Across Unknown South America

by Arnold Henry Savage Landor

The most striking building in the principal square of Goyaz was the prison. I visited it in the company of the Chief of Police. The place had been specially cleaned on the occasion of my visit, and that particular day it looked quite neat. I was shown very good food which—at least that day—had been prepared for the prisoners. Nearly all the prisoners were murderers. "But the biggest criminals of all," said the Chief of Police to me, "are not inside this prison; they are outside!" The poor devils inside were mere wretches who had not been able to bribe the judges.

Curiously enough, petty theft was considered a shame in the Province of Goyaz, and was occasionally severely punished; whereas murderers were usually set free. I saw a poor negro there who had stolen a handful of beans and had been sent to five years' penal servitude, while others who had killed were merely sentenced to a few months' punishment. In any case, no one in Brazil can be sentenced to more than thirty years' detention, no matter how terrible the crime he has committed.

The display of police guarding the prison was somewhat excessive. There were fifty policemen to guard fifty prisoners: policemen standing at each door, policemen at each corner of the building, while a swarm of them occupied the front hall. The various common cells were entered by trap doors in the ceiling, of great height, and by a ladder which was let down. Thus escape was rendered improbable, the iron bars of the elevated windows being sounded every morning and night for further safety.

The sanitary arrangements were of the most primitive kind, a mere bucket in a corner serving the needs of eight or ten men in each chamber.

As there was no lunatic asylum in Goyaz, insane people were sent to prison and were kept and treated like criminals.

I noticed several interesting cases of insanity: it generally took either a religious or a criminal form in Brazil. One man, with a ghastly degenerate face, and his neck encircled by a heavy iron collar, was chained to the strong bars of a window. His hands and feet were also chained. The chain at his neck was so short that he could only move a few inches away from the iron bars. He sat crouched like a vicious dog on the window-ledge, howling and spitting at us as we passed. His clothes were torn to shreds; his eyes were sunken and staring, his long, thin, sinewy arms, with hands which hung as if dead, occasionally and unconsciously touching this or that near them. I tried to get close, to talk and examine him; but his fury was so great against the policeman who accompanied me that it was impossible to get near. He was trying to bite like a mad dog, and injured himself in his efforts to get at us. Another lunatic, too—loose in a chamber with other prisoners—gave a wonderful exhibition of fury—that time against me, as he was under the impression that I had come there to kill him! He was ready to spring at me when two policemen seized him and drove him back.

There was a theatre in Goyaz—a rambling shed of no artistic pretensions. The heat inside that building was stifling. When I inquired why there were no windows to ventilate the place I was told that a leading Goyaz gentleman, having once travelled to St. Petersburg in Russia in winter-time, and having seen there a theatre with no windows, eventually returned to his native city, and immediately had all the windows of the theatre walled up, regardless of the fact that what is suitable in a semi-arctic climate is hardly fit for a stifling tropical country.

One thing that struck me most in Goyaz was the incongruity of the people. With the little literature which found its way so far in the interior, most of the men professed advanced social and religious ideas, the majority making pretence of atheism in a very acute form. "Down with faith: down with religion: down with the priests!" was their cry.

Yet, much to my amazement—I was there in Easter week—one evening there was a religious procession through the town. What did I see? All those fierce atheists, with bare, penitent heads stooping low, carrying lighted candles and wooden images of our crucified Saviour and the Virgin! The procession was extremely picturesque, the entire population, dressed up for the occasion, being out in the streets that night, while all the men, including the policemen and federal soldiers—all bareheaded—walked meekly along in the procession, each carrying a candle. When the procession arrived at the church, the Presidente himself—another atheist—respectfully attended the service; then the priest came out and delivered a spirited sermon to the assembled crowds in the square. Then you saw those atheists—old and young, civil and military—again kneeling on the hard and irregular paving-stones—some had taken the precaution to spread their handkerchiefs so as not to soil their trousers—and beating their chests and murmuring prayers, and shaking their heads in sign of repentance.

Such is the world! The prettiest part of the procession was that formed by the young girls, all garbed in immaculate white, and with jet-black hair—masses of it—hanging loose upon their shoulders. The chanting was musical and the whole affair most impressive.