A Fazenda de café escravocrata, no Brasil.

Resumo

The initial path of coffee cultivation before it became an important export product was described as follows: Ethiopia, Arabia Felix, Java, Antilles, Guyanas, and Brazil. In this country coffee from the Amazon region was sent to Rio de Janeiro (XVIIIth Century) as a backyard crop. The coffee graves of the Fluminense lowland lasted for a short period and were of little importance.

            Stimulated by the American market, coffee cultivation was developed in the mid Paraíba basin; the plants and the slaves came from the coast and the planters from the declining mining area of Minas Gerais.

            The first years of pioneer occupation were very difficult. This was so, because they had to slash down woods, and because they had to expel the Indians and the squatters who didn't adapt themselves to the new economic and social structure. The great seats of the plantations, with their grounds to dry coffee and the "senzalas" (slave houses) formed a cluster and looked like a fortress. The coffee tree ranges sloped sharply downhill, making erosion easy.

            In the mid Paraíba valley, the coffee graves expanded in two opposite directions: to S. Paulo and to the "Zona da Mata" (Forest zone) of Minas Gerais. The Brazilian coffee crop increased 30 times in volume, and 45 in value, from 1822 to 1889.

            The intense social life of the coffee's aristocracy was the most brilliant in Brazilian history, and lasted until the end of imperial times (1889). Based on slave labor, it fostered the slave trade, in spite of the law abolishing it and the persecution of their ships by the English navy.

            As compared to the Portuguese rural laborer, the Negro slaves in Brazil had better nourishment, but inferior clothing and working conditions.

            The coffee planters built magnificent mansions not only in their plantations, but also in the nearby towns and outlet ports of the coffee region. Most of those towns had a commercial function and a linear pattern; some of them had their buildings around a square. Later, their outline was complicated, because of the diversification of urban functions.

            The processing of coffee beans improved as the coffee cultivation expanded throughout the Paraíba valley. There, a humid technique was adopted, which was simpler than that used in the West Indies, but more complex than that of the Paulista plateau.

            In the Paulista plateau, as in the Paraiba valley, the harvest was done in one single step. Green, ripe, and dry berries were gathered and processed together; the result was a poor quality product. The coffee from the Paraíba valley was of even lower grade than that of S. Paulo plateau, because its ripening was more irregular.

            The transportation of coffee from the producing area to the ports was done on mule back, and the stopping places gave origin to several towns. The mule packs reached both the ports located at the navigation limit of the rivers flowing into the Guanabara's bay, and those ports in the mountainous coast of southern Rio de Janeiro and northern S. Paulo. Later on the railroads, were used to ship coffee crops to the main exportation ports of Rio and Santos. The other ports were left to fall in ruins.

            The map illustrating the distribution of slaves, in 1883, in the Paraíba do Sul basin, shows slave concentrations in new coffee plantation zones, as well as in old ones where they served as the guarantee for loans and mortgages.

            Finally, an analysis is done on the fundamental causes of slavery's decline, establishing a parallel between Brazil and the Roman Empire. It arrives to the conclusion that slavery persists while it is economically necessary, and disappears as soon as people realize that it is uneconomic, besides inhuman. The former condition hindered the expansion of slave plantations on the S. Paulo plateau. The mechanization of coffee processing favored the expansion of coffee plantations run by European colonists and based on new labor relations.           The slave coffee plantation is therefore representative of a period, as well as of a region.