Brazil today and tomorrow

by L. E. Elliott Joyce

A simple camaraderie prevails in the upland interior, where little money passes and barter of goods is the most common form of exchange; it is frequently impossible to hire labour, and as a consequence farmers and their sons invite the help of their neighbours when field work is needed, giving their own time in turn when occasion arises. No distinction between rich and poor occurs in a society of such friendly simplicity.

In the cattle regions there is a special ceremony every year, for rounding and branding cattle, known as the feira dos bizerros (calf branding) and the apartação do gado—separation of herds, frequently running with those of other fazendeiros over unfenced country. All the neighbours arrive at the farm which is thus counting its stock, families making it an occasion of friendly reunion. During the evenings of the two or three days of festa there is a continual round of coffee drinking and eating, many a marriage is arranged and consummated; at the close of the work there is frequently a series of competitions of skill in horsemanship, the clever performance of the vaquejada or derrubada always exciting a critical audience. Horsemen, mounted on well-trained animals, post themselves at the gate of the corral where bulls have been shut up for a day or two; the bars are let down and when the cattle rush out each of the horsemen tries to seize a bull by its tail and throw it to the ground—success largely depending on the cleverness of the horse in avoiding the rushes and struggles of the bull. The last night is one of continual dancing and temperate feasting, the flute and violin sounding until dawn. It is a little curious that these instruments, with the guitar, are the favourites of the musical peasantry of Brazil, and that the exquisite marimba of African origin, carried by negroes into Central America and there enthusiastically adopted by the Quiché-Cachiquel natives, should not have also found a home in the southern continent.

Among the other figures of the sertão, created by the absence of mechanical transportation in a series of great regions, is the tropeiro, the leader and frequently the owner of a troop of mules carrying the products of the interior to market. A good tropeiro is entrusted with the marketing of the cotton crop of a fazenda or even a district, and he will carry cash for long distances, settling accounts, making purchases; his mules are trained performers who know their work and make themselves understood if there is anything wrong with one of their number. In the north of the Brazilian promontory—Bahia, Pernambuco, interior Ceará, Maranhão and Rio Grande do Norte as well as the hinterlands of the central states, the tropeiro undertakes the transportation of much of the interior crop of cotton, sugar and tobacco.

He is doomed to extinction as the steel arms of the railroads push out into the interior, but his day is not yet done.

Public lotteries are to the Brazilian what horse-racing is to the Englishman and baseball to the North American. It is a form of excitement, with a chance of betting something and winning a great deal, an interest apart from the ordinary round of business. Opinion is not popularly opposed to the system in Brazil, any more than it is in, for instance, Italy, and in like manner it is conducted by the Federal Government, is a recognized source of revenue, and many charities and other worthy institutions supported by the authorities derive their main income from it. Few people express any adverse sentiments to these regularized lotteries, but an amusing offshoot from it, illegal, forbidden, pounced upon now and again by the police, generally denounced by the press, and indulged in by everyone, is the famous bicho. A bicho is in Brazil any kind of animal or bird or insect—everything living is popularly a bicho—and in this underground lottery groups of numbers are represented by a deer or monkey, butterfly or tiger, etc., something more interesting than a bald set of figures. The bicho was of independent origin, with twenty-five animals represented, but nowadays depends upon the government results, and is really a gamble on a gamble, but with the advantage that combinations and groups can be played on, and very small sums staked. You can stake a few pennies on your favourite humming-bird again and again without feeling the loss when the anta persists in coming up instead, and there would be little harm done did not servants sent to the market get the bicho habit so badly, together with shoe-shiners and waiters and all the working class, that in its acutest form “playing on the bicho” becomes an obsession equal to drug-taking. Tickets for the bicho can be bought at many newsdealers, in scores of shops, little banks and financial houses run it, and some daily papers print pictures of the winning animals: it is well not to stake more than a milreis or two, because while a modest winning will be paid your gain of a conto would probably be met by the assurance that the ticket-seller cannot pay. In such a case there is no redress as the whole thing is illegal.

Its chief objection in the eyes of the authorities is that it does not yield a public revenue, and that people spend, in the aggregate, more money on the bicho than on public lotteries which are sources of governmental income. Nevertheless, denounced, raided, and occasionally prosecuted, the bicheiros continue to exist and to furnish a mild form of excitement and adventure. I do not think that lotteries are more objectionable originators of a thrill than cocktails and whiskies dear to the Anglo-Saxon; in regard to heady liquors the Latin is universally abstemious, and the rule is not broken in Brazil.

Rarely does the Brazilian born and bred drink anything stronger than coffee, and this he takes, in little cups in the innumerable cafeterias of every city, many times a day. Since the established price of a little cup of hot, very strong black coffee is but a tostão (two U. S. cents) there is no great extravagance about this. At family meals a little wine, generally imported from Portugal, France or Italy, is on the table: since Rio Grande has been trying her hand at wine-making the bottle may contain vinho nacional; in any case it is sparingly used. The younger generation has taken to a limited extent to the whisky introduced by the Britisher, the beer of the German, now very well brewed in the country, and the cocktail of the newcomer of North America, but he appears to drink these exotics more with a desire to be in the fashion or a “good sport” than because he likes them.

Monroe Palacio, on the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro.
Municipal Theatre, São Paulo City.

Deliberate drinking is almost confined to the festas beloved of the mestizo and mulatto populations, especially celebrated in agricultural districts, when the Brazilian-made cachaça, a kind of rum made from sugarcane, is liberally consumed. Its festive use seems to be a survival of Indian custom, for the natives of the coasts and forests in pre-Portuguese days made a fermented liquor (from milho = maize) for special occasions, and their descendants as well as the negro element, also great lovers of celebrations, regard an occasional period of revelry as a right. The influence of Christianity has succeeded in identifying these festal occasions with, and confining them to, saints’ days and other Church celebrations, but their root is more primitive.