
And because it's a gold mining
region, there is something
with which one can
buy one's freedom.
Those tax records, to my
surprise, prove to also reveal
that when a slave male,
usually it's the men
who are buying their freedom in
these mining towns with a lot
of gold, he had to
pay his tax on himself
so he could get his freedom.
A gratuitous, or a
free manumission,
or letter of liberty, you
didn't have to pay a tax.
But if you gave up all that
gold to buy your freedom,
you had to pay a tax on it.
Okay, so other slaves were
able to get their freedom
because the father, or
partner, he was a miner,
and he bought the freedom
of his wife and children.
Then there's also
the group of women
who bought the freedom
of their children.
Sometimes after decades
as a slave,
because it took them
that long to do so.
Now, the black brotherhoods
played a role
in helping them secure
their freedom.
I have the records from one
of the black brotherhoods
in the City of Goias.
At the beginning of the period
of time that the records begin,
most of those on the
board were slaves.
By the 1860s, most of
them were either free,
born free, or freed.
They had been slaves, but
they had been manumitted.
In other cities, often the
black brotherhood kept the box
in which the slaves
held their savings
in gold for their freedom.
And so that's why the gold
could be protected for 10 years,
20 years, 30 years, until
the person could finally buy
their freedom.
So this is one area
where both men
and women were able
to get their freedom.
And, of course, they
often freed the babies
at the time of baptism.
Now, I also worked in
Portugal, but, you know,
I won't really talk
about that today
because I can see I'm
running out of time,
and I know you will
probably want
or to have some time
for questions.
Now, my final comment then, I
would like to stress that travel
and encountering the people of
a region that you're talking
about is absolutely essential
to understanding what's
in the documentation.
And some historians feel
that they can just
sit in the archives.
But if you don't
go to these places,
you don't understand often, you
know, what you're writing about.
This was particularly
true for me when I went
to the Apinoge [phonetic]
Reserve in 2007.
Now, in the colonial documents,
the Apinoge [phonetic] were a
notable people controlling the
juncture of where the two
great rivers come together,
the Araguaia and the Tocantins.
And they were a powerful people.
Were a very, very
war-like people.
And then they became
allies of the Portuguese.
And they fought for the
Portuguese, which again,
was a strategy by which
they could survive
as a people, retain their lands.
In their wars, they often
conquered other populations,
including Africans.
And so in the sources,
you see the references
to the Africans living
among them.
Because many enslaved
Africans ran away
and joined indigenous
communities.
And if they were strong men
who had fought in Africa
as warriors, they fought
with the indigenous people,
both against, invading settlers,
as well as against other
indigenous populations.
All right, so, you
know, I had those images
of the Apinoge [phonetic] when
I went to visit the reserve.
They had recently been
given their lands back,
and the reserve created.
I saw the remnants of the old
settler houses that had had
to leave when the Apinoge
[phonetic] got their lands back.
And, you know, met the
people, watched, you know,
particularly very nice
religious ritual in the evening,
and just a memorable experience.
And so acquired this too for
anyone curious about this.
So this is Apinoge [phonetic].
Because one of the things I
had to do was get the help
of an anthropologist to
go there, as well as I had
to get permission from
FUNAI to enter the reserve.
And I had to take tribute, in
this case, T-shirts from Target.
I mean, these are the things you
have to do often to do research,
and do it successfully.
Okay, then I also did a
trip by car and boat, again,
to visit the Carajas in
Gavea on the Araguaia River.
But this time, what
really struck me was not
so much the people
themselves, but the environment,
the great Caymans,
12-footers, 15-footers,
that the people were
living with.
And it was a dry season,
so all kinds of animals
and birds had congregated
on the river.
And then I've also has the
experience of traveling by train
to the Pantanal of Mato Grosso.
For those of you
considering trips to Brazil,
the Pantanal is the best place
to see wildlife anywhere
in Brazil.
Better than the Amazon.
Because here, this is
a very swampy area,
and you have the giant
snakes, you have the jaguars,
all kinds of creatures, as
well as cattle, who are part
of the local landscape.
So travel, I would repeat
again, absolutely essential.
So what I have tried to do is
write a history of the people
of the region, and to illustrate
how diverse peoples came
together, indigenous,
African, Portuguese,
immigrants from other parts
of Brazil, to the point
at which the majority of the
population, very racially mixed,
people of color certainly.
And again, just a
reminder, slavery did not--
most people, or so many
people, were still enslaved
until it was abolished in 1888.
Now, Goias is one of the
richest states of Brazil.
Not because of gold, but
because of agriculture,
the great agribusinesses.
When I traveled in
Tocantins state,
one of the most remarkable
ecosystems of all of Brazil,
because you see the
gradation from savannah
to rainforest along the reverse.
There are species
in Tocantins state
that do not exist
anyplace else in the world.
Now, Tocantins state is
undergoing the agribusiness
revolution, the burning
down of the Cerrado.
The cutting down of
trees to the north.
Redoing rivers.
Last time I was in Palmas and
Porto Nacional in the Tocantins,
we couldn't go swimming anymore
because the river was
full of dead trees.
Well, they had flooded it.
But it was kind of
typical of what's happened
in many other parts of
the Tocantins River.
The Araguaia as well.
There is also now
increased drought,
longer periods of drought.
In the 18th century, this
region was famous for the length
of the rainy season, the
intensity of the rains.
The rains were so intense,
they called it the
time of the waters.
But it's no longer as intense.
And the droughts are extending.
Now what you have is often,
at the end of the dry season,
intense period of smoke
in the area so thick
that the planes can't
land at the airport.
So there's no question the
environment is changing so much.
And we need, obviously,
to be much more conscious
of what's happening there, both
in Goias and Tocantins state.
Okay, let's get to
some questions.
I see I am way out of time.
[ Applause ]
>> We have time for
some questions.
[ Inaudible ]
>> So my question is,
after you did the research
in the archives, et cetera,
did you find any people
with oral histories that
either matched, supported,
or contradicted the
documents that you found?
>> Mary Karasch: Yeah, this is
a real problem in the region.
The oral traditions are bigger.
The people have not
been collecting them
in a very professional way.
Now, with the indigenous
populations.
>> Mary? I'm sorry.
These people might not
be able to hear you.
>> Mary Karasch: Oh, okay.
With the indigenous
populations, you know,
there are interesting
fragments that you pick up,
that people were recording
somehow their traditions.
Because I have a petition
from a group of people living
in Central Brazil, and they
petitioned the King of Portugal
for protection for their lands
on the basis of their service
to the Dutch, I mean, in fight
the Dutch in the 17th century.
So I know they had
some oral tradition.
The Chivante and the [inaudible]
of oral traditions, one,
that they once had
their [inaudible]
and they migrated inland.
The other, that they
once lived in Rio.
I cannot substantiate,
especially the Rio tradition.
It seems unlikely also.
I think the local
historians now are starting
to collect the traditions.
When I was telling
a local person
about the Cuca lay brotherhood,
she was telling me, oh,
there's this tradition
in our town
about this wealthy
African woman,
which I had not seen
in the records.
So I'm hoping my book will
stimulate more oral history.
Because this is such
a rich region,
because you have the survival
of religious traditions there
that are no longer
practiced on the coast.
And a lot of them
are African-derived.
>> We know how the
demographics were looked upon
in the United States in
1800s, even up to 1960s,
how do they do demographics in
Brazil, since it's so mixed?
How do they define it?
>> Mary Karasch: Okay,
well, number one,
why were the Portuguese
collecting statistics
on the population?
Their objective was to find
out where the people were,
meaning non-indigenous, and
who was available to mine gold.
This is why they
were so conscious
of tracking the black
population.
Because it's clear that the
Africans knew how to find
and locate gold, because many
of them came from West Africa,
places like Ghana,
as you would expect,
where people knew
how to find gold.
So it's because of the
Portuguese nivate [phonetic]
of the period.
We've got to count
the people out there
so we can find more gold.
>> I meant more, because
see like how do they--
if they have a definition
for [inaudible] for example,
do they have that thing checked?
So you go to this category,
you go to that category.
How do they push
people in certain rows?
>> Mary Karasch: Some of
it is based on the fact
that it's the local priest
who's collecting the data.
>> Okay, so he would say,
you are this, you are that.
>> Mary Karasch: That's right.
And the other group, the police
in larger cities and towns.
But the Tripartite division is
basically white [inaudible] you
see this in the brotherhood
registries.
You see this in the tax records.
I mean, it appears through
the whole series of documents.
>> What else?
We had white, then we had.
>> Mary Karasch: We had pardo,
we had murano [phonetic].
Pardo is most common, especially
as we get into the 1830s
where the population is
largely free people of color.
So basically what they're saying
is these people are no longer
black, but now they're
racially mixed,
but we don't know
the racial mixture.
Okay, now, another
term that does appear
in some documentation is the
term cathuso [phonetic], which,
in some parts of
Brazil, define a mixture
of an indigenous and African.
Usually, an Indian woman
and an African man.
But it's the local
area that defines
who fits in the categories.
[ Inaudible ]
The extent often is the mulatto
is more likely to be the child
of a European man
and an African woman.
In other words, first
generation.
Pardo being more
likely used for second,
third [inaudible] generations.
[ Inaudible ]
Yeah, and pardo and mulatto
are used interchangeably
in the same document,
referring to the same person.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> Mary, it sounds to me from
your description of agribusiness
in Goias that what the people
of Goiania are looking
forward to is impoverishment.
Am I reading the
signs incorrectly?
>> Mary Karasch: There's a
very large urban poor people
in Goiania because of migration
from the big agribusinesses.
Again, a memory from
1969 when I was going
out to see the caraja
[phonetic], where the people
on the estates, in the
fields, it was harvest time,
there were lots and
lots and lots of people.
At present, they've been kicked
off the lands, and they've had
to migrate then to the cities.
And many of them join the
urban slums of Goiania,
or other cities in the
[inaudible] and Brasilia.
Now, there is-- there's been
a lot of poverty created
by the dispossession of whites.
[ Inaudible ]
>> I have a question, Mary.
I'm curious how the experience
of slavery in the interior
of Goias, if you learn of
any differences between that
and coastal, or urban areas like
Rio de Janeiro, for example.
>> Mary Karasch: Yeah, one of my
challenges in doing research was
to try and find out
how people mine,
because that's the principle use
of enslaved African
labor in this region.
And it was very, very difficult
to locate the descriptions.
I actually was able to
see one of these mines,
and people were still
working it in Tocantins state.
And it was a very small
sterile operation.
It was not a big gold mine like
you think of in South Africa.
A lot of it was one slaveholder.
Now, this is, again,
one of those interesting
social questions.
How does one slaveholder
maintain control
over a game of miners?
They're out in the
middle of nowhere.
And obviously we know that a lot
of those miners escaped
to quilombos.
But the ones who managed
to return with their slaves
and gold, in other words, there
seems to have been connections,
and I have a way
to document that,
maybe in oral history
it would turn up,
of the way people could go
into the interior and survive
in the face of potential
indigenous attacks and get back.
Okay, so you've got the
hope of riches and freedom.
I think this is one
of the things
that slaveholders were doing.
If you find the gold mine, or a
gold piece of significant size,
the slaveholder promised they
would monument the individual.
The manumission was
used to persuade people
to stay with the group.
Now, there was another factor
that emerged towards the end
of the period when a group
of Africans, mostly composed
of the miners, who were
male, and then the women,
and the group made a
pact, this is about 1805,
that they would stay
together and mine gold.
And what they would do then
was work for the freedom
of every individual, including
the women, and the role
of the women was to provide
the food for everyone.
And so another mechanism
by which people could
get their freedom.
So one of the things that's
different, if you compare this
to a big sugar plantation
on the coast of Brazil
where rigid control existed,
hundreds and hundreds of slaves,
and they had no opportunity to
enter a cache economy, get gold,
or even wander off into
the interior in the search
for something like that.
So there are key differences
between this region
and the coast.
Now, having said that, to
my surprise, I also found
that the region had extensive
sugar plantations with hundreds
of slaves just like
on the coast.
So I suspect that slave control
was more intense and difficult
for the slaves on the
sugar plantations.
But I think you have to look
at what productive
activity they're engaged in.
>> Thank you very much.
Wonderful.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.