The Unlikely Protagonist - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 20

inventednumerousinstitutionalformsforcollaborationandresistance.Further,theyact-
ivelyrestructuredthecontentofmanyBrazilianinstitutionsandlandscapestomaketheir
lotasbearableaspossible. 30 Theyre-createdtheirliveswithinthemodalitiesofbondage
and liberation that unfolded in Brazil.
African slaves changed the New World ecologies. They created dense palm environ-
ments,movedritualplantsfortheirreligiousobservances,andintroducedthefoodplants
of rice, guandule (black-eyed peas), watermelons, okra, and oil palm. From their mat-
tress pallets and hay bales for feeding the animals on their trans-Atlantic travels came
molasses grass ( Melinis sp) and guinea grass ( Panicum maximum ), invasive species that
would support the creole cattle that became the vanguard of European conquest and
caused Latin America's profoundest and most extensive ecological change. 31
Slaves reinvented African institutions where feasible and recast existing ones within
an African register whenever they could: “Christian” brotherhoods, burial groups, co-
operativeworkgangs,religioussocieties,andapprenticegroupsworkedtosupportiden-
tity, help ensure daily survival, nourish spiritual life—and all this social infrastructure
could become platforms for resistance. 32 These could range from “everyday forms of
resistance”—pilfering,footdragging,pettysabotage,and“intractability”—tofull-blown
rebellion and murder. Slaves also fled to the margins to create independent lives and
polities. These, the most dramatic form of resistance, were known as quilombos or
mocambos —fugitivecommunities. ThesewerewidespreadinBrazil'sinterior,withhid-
den communities stretching from the Atlantic to the Andes. 33
Whiletheplantationmodelwithitsbullwhipandoverseersdominatestheimagination
of slavery today (perhaps because of the overriding influence of Gone with the Wind in
American iconography), protoindustrial sugarslavery wasbutoneformofbondage, and
hardly the most common. Slavery in Brazil was overwhelmingly the realm of a mas-
ter with a handful of slaves, and there were a host of economies where the activities of
slaves could not be monitored to the same degree as on the ordered cane plantations.
There were small-scale slave producers of provisions and tobacco, slave cowboys from
the cattle and horse traditions of what is today the interior of Nigeria and Sudan, and
specialized slave “folk geologists” from Ghana's Mina ports—the “Gold Coast” for the
mines of Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, and Goiás. There were black slaves in the cacao
plantations of the Amazon; there were Africans and indentured natives who rowed up-
river to collect all the extraction products for the international markets, including quin-
ine, turtle fat, brazil nuts, and the parrots and monkeys that everyone loved. Nothing
could be done without slaves.
In urban areas, many owners had only one or two slaves: a domestic helper and a la-
boring servant who could be hired out. These ganhadores or “earners” were sources of
householdincomeamonglesswell-offmiddleclasses.Theywerestevedores,litterbear-