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u n i v e r s i t y o f t e x a s p r e s s a u s t i n

Darlene J. Sadlier

1 5 0 0 t o t h e p r e s e n t

Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2008

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html

∞ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sadlier, Darlene J. (Darlene Joy) Brazil imagined : 1500 to the present / Darlene J. Sadlier. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (The William & Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the Western Hemisphere) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-292-71856-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-292-71857-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. National characteristics, Brazilian. 2. Brazil—Civilization. I. Title. II. Series. f2510.s24 2008 306.4'20981—dc22 2008005572

For Jim

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c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

ch a pter 1 Edenic and Cannibal Encounters 9

ch a pter 2 Paradise (Re)Gained: Dutch Representations of Brazil and Nativist Imagery 63

ch a pter 3 Regal Brazil 106

ch a pter 4 The Foundations of a National Literary Imaginary 132

ch a pter 5 Modernist Brazil 184

ch a pter 6 Good Neighbor Brazil 209

ch a pter 7 From Revolutionary to Dystopian Brazil on Screen 234

Epilogue: Land of the Future 274

Notes 299 Bibliography 335 Index 355

Color section follows page 148

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a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

I was fortunate to receive a number of grants from Indiana University to support the research and writing of this book. I want to thank the Presi- dent’s Office for an Arts and Humanities Research Award and the College of Arts and Sciences for an Arts and Humanities Institute Fellowship, both of which provided me with time away from teaching. A New Perspectives Grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and a second Col- lege of Arts and Humanities Institute grant supported a research trip to Brazil in 2005. In Brazil I gave lectures on “the Good Neighbor Brazil” at the Universidade de São Paulo and the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio and received valuable feedback from colleagues and students there that contributed to my development of Chapter Six in this volume. I wish to thank Professors Esther Hamburger and João Luiz Vieira for inviting me to speak at their universities. My former Indiana University colleague Silviano Santiago brought to my attention important contemporary sources on the colonial imaginary, and I want to thank him for his advice and friendship. While I was in São Paulo, journalist Leila Gouvêa invited me to an exhibit at the Ateliê Amarelo, where I was fortunate to meet artist Vinicius Berton, who allowed me to represent one of his works in this book. The Rio artist Laerte de Sousa was equally generous in allowing me to include his work in this study. I am also grateful to Carmen Teixeira, who has been a great help whenever I visit the Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo. Although not as exciting as places like Rio or São Paulo, Bloomington, the home of Indiana University, does have the world-renowned Lilly Li- brary. The Charles R. Boxer and Bernardo Mendel collections there con- tain rare materials on Brazil, some of which are reproduced in this volume. It was a privilege to teach a course on images of Brazil in the Lilly in 2004, and I want to thank librarian Becky Cape for her knowledge and wit and for taking time out of her busy schedule to talk to my students about the Brasiliana materials. Having a pied-a-terre a few blocks from The Newberry Library in Chicago has been a joy, and I was fortunate to discover in the

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William B. Greenlee and Edward E. Ayer collections there additional rare materials, including the little-known Frankfurt edition of Hans Staden’s 1557 account of his captivity in Brazil. Throughout the writing of the book, my longtime colleague and friend Heitor Martins shared with me his encyclopedic knowledge of Brazil, espe- cially in the areas of literature and broadcast and print journalism. There are no words to thank him adequately for his time, counsel, and good fel- lowship. My colleague Juan Manuel Soto provided me with vital techni- cal support, and I appreciate his time and efforts. Fellow Brazilianist Jon Tolman graciously allowed me to reproduce images from a Brasiliana col- lection that originated in the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico. Finally, James Naremore encouraged me from the beginning to the end of this project, reading everything that I wrote and providing scholarly critique and editorial advice, all the while being the best companion in life a gal could ever have.

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This book originated in a plan to write a large-scale history of Brazilian literature, showing how different authors have contributed to ideas of Bra- zilian national identity. Had I followed through with my initial aims, the result might have vaguely resembled Peter Conrad’s Imagining America (1980), which describes how certain nineteenth-century English writers who visited the United States imagined the country for their respective readerships. (Niagara Falls, for example, was a mandatory stop for Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, and others, and it assumed iconic status in their works.) My plan changed, however, when in the course of researching in the Lilly Library and Newberry Library’s Brasiliana collections I began to realize the importance of early cartographic iconography to the formation of the Bra- zilian colonial imaginary. From cartography, it was a short step to studying early woodcuts and copperplate engravings, a topic that I had addressed in an earlier study of Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s 1971 Como era gostoso o meu francês (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman), a tongue-in-cheek film about sixteenth-century European expansionism and indigenous anthro- pophagy. Before long, my book had grown to include not only literature but also maps, book illustrations, architecture, painting, films, and broadcast media, and my history of the nation ranged from the sixteenth century to the present. Although my study is broad, even panoramic, I should perhaps make clear at the outset that it is focused on various forms of art or mass commu- nication and takes a particular approach to the question of national iden- tity. By using this last term I mean to designate anything that contributes to the individual subject’s sense of belonging to a nation. Does national identity therefore actually exist? Yes, but as I hope to show, it always exists discursively, as a representation or as an idea that is open to contestation and change over time. How does it take shape in Brazil? In many ways— for example, we can observe its workings through a study of law, politics, religion, and even historical linguistics. My own interests, however, are slightly apart from these matters and indeed from the economic relations,

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technologies, and institutions that determine ideology. Unlike Benedict Anderson’s valuable and highly influential Imagined Communities (1983), which explores many of the material conditions that gave rise to ideas of nationhood, my book exclusively addresses imaginary representations; thus I speak only about the cultural superstructure and allude indirectly to certain concerns of historians, political scientists, and anthropologists. For instance, I have little or nothing to say about constitutional law, definitions of citizenship, geographical-territorial boundaries, industrial economies, or popular customs. I do not deal, except obliquely, with the development of print cultures or representational technologies, and I do not write about the formation of “public spheres” such as the ones that have been theorized by Jürgen Habermas. My subject is the relatively manifest ideological ef- fect of fine art, literature, architecture, film, and television on the shap- ing of “Brazilianness.” The modes of cultural expression I have chosen to analyze are obviously determined by economic and political forces, but in themselves they contribute to the shaping of national identity and give us a window onto political and social struggles. They are worthy of study in their own right and have been given relatively little attention, at least in the academic world, along the lines in which I have tried to discuss them. The process of selecting writers, artists, and works was challenging, partly because I was covering five hundred years in a changing culture. In lieu of an encyclopedic survey of the arts, I constructed a series of histori- cal moments in which one or more art forms become dominant or strongly influential. Thus my discussion of the colonial period focuses chiefly on cartography and visual arts, while in my chapter on the nineteenth cen- tury I give most of the attention to literature. When I reach the twentieth century, the materials under consideration are increasingly public, so that I discuss modern architecture, city planning, films, and television. I have also tried to explore the ways in which both foreigners and native-born Bra- zilians have imagined the country. Anyone who has studied Brazil knows that there are myriad accounts of the nation written by foreign travelers. In recent years, scholars José Car- los Barreiro, Felix Driver, and Luciana Martins have focused attention on nineteenth-century illustrations and writings by such individuals as the French painter Jean Baptiste Debret and various British subjects, including the diarist Maria Graham and naturalists William Burchell and Charles Darwin. The nineteenth century is particularly rich in foreign materials

Introduction | 3

on Brazil because shortly after arriving in Rio de Janeiro in 1808, Dom João VI opened the country’s ports to commerce. Curiously, the image of Bra- zil produced by Brazilians themselves has received far less critical atten- tion. This may explain why most of my Brazilian colleagues and friends assumed that I was focusing exclusively on the outsider or “imperial” gaze. My aim instead is to concentrate on Brazilian materials, occasionally show- ing the relationship between local and foreign imaginaries. In all cases, I have indicated the sociopolitical and economic interests and concerns that played a part in the image-making process. Although I have attempted to provide as many examples of national im- agery as is feasible, by no means is the material exhaustive or complete. The wealth of materials from which to choose is an indication of Brazil’s impor- tance as a New World territory of vast proportions, bountiful resources, and indigenous peoples; as the new home of a transplanted European royal court; as a bourgeois society eager for national independence; and as a mod- ern nation of seemingly endless potential, dubbed by a spellbound Stefan Zweig “the land of the future.” Faced with a massive archive, I have necessarily been selective and tried to be mindful of what Raymond Williams described in The Long Revolution (1961) as the “selective cultural tradition”:

Within a given society, selection will be governed by many kinds of special in- terests, including class interests. Just as the actual social situation will largely govern contemporary selection, so the development of society, the process of his- torical change, largely determine the selective tradition. . . . We tend to under- estimate the extent to which the cultural tradition is not only a selection but also an interpretation. We see most past work through our own experience, without even making the effort to see it in something like its original terms. What analy- sis can do is not so much to reverse this, returning a work to its period, as to make the interpretation conscious of showing historical alternatives; to relate the interpretation of the particular contemporary values on which it rests; and, by exploring the real patterns of the work, to confront us with the real nature of the choices we are making. . . . Every element that we analyze will be in this sense active: that it will be seen in certain real relations, at many different levels. In describing these relations, the real cultural process will emerge. (68–70)

To the best of my ability I have documented and examined representa- tions of Brazil “in something like their original terms.” By this I mean that

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I study specific images in their historical contexts and alongside other im- ages to give a sense of their significance in what Williams refers to as the “lived culture.” My study includes canonical texts as well as other works that, for whatever reason, have been neglected or dismissed. A case in point is the poetry of the nineteenth-century African-Brazilian Luís Gama, a gifted writer who was a contemporary of Castro Alves and Joaquim Na- buco. Unlike Alves and Nabuco, who wrote celebrated (and canonical) anti- slavery works during and after the abolitionist movement, Gama focused on the issue of race itself in Brazil. Among his poems are tour de force satires directed at middle- and upper-class Brazilians of African descent who try to pass as white. Perhaps for that reason, Gama never gained entry into the Brazilian literary canon. My book is concerned with a great variety of nationalistic themes in dis- tinct historical periods and at different cultural levels. I have attempted to show how national identity is shaped in the colonial and postcolonial eras, in times of dictatorship and democracy, and in response to moder- nity and postmodernity. At certain junctures I also indicate how the image of Brazil has been influenced by the politics and culture of other nations, particularly France and the United States. In addition, I realized during the course of writing the book that for the entire time span of its existence, Brazil’s imagined identity has been strongly affected by at least two impor- tant concepts that can sometimes take on different qualitative implications at different historical junctures. The first of these is race, which becomes an important issue from the moment European colonizers encounter indig- enous peoples and which lies behind the present-day recognition that the nation is made up of a multiracial population, much of it black. The second theme is nature, meaning in this case the flora and fauna of the place, and its value as a “natural resource.” From the beginning of the European “dis- covery” of Brazil, the vast and varied landscape has been seen alternately as an exotic Eden, a savage wilderness, and a source of valuable commodi- ties. The contrast in these views of the natural world is vividly evident to- day in the long-unequal distribution of landownership and especially in the ever-increasing conflict between ecology and commerce. Both sides of this conflict tend to cultivate a rhetorical technique called ufanismo, which praises to the point of exaggeration Brazil’s resources. Although largely a characteristic of sixteenth-century texts by Portuguese writers who were

Introduction | �

eager to promote the country’s colonization, ufanismo continues to inflect contemporary writings about the nation. At the outset I emphasize the importance of historiography, cartogra- phy, engravings, and woodcuts to the construction of the first images of Brazil. As I show in Chapter One, among the best-known representations of Brazil were Belgian-born Johann Theodor de Bry’s sensational engravings of indigenous cannibals, images that circulated throughout Europe at the end of the sixteenth century. Those engravings not only refuted earlier im- ages of Brazil as a paradise populated with Edenic inhabitants, as recorded by the Portuguese royal scribe Pero Vaz de Caminha and others, but also helped to bolster and justify an aggressive colonial campaign to enslave and ultimately rid the Brazilian coast of the native presence. In Chapter Two, I show how the contrasting images of Brazil as terres- trial Eden and barbarous land continued to be explored in Dutch paintings by artists who accompanied Prince Johan Maurits von Nassau-Siegen to Pernambuco in the seventeenth century. Although scenes of anthropopha- gy appear on Dutch maps and in other works of the time, they are relatively few and always subordinate to images of passive if not friendly natives, happy African slaves, and an energetic commerce—all of which was de- vised to encourage Dutch colonization. The paradise described in writings by early Dutch visitors is especially evident in the work of Frans Post, who is regarded as the first landscape artist of the New World, and in Albert Eckhout’s ethnographic-style paintings of Indians, flora, and fauna. The Edenic vision became a major topos in the earliest literature written in Bra- zil, and nativist works by poet Manuel Botelho de Oliveira and the Jesuit Vicente do Salvador, among others, extolled the country’s natural beauty and abundant resources. Renowned for his satiric verses, the Bahian poet Gregório de Matos took a different approach by criticizing his bountiful homeland for enriching foreigners at the expense of locals. The discovery of gold and diamonds in the mid-eighteenth century confirmed early proph- esies of Brazil as a land rich in precious stones, which resulted in represen- tations of the country along the lines of a tropical Eldorado. That image contrasted sharply with pictorials and accounts of the brutal treatment and death of African slaves who were brought to Brazil to work the mines and plantations. If Brazil was a paradise on earth for some, it was at best (in the words of the Jesuit Antônio Vieira) a “sweet hell” for those enslaved.

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Chapter Three focuses on the flight of the Portuguese royal court from the Napoleonic invasion and their arrival in Rio de Janeiro in 1808. Early writings by the newly arrived immigrants complained about the lack of civ- ilization in Brazil and drew unfavorable comparisons between the country and the homeland left behind. Following various proclamations and proj- ects to lift the profile of the new royal capital, in 1816 the monarch Dom João VI invited a group of French artists and architects to Rio to train lo- cal talent and design buildings in keeping with Brazil’s newly appointed status as part of the kingdom with Portugal and the Algarve. The opening of Brazilian ports to overseas commerce in 1808 encouraged the arrival of various foreign scientific expeditions that documented flora and fauna and produced ethnographies of its people. Travelers like the British-born Maria Graham and John Mawe kept diaries of their visits that described in detail the problems and impact of imported notions of civilization on a people and nation eager for independence. With the proclamation of Brazil’s independence in 18�� and the begin- ning of the Brazilian empire, a new image came to the fore; and the Indian, who was no longer visible, having died or fled into the interior, became an icon of the recently independent nation. As I discuss in Chapter Four, al- though the Indian had appeared earlier in Brazilian literature, the European romantics, including the Portuguese poet Almeida Garrett and the French Brazilianist Ferdinand Denis, encouraged their Brazilian cohorts to adopt the figure of the noble savage as a national symbol. Meanwhile, as Antônio Gonçalves Dias and José de Alencar were writing popular epic-style works about valiant indigenous warriors and maidens in the wilderness, other in- tellectuals and artists were beginning to write works about life in the city. The desire to forge a national literature moved from discussions of the Indian to debates among urban novelists such as Joaquim Manuel de Mace- do and “regional” writers such as Franklin Távora, and by the latter part of the nineteenth century, the literary image of the nation was split (albeit unevenly) along geographic lines. On the one hand were works of limited circulation about the Brazilian interior with its “exotic” flora and fauna and regional types such as farmers and storekeepers, muleteers and bandits. On the other hand were the more widely published books about the city and the urban middle class. Blacks rarely figured in either genre; when they did ap- pear, they were usually cast as slaves. However, the image of the slave took on new meaning in abolitionist writings and oratory of the period, efforts

Introduction | 7

toward emancipation that were finally rewarded in 1888. Despite emancipa- tion, the suffering slave continued to be evoked in speeches and writings as a metaphor for a nation eager to wrest its freedom from the imperial monarchy. The freeing of the slaves anticipated by one year the overthrow of Emperor Pedro II and the establishment of the republic. At the same time, novelist Machado de Assis was charting a new course for Brazilian literature that shifted emphasis from romantic nationalism to a more cos- mopolitan, proto-modernist sensibility with which he dissected the values and foibles of the growing bourgeoisie. Chapter Five focuses on the images of modernist Brazil, beginning with the Modern Art Week in São Paulo in 19��. Held in the Municipal The- ater during the centennial celebration of Brazil’s independence, the week’s events were an attempt by writers, artists, and musicians to expand on the nation’s cosmopolitan image while emphasizing the importance of its re- gional character. Once again the Indian was called forth as a national sym- bol. Instead of the romantic bon sauvage, however, poet Oswald de Andrade summoned the anthropophagous figure as part of a modernist counter- colonialist strategy: the local culture would ingest (as oppose to emulate) foreign sources in order to strengthen what was endemic to the nation. The desire to “make it new” was especially evident in painting and architecture, in which classical forms gave way to futurism, expressionism, cubism, and other modernist schools. This radical shift in the arts and architecture cul- minated years later with the construction of the futuristic capital, Brasília. The “new way” also produced bossa nova, a cool, hip music whose impact was felt far beyond Brazil. In Chapter Six I examine the 19�0s, when Brazil’s national identity was shaped not only by its own artists but also by the U.S. Good Neighbor policy, which fostered cultural exchanges and an emphasis on both modernity and exoticism. During this time Hollywood transformed Carmen Miranda into a colorful, amiable, and tropical Latin icon—an image that endured long after the end of World War II. In the same period Orson Welles functioned as a goodwill ambassador from the United States; through his aborted film, It’s All True, and his radio programs broadcast from Rio and New York, he emphasized a very different image of Brazil as a racially diverse, culturally rich, and respected wartime ally of the United States. The early oscillating images of Brazil as Edenic and barbarous reemerge in the later part of the twentieth century as Cinema Novo films about the

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utopian possibilities of a poor but developing nation accede to darker pic- tures of a dystopia plagued by corruption, drugs, and violence. I explore these contrasting media images in Chapter Seven, and in many ways they remain at the heart of the country’s view of itself today. The media coverage of Brazil’s growing poverty, violence, and corruption coexists with reports on the country’s emergence as a global economic power—a contradiction that seems more extreme with each passing year. The contradiction is espe- cially evident in the major cityscapes, where towering multinational build- ings and high-end shopping centers appear alongside modest housing and sprawling favelas, or slums. It is impossible to predict what lies ahead for a nation still referred to as “the land of the future”; nevertheless, an examina- tion of the ways the nation has been represented over the centuries should provide us with a better understanding of the imaginary that has shaped Brazil and may shape it in decades to come.

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters

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When the Portuguese nobleman Pedro Álvares Cabral and his armada of thirteen ships left Lisbon on March 9, 1�00, his mission was to sail to the port city of Calicut in India and bring back spices, silks, porcelains, and other valuable commodities.1 Vasco da Gama had opened the sea route to India two years earlier, and the Portuguese monarch, Dom Manuel I, was eager to send a much larger expedition to keep Portugal in the forefront of maritime trade with the East.2 Onboard Cabral’s ship was the royally ap- pointed financial administrator from Oporto, Pero Vaz de Caminha, who was attached to Cabral’s ship as scribe. It was on that trip that Caminha wrote his famous letter of May 1, 1�00, to Dom Manuel, in which he de- scribes the founding of a land that eventually would be called Brazil. There are different hypotheses about why Cabral sailed so far west of Vasco da Gama’s Atlantic route to India that he ultimately sighted Brazil. In his Tratado da terra do Brasil (Treatise on the Land of Brazil), written in 1�7�, the Portuguese chronicler Pero de Magalhães Gândavo attributes the fleet’s southwesterly turn to doldrums that forced Cabral to seek better sailing winds far off the Guinea coast. This course took his armada directly west to Porto Seguro and the coastline of what is today Bahia. According to Brazilian cultural historian Luís da Câmara Cascudo, for a long time the discovery of Brazil was attributed to a storm that caused Cabral to change direction and head south-southwest. But neither Caminha’s letter nor nau- tical charts of the period refer to any inclement weather that might have driven Cabral off course.3 Portuguese literary historian Jaime Cortesão argues that imperialism, and not nature, was the real reason for Cabral’s westerly turn. He contends that with the Spanish already in North America and with the redrawing of the Line of Tordesillas in 1�9� to a more favorable position for Portuguese expansion (370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands), Cabral’s imagina- tion was fueled by the possibility of new Atlantic conquests (Cortesão 1967, 90–91). The German-born medievalist scholar Carolina Michaëlis de Vas-

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concelos argues that Caminha’s letter to the king makes Cabral’s intentions clear, for instead of using the term descobrimento (discovery) when referring to the “Land of Vera Cruz” claimed for the Portuguese by Cabral,4 Caminha used the word achamento (finding). Vasconcelos infers from Caminha’s word choice that the armada did not make a chance “discovery” as the result of weather but a “find” while searching for new territory.5 Her interpretation supports at least one other theory that Cabral had prior knowledge of the new land from earlier navigational sources and that he journeyed westward from Africa to claim it officially for the Portuguese empire.6 Whatever the actual case, together the various speculations about the events and intent surrounding Cabral’s voyage have transformed the “discovery” of Brazil into something akin to legend or myth—as if the “find” in and of itself were somehow insufficient to convey the extraordinary nature of Cabral’s maritime achievement. Given all the different theories and speculations, Caminha’s description of the sighting of Brazil seems almost matter-of-fact: “On this day [April ��], in the evening hours, we sighted land: first of a very high, large and round mountain, and of other, lower mountains to the south of it, and of flat lands with giant groves of trees. The captain gave the name of Monte Pascoal [Easter Mountain] to the tall mountain and to the land he gave the name the Land of Vera Cruz.”7 One might infer from his description that the “finding” was less important to Caminha than what was actually found. Unlike the customary brief messages written to the king by Cabral and other ship captains about the sighting, Caminha penned a lengthy mis- sive (fourteen folios, front and back) that is remarkably detailed and ethno- graphic in its descriptions of the land, the people (Tupiniquims, or Tupis), and their customs. Caminha is modest about his abilities as a scribe, telling Dom Manuel that he is the least equipped to put these matters into writing; nonetheless he assures him that he will strive neither to play up (aformosen- tar, to make beautiful) nor play down (afear, to make ugly) what he has seen. His letter has long been recognized as the official record of the first contact between the Portuguese and native Brazilians. No indigenous documents exist on this or any other encounter between the two groups. As for Caminha’s objectivity, it should be noted that his letter concludes with a petition to the king to grant clemency to his son-in-law, Jorge de Osório, who had been exiled to São Tomé off the west coast of Africa.8 Al- though petitions of this kind were not uncommon, especially when a ser-

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | 1 1

vant of the King provided him with good news, one cannot help but wonder the degree to which Caminha’s request affected his objectivity. It seems un- likely that he would pen anything “ugly” that might displease his sovereign, while he would have every reason to curry favor and write a positive if not exuberant account. Historian José António Costa Idéais has observed that the custom of the alvíssara (a gift given to a bearer of good tidings) was an incentive for the embellishment of events: the better the news received, the more valuable the gift given (in Amado and Figueiredo �001, 113–11�). For centuries, maritime accounts of new lands and peoples were regarded along with charts, maps, and illustrations as historical documents and, therefore, as truth. But Caminha’s reference to the alvíssara is an important reminder that even the most apparently straightforward narratives are produced not in a vacuum but within a context that can bring to bear forces as widely divergent as a family member’s plight, a religious conviction, or a broader ideological position, which in sixteenth-century Portugal was steeped in imperialism and the desire for territorial conquest and global commerce. It should not come as a total surprise, then, that Caminha’s letter offers a very favorable impression of Brazil. Although the armada had landed in one of the more humid areas in the tropics, he described the weather as cool and temperate and compared it with the climate of northern Portugal. He praised in particular the bountiful forests filled with different species of trees (including the dyewood, also known as brazilwood, which would be- come the first commodity exported by the Portuguese), the vast mountain ranges, and the sweet and plentiful waters of the rivers. He was amazed by the abundance of shrimp of a size he had never before seen and by the ma- caws and vibrantly colored parrots of multiple hues. Although he did not see many other birds while on shore, he inferred from the number of trees and forested areas that they were many. Not unlike some ancient and medi- eval myths about remote Atlantic islands, one of which was called Brazil,9 Caminha’s account describes the “island of Vera Cruz” along the lines of the classical locus amoenus (gentle place)10—in this case, a tropical Eden with comely and innocent men and women who are curious about yet shy of the European. This image of a paradise on earth was not unique to Caminha’s letter; indeed, as scholars such as Henri Baudet, E. Barlett Giamatti, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, and Laura de Mello e Souza have pointed out, the biblical garden was repeatedly evoked in writings about the New World.11 It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the name “Brazil”—long associated

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with an imaginary island paradise, not to mention the valuable and coveted dyewoods indigenous to the land—would ultimately replace “the Land of Vera Cruz.” Although Caminha discusses in some detail the topography and wild- life of the new land, most of his narrative focuses on the human inhabit- ants, many of whom carry bows and arrows: “In appearance they are brown, somewhat reddish, and they have good faces and well-shaped, good noses” (folio �, verso). Here Caminha defines the native Brazilians’ facial features in terms of their similarity to Europeans; there is also the suggestion that they are different from the west coast African, whose broader, flattened nose was deemed unattractive by the Portuguese. Caminha remarks more than once on the native inhabitants’ cleanliness, their unusual fitness, and their complete lack of awareness or shame about their nakedness. At one point, he compares their total innocence to that of the biblical Adam, and he praises them over “civilized man” for their personal hygiene and purity of mind. What is particularly interesting to note is Caminha’s use of neu- tral terms, such as “men,” “young women,” “girls,” “people,” and “gallants” to describe the local population. These non-racial, non-ethnic terms would soon be substituted by either tribal designations, such as Tupiniquim and Tupinambá, or by the generic “Indian” (used by Columbus to refer to the Caribbean populations that he believed to be East Indians), or by the depre- catory “savage,” “beast,” and “barbarian.” The ethnographic feel of Caminha’s account is especially evident in his detailed descriptions of the indigenous culture. He refers on various occa- sions to the different dyes used to tint the inhabitants’ bodies. For example: “This one . . . was tinted with red dye on his chest, shoulder blades, thighs, hips, and down to the lower part of his legs, while his stomach and other places were of his own color. And the dye was so red that it would neither wash off nor dissolve in the water. On the contrary, when he came out of the water, he looked even redder” (folio �). Later on he observes: “[There was] one with her thigh from knee to hip and buttock all tinted with black paint and the rest of her in her own color; another had both knees and calves and ankles so painted, and her private parts were so naked and exposed with such innocence that in this there was no shame” (folio 7).12 Caminha also commented on the male tradition of wearing decorative bone fragments and stones in the lower lip, and at one point he seems amused by an old man’s attempt to provoke Cabral, if not silence him: “This old man had his

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | 13

lip bored so deeply that a large thumb could fit into the hole; and in it he wore a large and worthless green stone that closed the hole from the outside. The Captain made him take it out. I know not what devil spoke to him, but the old man took it directly to the Captain in order to place it on his mouth” (folio 7). Caminha noted that like their European counterparts, the men were not circumcised, while the young women’s genitalia were remarkable for their lack of pubic hair. He gave considerable attention to the inhabitants’ hair (or lack or it) as well as to their headdresses and other adornments, many of which were made of bird feathers. Caminha also commented on their basic foodstuffs of seeds and yams and their fear and suspicion of unknown ani- mals such as lambs and chickens that were brought on the ships. When two men were invited to board the captain’s vessel, Caminha described their be- ing treated as if they were visiting royalty. Following a welcome ceremony, they were given food and drink (which they tasted and subsequently spit out); when night fell, they curled up on the floor and fell asleep, and the cap- tain ordered his men to cover them with blankets, and pillows were eased beneath their heads. There is no question that Caminha regarded the native inhabitants as primitive and “other”; in at least two places in the narrative he refers to “taming” the population, and he calls them “bestial” on another occasion. In most instances, however, he preferred to draw comparisons be- tween them and animals of a benign nature—especially with birds whose prized feathers decorated the natives’ heads and bodies. Although the Portuguese and indigenous peoples were unable to under- stand each other’s language (unlike the African experience, no interpreters were available to the Portuguese on this expedition), Caminha nevertheless commented on the Tupiniquim’s purported lack of religious belief. He gave special attention to their curiosity about the Catholic masses conducted while the Portuguese were on shore and approved of the ways they imitated the Europeans by remaining silent during the services and standing and kneeling at different parts of the ceremony. As important as gold, spices, and other precious commodities were potential converts to Christianity who could help the Portuguese empire deter the spread of Islam. Indeed, the Treaty of Tordesillas was enacted specifically to allow the Portuguese and Spanish to claim territories for their respective kingdoms as long as the native inhabitants were non-Christian. For Caminha, the goodness, pas- sivity, and simplicity of the native people and their receptivity to ceremony

1 � | brazil imagined

made them ideal candidates for Christian conversion: “And I believe that were Your Majesty to send someone here to stay longer among them, they will all be converted according to Your Majesty’s desire” (folio 13). He con- cluded his account of the New World by drawing links between Christi- anity, colonization, and commerce. After praising the vast lands, plentiful waters, and gentle climate, he wrote: “However, it seems to me that the best fruit to be taken from this land would be that of saving this people. And this should be the principal seed that Your Majesty should cast here” (folio 13, verso). As the expedition’s leader, Cabral wanted to prove the potential com- mercial wealth of the new land to Dom Manuel, and he immediately dis- patched a ship back to Lisbon with a small cargo of brazilwood (March- ant 19��, �8–�9).13 The vessel also carried Caminha’s letter as well as other communications about the discovery. The rest of the armada continued its voyage to India, where Caminha died in December during an attack by Hindi locals on the Portuguese trading post in Calicut. Although his letter remained unpublished until 1817, it is a prototype of an emerging literary sensibility known as ufanismo, whose rhetoric is characterized by glowing and often highly exaggerated descriptions of New World lands and peoples. In his 1�00 missive, Caminha lays the foundation for subsequent descrip- tions of Brazil as a tropical Eden—an idea that would become a major trope in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century representations of Brazil.14 This im- age confirmed and bolstered the sense of good fortune and accomplishment that was associated with Portuguese expansionism; at the same time, it ul- timately persuaded the monarchy to engage in a more rigorous colonization enterprise.15 As mentioned earlier, Caminha was one of several who wrote to the king, but only two other documents from the 1�00 voyage have survived. In the Carta do mestre João (Letter by Master João), the armada’s surgeon-astrono- mer writes briefly about the newfound “islands” but reserves most of his comments for a discussion of the estrelas da Cruz, or Southern Cross.16 In a much longer document known simply as the Relação do piloto anônimo (Ac- count by the Anonymous Pilot), the unnamed author wrote that they had landed on terra firme, an observation that confirmed Cabral’s belief that they had encountered a continent and not an island as posited by Caminha in his letter’s closing. This is an important observation because history has long credited the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci as the first navigator

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | 1�

to recognize that the territory was a continent. The anonymous report dif- fers from Caminha’s account in one other, significant way. While Caminha only focuses on the new land and its people, the nameless author places the founding of Vera Cruz within the much broader context of the fleet’s expe- dition to India, and he writes about negotiating trade as well as about the loss of men and ships in the battle at Calicut. Although his report is positive in its description of Brazil, it lacks the breadth and ethnographic specificity that makes Caminha’s letter so fascinating to read. The anonymous letter suggests that the discovery of Vera Cruz, albeit fortuitous, was of minor importance in comparison with the fleet’s arrival in India, whose precious commodities were the objective of the voyage. Although Dom Manuel forbade the publication of navigational charts and maps outlining the route to India (Marchant 19��, �97), in the summer of 1�01 he wrote to his Spanish in-laws, the Catholic royal couple Fernando and Isabel, to inform them of finding “Santa Cruz.”17 He was succinct in his account of the new land, stating that it provided logistical support for the expedition, which made repairs and replenished water supplies there. In fact, he made only one brief reference to the people of Santa Cruz, stating that they were nude, innocent, and peaceful. No mention was made of the natural beauty, wildlife, or other resources amply described in Caminha’s narrative. Similar to the account by the anonymous pilot, Dom Manuel’s letter gives far greater emphasis to Cabral’s voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India, the loss of ships and life in battle and at sea, trade with the East, and the commercial success of the venture. However, prior to writing to his Spanish relatives, Dom Manuel had commissioned the renowned cosmographer Amerigo Vespucci to make a second voyage to Brazil to strengthen Portugal’s claim to the territory.18 In June 1�01, on his way to Brazil, Vespucci wrote a letter to his former pa- tron and friend in Florence, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici, from Cape Verde, where he encountered ships from Cabral’s fleet on their way back to Lisbon.19 This letter and subsequent correspondence with Medici brought word of Brazil and Portugal’s successful commercial enterprise in India to the Florentines, and from there, word spread to other parts of Europe. From Cape Verde, Vespucci traveled from what was believed to be the mouth of the Amazon River to the Rio de la Plata region, helping to establish with greater exactitude the line that separated Portuguese from Spanish hold- ings. In a second letter to Medici written after he returned to Lisbon in

16 | brazil imagined

1�0�, Vespucci described the new land in Edenic terms: “sometimes I mar- veled so much at the delicate scents of the herbs and flowers, and the tastes of those fruits and roots, that I thought I must be in the Earthly Paradise . . . What is there to say of the quantity of birds, their plumes and colors and songs and how many kinds and how beautiful they are? (I do not wish to enlarge upon this, for I doubt I would be believed)” (in Formisano 199�, 30–31). Although Vespucci was clearly moved by the riches of the land, he was far more judgmental than Caminha in his assessment of the native popula- tion. Having lived among native Brazilians for nearly a month, he report- ed on their “pagan” custom of body piercing and wearing large bones and stones in their facial holes for the “brutal business” of making themselves look fierce. Caminha’s description of New World inhabitants seems almost pastoral compared to Vespucci’s narrative,20 which comments on their cru- elty in warfare and their anthropophagy:

And at certain times, when a diabolical frenzy comes over them, they invite their relatives and people to dinner, and they set them out before them—that is, the mother [enemy captive] with all the children they have got from her— and performing certain ceremonies kill them with arrows and eat them; and they do the same to the . . . male slaves and the children that have come from them. And this is for certain, for in their houses we found human flesh hung up for smoking, and a lot of it. (In Formisano 199�, 33)

A text often attributed to Vespucci entitled Mundus novus (1�03) enjoyed wide circulation—twenty-two editions of the Latin version appeared by 1�06 (Amado and Figueiredo �001, 3��), and sixty-six editions in six other languages were available by 1��9 (Lestringant 1977, �8])—spreading even greater affirmation of Brazil as a tropical Eden. In both Vespucci’s private correspondence to Medici and in the apocryphal Mundus novus, attention is given to the temperate climate, the bountiful flora and fauna, and the miraculous life spans of the native population.21 Like later narratives about Brazil, certain editions of Mundus novus were illustrated by artists who had never even traveled there. Woodcuts represented native Brazilians as trans- planted classical Greek or Roman figures with long, curly, golden tresses, and a few men even sported beards. One of the earliest of these woodcuts of indigenous Brazilians appears in the 1�0� Basel edition of Mundus novus.

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | 17

Attributed to the German Johann Froschauer, it is a broadside, and its in- scription reads:

This figure represents to us the people and island which have been discovered by the Christian King of Portugal or by his subjects. The people are thus naked, handsome, brown, well-shaped in body, their heads, necks, arms, private parts, feet of men and women are a little covered with feathers. The men also have many precious stones in their faces and breasts. No one also has anything, but all things are in common. And the men have as wives those who please them, be they mothers, sisters, or friends, therein make they no distinction. They also fight with each other. They also eat each other and even those who are slain, and hang the flesh of them in the smoke. They become a hundred and fifty years old. And have no government. (In Eames 19��, �7)

In the center foreground of the woodcut a woman is seated and seems content to watch the children around her, one of whom suckles at her breast. To the far right of the woodcut, two men, one bearded, the other clean- shaven, appear to be in friendly conversation, while another bearded man and young boy are looking back at the nursing mother. In the left corner and behind the mother figure is a group of four people standing around a headless body that is stretched out on its side. Although the body has little definition and could be that of an animal, one of the men is clearly chewing on a limb that has a hand and fingers attached. In the center background of the illustration and hanging from a makeshift rack over an open fire are human body parts, including a head, an arm, and a leg. Although cannibal- ism is far from an Edenic activity, the image in the woodcut has a certain benign, almost pastoral look. In fact, the face of the severed head is turned in the direction of the two men in amiable conversation—as if it were some- how partaking of their fellowship. Despite the fact that Mundus novus and the woodcut’s inscription re- fer to the people’s nakedness, the men and women are depicted wearing headdresses, skirts, and other adornments made of feathers. Moreover, all male and female sexual organs are concealed—even those of the children. It is not clear if the artist had actually traveled to Brazil, but the physical representation of the local population is in many ways more realistic than some later illustrations. Like an iconic signature, two caravels appear in the upper right corner to mark the European presence. This single woodcut

18 | brazil imagined

consolidates a number of tropes emerging in the early part of the sixteenth century: the comeliness of the native inhabitants, the egalitarian or utopian nature of the community, their warring tendencies, and their practice of anthropophagy.22 The popularity of Mundus novus cannot be overemphasized: it announced to readers that a “new world” existed, a faraway utopia of extreme natural beauty—not unlike the Atlantic islands described by myth and lore over the centuries. The German Martin Waldseemüller’s 1�07 map pays homage to Vespucci by affixing the name “America” to the South American conti- nent. And although the descriptions of a cannibal people were disturbing if not terrifying, the emphasis given to the land’s real and potential natural wealth piqued public and private interests about still other riches and won- ders that the New World might hold. A greater focus on commerce was evi-

1.1 Early woodcut of native Brazilians (1�0�). Basel edition of Mundus novus. Spencer Collection, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | 19

dent within just a few years. In his Décadas da Ásia (Decades on Asia), pub- lished in 1���, Portuguese historian João de Barros was extremely critical of the people’s substitution of the name Santa Cruz for the commercially oriented name Brazil:23

Santa Cruz was the name given to that land in the first years, and the cross made out of trees lasted for some years in that place. However, like the devil, the sign of the cross lost its power over us . . . So much of the red wood, known as brazil, came from that land that this name has been taken up by the people and the name of Santa Cruz was lost. It is as if the name of a wood to dye cloth were more important than the name of the wood that gave tincture to all the sacraments by which we are saved and that was spilled on it by the blood of Jesus Christ. And since on this matter I cannot avenge myself of the devil, I advise, on the part of the cross of Jesus Christ, and to all those who read this, that they give to this land the name that was so solemnly bestowed upon it. For under penalty of that same cross that has to be shown to us on our final day, we may be accused of being more devoted to brazilwood than to the cross. And in honor of such a great land, let us call it the “Province of Santa Cruz,” which sounds better than “Brazil” among those who are prudent, since the common people are inconsiderate and unqualified to name properties of the royal Crown. (19��, 1:111)

Nearly fifty years would pass before Dom João III, the successor of Manuel, initiated the process of religious instruction and conversion that Caminha enjoined his monarch to consider in 1�00. In the meantime, the luxurious brazilwood on the coastline became the object of growing com- mercial interest for the Portuguese—as well as for the French, who, refus- ing to recognize the Treaty of Tordesillas, sent expeditions to harvest the trees with the aid of the Tupinambá.24 Because of its aggressive overseas expansionism from Africa to the Far East, Portugal lacked the manpower to prevent other nations, particularly France, from extracting the precious hardwoods whose red dye, used in making the vibrant garments worn by the French royal court, was in increasing demand by the European textile industry (Hemming 1978, 8). The dye also was used to make illuminated manuscripts, and the tree pulp had medicinal properties that cured ills such as inflammation of the eye (Emert 19��, 19). One of the woodcut illustrations in Franciscan André Thevet’s Les sin- gularités de la France Antarctique (The Singularities of Antarctic France),

�0 | brazil imagined

published in 1��7, depicts a Huguenot community founded off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in 1���. In the woodcut, a brazilwood tree is being chopped down by two naked Indians, while a third, attired only in headdress, car- ries a piece of timber on his shoulder in the background. This is not the first illustration to show the commercial importance of brazilwood. In fact, the Portuguese Cantino’s world map of 1�0�, which is regarded as the first to il- lustrate the Brazilian coastline, identifies the territory as both “Vera Cruz” and “Brazil” and uses figures of large parrots and gold, green, and brown trees as symbols of its resources. Nicolau Canério also used trees on his map of Brazil (1�0�–1�06), and brazilwood appears in a legend on charts as early as 1�08 (Emert 19��, 18, 9�). The Portuguese Lopo Homem-Reinel map of 1�19, whose remarkable detail of the coast was no doubt provided through descriptions by Portuguese sailors and merchants, is decorated with tree- toting native Brazilians who serve as iconographic ornaments alongside drawings of tropical birds. A similar image of indigenous inhabitants ap- pears on sixteenth-century wood carvings located in Rouen, a French city that had strong ties to the brazilwood industry (Marchant 19��, ��). Until the measuring of longitude became an accurate science, maps tended to vary in their interpretations of where the Line of Tordesillas was located and consequently where Portuguese possession stopped and Span- ish dominion began. A map drawn in approximately 1�7� by the Portuguese Luis Teixeira and another by the Spaniard Lopes Velasco about the same time show very different territorial divisions. Not surprisingly, Teixeira’s interpretation gives far more land to Portugal than Velasco’s map—the lat- ter of which shows the southwestern part of Brazil belonging to Spain. The Portuguese Vaz Dourado’s map of 1�68 is also generous in its representation of the land under Portuguese control. A much earlier and far more accurate map of Brazil and the placement of the line were produced by the Portu- guese Diogo Ribeiro about 1���.25 Yet despite Brazil’s depiction on maps as a Portuguese possession, the re- ality was that in the first half of the sixteenth century the French were quite successful in extracting timber from Brazil—so much so that in 1�16, King Manuel sent an armada to drive off French ships. However, most French vessels did not even need to touch land, because the Tupinambá rowed out to them to initiate trade. In some ways, the French were more effective than the Portuguese in negotiating with the native inhabitants. They learned the local languages, and a few even took up residence among the Tupinambá

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | �1

and practiced their customs. In exchange for carrying the heavy tree trunks, often over great distances, native Brazilians were given clothing, knives, scissors, tweezers, tools, and trinkets. Somewhat like what occurred during the American Revolution, skirmishes between the Portuguese and French in Brazil resulted in the formation of different tribal allegiances to the two European groups. For example, the Tupinambá, who inhabited the area around Rio de Janeiro, aided the French, while the Tupiniquim, whose lands were in the area of São Paulo, allied themselves with the Portuguese. The success of France’s commercial enterprise in Brazil brought about a change in priorities back in Lisbon. In 1�3�, Dom João III divided the ter- ritory (known and unknown) into vast strips of land called capitanias (cap- taincies), which were given to donatários (generally individuals of the lesser nobility, the middle class, or court favorites) in exchange for which they

1.2 Brazil as parrots and trees on Cantino’s world map (1�0�). Courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

1.3 Nature and commerce on Lopo Homem-Reinel’s map (1�19). Courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | �3

would begin the process of colonization: growing crops on fazendas (plan- tations) or roças (smaller farms), building towns, recruiting settlers, pro- ducing offspring, and generally expanding commerce in the New World. However, the barter system employed for so many years by the Portuguese gradually lost its appeal to the native Brazilians, who were no longer in- terested in exchanging hard labor for trinkets. Increasingly, Portuguese farmers and tradesmen took to enslaving indigenous populations, which, in turn, led to resistance and warfare.26 Battles between the Portuguese and the Indian, between the Portuguese and the French, and between rival indigenous groups created an instability that proved disastrous for the capitanias, nearly all of which failed by 1��8. One year later, in 1��9, the monarchy decided to establish a royal govern- ment in Brazil and sent Tomé de Sousa as the territory’s first governor-gen- eral. That same year, the monarchy took up Pero Vaz de Caminha’s sugges- tion and sent the first Jesuit priests to Brazil in an attempt to proselytize the native population. Interestingly, it was neither the Portuguese nor the French who produced one of the most widely disseminated images of Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century. The person responsible was a German by the name of Hans Staden, who wrote a riveting eyewitness account of life among the native inhabit- ants following his capture by the Tupinambá in 1��3. What made Staden’s 1��7 chronicle, Warhaftig Historia und beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der wilden, nacken, grimmigen Menschenfresser Leuthen in der Newenwelt Ameri- ca gelegen (True History and Description of the Land of the Wild, Naked, Fierce, Man-Eating People in the New World of the Americas, translated to Portuguese as Viagem ao Brasil), so engaging was his detailed account of the customs and habits of a cannibalistic people, who were made even more sensational by a series of woodcuts that accompanied the text. It should be noted here that the woodcuts we have come to associate with the Staden text published in Marburg in 1��7 and the “Great Voyages” en- gravings by Theodor de Bry, which will be discussed later, are not the illus- trations that appeared in the Frankfurt edition also published in 1��7. The Frankfurt images are more elaborate and deserve a brief commentary. For example, although Staden was writing about his capture by the Tupinambá, the Frankfurt illustrations have nothing to do with Brazil. They are largely orientalist in appearance, depicting turbaned sultans and merchants, cam- els and elephants, and an occasional figure that might be an Amerindian.

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There is no king in Staden’s account, yet the image of a king appears at different junctures in the illustrations: in one scene he is sitting in a din- ing room in a castle, and in another, he is outdoors with various animals. Whether it was Staden (which seems unlikely), the publisher, or someone else who incorporated these images into the text is not clear. What is certain is that at some point they were deemed appropriate and desirable for the book, and no distinction was made between the New World and Europe or the Far East. One of the woodcuts stands in ironic juxtaposition with Staden’s de- scription of mutilations and anthropophagy in the chapter titled “How the Tupinambá Treat Their Prisoners upon Their Return” and was used on the cover of the book. It is one of the only images that has some relation to the narrative, and yet instead of a Tupinambá, it depicts a European male who looks like a sailor clothed in knee breeches, open vest, and a head band, holding a cleaver in his hand, and standing over a headless body. The illus- tration is all the more ironic because it includes still other European types who look like castaways, seemingly unfazed by the act of dismemberment. In a note to his preface for the 1930 Portuguese translation of the German edition, Alberto Lofbren tells us that a Dr. Dryander proposed new wood- cuts be made for the text, since the original Frankfurt ones had nothing to do with the narrative. His point is certainly true, even though the illustra- tion of mutilation has at least a tangential relationship to the text. But one can imagine that that image in particular was troubling to Dr. Dryander. It was one thing to represent mutilation at the hands of an Indian; it was quite another to suggest that a European was capable of such an act—even though that was historically true.27 Among the woodcuts supplied for the Marburg edition are depictions of village life, tribes combating one another, a naked European captive (presumably Staden) in the company of his naked hosts, and the prepara- tion (depilation, killing, cutting up, roasting) and consumption of enemy prisoners. Staden is graphic in his description of the Tupinambá’s anthro- pophagy, and the woodcuts, though crude and lacking in detail, show gro- tesque scenes such as a man’s body being slit up the back and a human head sticking out of the top of a roasting pot. Several other woodcuts portray the community’s preparation and ingestion of the captive-meal. What is perhaps most startling about the illustrations is that, with the exception of the captive’s execution, which was always carried out by a male, all oth-

1.4 Cover of the Frankfurt edition of Hans Staden’s witness-captive account, War- haftig Historia (1��7). Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago.

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er aspects of the cannibalist act are generally associated with women and children (who receive relatively little attention in Staden’s narrative). For example, a woodcut of women and children shows them consuming the contents of two large platters placed on the ground. There is a certain irony in this picture: without knowledge of the text, one could easily interpret the image (which lacks a certain detail) as yet another representation of the idyllic life—this time of harmless naked mothers with their naked children at their side who are joyously partaking of a meal in the out-of-doors. As we have seen, Staden’s account was not the first to describe cannibal- ism in the New World, but his narrative certainly had the greatest impact of any of its time. Ultimately, the internecine feuds between tribal groups, their participation in the Franco-Portuguese struggle, and their resistance to slavery resulted in another image of the indigenous people as savages, in

1.5 Woodcut of women and children eating, in the Staden Mar- burg edition (1��7). Courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | �7

the minds of many Europeans, despite the violence and brutality practiced by the Portuguese and French in their battle to profit from the land. More- over, woodcuts such as those in Staden’s book often circulated indepen- dently of the written text, and the dissemination of images of naked beings engaged in anthropophagy became even wider. By mid-century, a discourse had emerged based on reports and woodcuts of savages and cannibalism, and this discourse appeared alongside accounts and images of docile resi- dents in a tropical Eden. Perhaps nowhere were the contradictory images in evidence more than in an engraving titled Figure des brèsiliens from a 1��1 French manuscript that describes in detail a simulacrum of Brazilian indigenous life con- structed in 1��0 on the banks of the Seine in the city of Rouen.28 The occa- sion for this lavish construction was King Henri II and Queen Catherine’s official arrival and entry into the city. Apparently it was common for towns to stage reenactments of significant historical events to honor the arrival of the royal court. In this case, it appears that Rouen chose to fashion a unique

1.6 A Tupi village in Rouen (1��1). Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago.

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spectacle based on its special relationship with an exotic land that served its (and the king’s) commercial interests. The spectacle required considerable investment: fifty native Brazilians were imported for the event; foreign-looking trees and shrubs were planted to simulate a tropical forest; two complete Indian villages were constructed; ��0 French sailors and prostitutes role-played in the nude in order to fill out the native cast; and parrots and monkeys were released into the faux-wil- derness set. In his essay “Strange Things, Gross Terms, Curious Customs: The Rehearsal of Cultures in the Late Renaissance” (1988), Steven Mul- laney describes the various scenes portrayed in the 1��1 engraving, which is the only pictorial representation of the spectacle. Most interesting for our purposes are his descriptions of a man and woman who “strike a pose that recalls period illustrations of Genesis” (71); a few others who are walking hand in hand or engaged in making love; and many more who are making war with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows. Mullaney observes:

Along with its version of Edenic pastoral [the engraving] reveals a land of un- biblical license and enterprise. Some of the couples are partially obscured in the underbrush, taking advantage of the cover to indulge in relatively unabashed foreplay; men are hewing trees, then carrying them to the river to build primi- tive barks. The soft primitivism of biblical tradition coexists with a harder in- terpretation of pagan culture, akin to the portraits of barbaric life composed by Piero di Cosimo. (71)

As for the various representations of warring tribes in the engraving, Mullaney informs us that a battle between two rival indigenous groups was staged upon Henri’s arrival and that in the course of the simulated struggle one of the villages was burned to the ground. An encore performance of the battle was staged the next day in honor of Catherine’s arrival, during which the second village was torched and destroyed (7�). In his book Can- nibals (1997), Frank Lestringant comments on a watercolor miniature of the spectacle that shows Henri observing a battle staged between French and Portuguese ships on the Seine. He also calls attention to a verse that appears alongside the miniature, which celebrates the French king’s rule: “Thy power to the cannibals extends: / Faithless to others, they remain our friends, / And in those islands we may safely dwell” (��).29 Whether it was for religious purposes alone or because the French had fostered such close alliances with indigenous groups that they rigorously

Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | �9

challenged Portugal’s political and economic sovereignty or because there were increasing reports and illustrations circulating about pagan acts in the New World, Dom João III sent the first group of Jesuits to Brazil to begin their crusade to convert the Indians to Christianity. In a letter written to his reverend superior in the spring of 1��9, the Jesuit Manoel da Nóbrega was optimistic about the new land, stating that it was “good and healthy” and that the Jesuits themselves were in good health, in fact, “in better health than when [they] left [Lisbon]” (1988, 7�). His first impressions of the indigenous community were also quite positive. According to Nóbrega, the natives were eager to learn Christian doctrine, and they wanted to be like the Europeans (7�).30 Nóbrega’s observations seemed to agree with Caminha’s earlier remarks about the docility of the native Brazilians and the potential ease of Chris- tian conversion:

If they hear the call for mass, they respond and . . . do everything, kneel, beat their chests, [and] raise their hands to the Heavens. One of their principals is already learning to read and he takes lessons with great care every day, and in two days he learned the entire ABCs. And we have taught him to cross himself, and he takes in everything eagerly. He says that he wants to be a Christian and no longer eat human flesh, nor have more than one wife, and other things . . . These are people without any knowledge of God. They have idols and do every- thing that they tell them to do. (7�–73)

Ironically, Nóbrega’s accounts of Europeans in the New World were less positive: “they live in mortal sin, and there isn’t a one of them that doesn’t have many black [indigenous] women by whom they have many children and it is a great evil” (7�). It has long been established that because Por- tuguese women did not participate in the early colonization of Brazil, in- terracial relationships between European males and Amerindian females were common, and many mixed-race children were born. Nóbrega con- demned the colonizers’ libidinous acts,31 and he encouraged his superior to send Portuguese women—even if they were erradas (wayward), stating that “they will marry well” (80)—but the monarchy did little or nothing to respond to the Jesuit’s complaint.32 Regardless of how it came about, active procreation meant more royal subjects in the colony, and this fact alone was enough to please the Crown. Nóbrega’s letters praised the new land and its people. The air was good,

few of the people fell ill, and there were delicious fruits and excellent fish in abundance. He commented on the unusual and plentiful wildlife, “almost all of which was unknown to Pliny” (89), and he described the extraordi- nary variety of herbs—far more diverse than what could be found in Spain. With regard to the territory’s size, he wrote in terms that were clearly ufani- sta in spirit: “The region is so large that, they say, of the three parts into which the world is divided, [Brazil] would occupy two parts” (89). His de- scriptions of the Brazilian natives focused on their innocence, their warlike activities (which, he was quick to point out, were based on blood vengeance and not greed), their ritual of bringing captives to live in their communities before killing and consuming them; and their practice of burying the dead in an upright position with a clean hammock and plates of food placed on top of the grave (91, 100). Nóbrega acknowledged that the process of religious conversion was not without its challenges and problems; he articulated this most effectively in 1��� in his Diálogo sobre a conversão do gentio (Dialogue on the Conversion of the Indian), an important early work of Brazilian literature about the need to find unity of purpose between the often antagonistic lay and re- ligious groups in the colonial community.33 In 1��0, he wrote about a war being waged by a former convert who convinced a tribe in the interior that the governor-general was out to enslave or kill them and that the Jesuits were using conversion to turn more of them into slaves (10�)—all of which ultimately proved to be true. Tensions also steadily grew between settlers and the Jesuits because of the latter’s desire to spare the Indians from the labor forced upon them by colonizers who, according to Nóbrega, were lazy and practiced all kinds of vices (110). At the same time, the Jesuits were not loathe to use converts to tend their missions’ crops and to carry out other tasks. Salvation came at a price—as the renegade convert’s acts made clear. And while Nóbrega and other Jesuits condemned the enforced slavery of Indians by the settlers, he was not hesitant to ask his superior in Portugal to send African slaves to work in the missions (130). In later letters, Nóbrega expounded upon the sins of the settlers, the dif- ficulty of retaining converts in the mission, the desirability of converting as many of the children of the enslaved as possible, the need for more white women in the colonies, and the continuing battles among Europeans under the command of a later governor-general, Mem de Sá. In one of his final letters, addressed to the Infante Dom Henrique in 1�60, he described Mem

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Edenic and Cannibal Encounters | 31

de Sá’s expedition to Rio de Janeiro with the Portuguese allies, the Tupin- iquim, and the subsequent Portuguese victory over the French, who had built settlements in the region. Nóbrega was part of that expedition, and he was pleased to report the victory over the Calvinists, the French Huguenots, and their Indian allies, who were living in a fortified settlement called Fort Coligny on an island in Guanabara Bay. Early residents of that community included the French Admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, the founder of the island colony, and religious leaders Jean de Léry and André Thevet, all of whom wrote about life in the New World’s “Antarctic France.” In 1��6, Villegaignon had obtained permission from Henri II, by way of the admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny, and the cardinal of Lorraine, to establish a colony that would be a religious haven for Catholics and Prot- estants alike.34 Apparently Henri II was favorably disposed to the request because it opened the possibility of increased brazilwood trade between France and Brazil (Whatley 1990, xx), and French Protestant theologian and Reformed Church founder John Calvin sent a group of missionaries to the island community to provide instruction. But just as the island experi- ment got under way, fierce theological debates broke out between the two groups—debates that were exacerbated by Villegaignon’s tyrannical lead- ership. Lacking material support from the indigenous population and with the Portuguese pressing for control, Villegaignon ultimately abandoned Fort Coligny, which came under Portuguese control in 1�60—as noted by Padre Nóbrega in his letter of that same year. Villegaignon’s letter to Calvin is a fascinating document: it makes clear the Huguenot community’s general lack of preparedness for living in Ant- arctic France, as well as Villegaignon’s personal dissatisfaction with the land and particularly the native inhabitants: