The Unlikely Protagonist - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 21

ers, day laborers, as well as artisans such as blacksmiths (taking advantage of the ex-
tensive metallurgical traditions of West Africa), carpenters, masons, and so on. In order
to earn, they had to have freedom of movement, and thus, like mining, extraction, and
livestock, this was a slavery without overseers. 34 Slaves with special skills or those who
worked hard could, in principle, buy their freedom. Both urban and rural slaves sought
to use agricultural plots, curing skills, artisanal skills, sexual attachments, and family
loyaltyforself-purchaseormanumission.Butmanyfledto quilombos ,wheretheydeve-
loped autonomous communities with their own systems of government and livelihood,
and where they were relentlessly hunted. Quilombos can be usefully understood as the
main form of colonization of Brazil's interior. Slaves were reconstructing the terms of
their bondage and were active participants in abolition politics through complex forms
of domestic influence, politics, and overt resistance. 35
. . .
AsEuclideswasgrowingup,abolitionwasintheair,andlikethemonarchy,slaverywas
considered an institution that blocked the country's advancement to a modern state and
economy. European and especially British pressure weighed heavily in the realm of in-
ternational geopolitics. 36 Da Cunha, like much of Brazil's urban intelligentsia, abhorred
the “dreaded institution.” Its atavistic taint seemed out of place in a modernizing and
industrial economic world.Inschooljournalsandadolescent publications daCunhareg-
ularly denounced the “hideous practice,” writing poems and screeds against it. Yet he
was fluent in the racialist ideologies that were part of the scientific training at Praia Ver-
melha; they saturate his masterpiece, Os Sertões . Brazil was the last major nation to free
itsslaves—anactcarriedoutbyPrincessIsabelin1888whileDomPedrowastraveling.
The protracted survival of slavery and its highly mestizoed population with “unprom-
ising” racial characteristics raised questions about Brazil's capacity to “develop.” 37 Al-
thoughslaveryhadbeguntocrumblewithprohibitionsoninternationaltrade(1850),and
a series of laws meant to gradually unravel its force (particularly the Free Womb Law
of 1871, designed by the first Baron of Rio Branco, and the law for the manumission of
aged slaves of 1886), it still structured the content of economic relations.
In most agricultural areas, abolition produced a vast and sudden proletariat whose ac-
cess to plots for subsistence farming was not necessarily assured by their former mas-
ters. In the Northeastern backlands, the retraction of the sugar and cotton economies and
the limited number of cowboys needed for the extensive cattle estates left a deracinated
population with few rights to land or in law, a “nonslave” yet not exactly free class of
workers, a population vulnerable to the vagaries of climate and the caprices of the rich.
These were the origins of some of the insurgents da Cunha would meet in the mountains