Brazil: Minas Gerais state

[ilbonito]

The next state inland from Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, is quite different in personality. Cut off from the coast and circled by rocky hills and mountains, its people (called mineiros) have a (relatively) more introspective personality, and a strong, almost spiritual connection to the land. They are the descendants of the slaves and settlers brought in to work the gold mines that provided this area (and Brazil) with a huge economic boom in the 17th century.

And that was to be just the start. A French geologist famously described the state (whose name, after all, means “General Mines”) as having a ” heart of gold and a breast of iron”. Minas is still being mined today, for both these metals, diamonds and managanese. Centuries of digging have left the once-dominant rainforest all but gone, with grassy mountains now studded with palm trees and dramatically cracked and eroded to reveal red soiled cliffs. But they have also left the state with an incredible legacy of 17th century boomtowns, that later dwindled into perfectly preserved villages – the one big attraction Minas Gerais has for tourists today.



Ouro Preto (black gold) is the biggest of these cidades historicas (historic cities). I arrived on the overnight bus from Rio, and pulled up 8 hours later with the sand from Ipanema still in my underwear, to a youth hostel next to Ouro Preto’s bus station. I opened the window to see this:



The town was spread out before me in a little valley between bare, steep hills cloaked in morning mist. Hummingbirds were fluttering about feeders in the hostel’s garden. It was a promising start.



After breakfast I walked down the hill, past donkeys grazing and couples intertwined at what seemed to be the local “makeout” spot – a hilltop church, with condoms littering the cobblestones and grafitti like “Thiago 4 Marillia 4eva” carved into the heavy baroque doors.



Like other colonial towns I have seen in Brazil, Ouro Preto is preserved perfectly. I remember exactly one 20th century building in Ouro Preto, and it was tucked discreetly out of view.



The town is littered with churches. This one is the Igreja da Santa Efigenia dos Pretos, ( Church of Saint Efigenia of the Blacks). It was built by slaves, who smuggled out gold dust from the mines in their hair and under their fingernails to finance the shrine to Saint Efigenia, a Nubian princess.



This case is called an oritorio, used to a house sacred image. According to the Lonely Planet guide, it is one of many built all over Ouro Preto at the beginning of the 18th century to ward off the ghosts that had lately plagued the town, springing out of the walls of the church of Santa Efigenia above.

Later, the oritorios became infamous for their part in a cunning plot. The town’s gold caravan – loaded onto donkeys and headed over the mountains for ports at Rio and Parati – was being robbed in the wilderness. Each time, the authorities chose a different route, but each time the caravan was attacked. It was later discovered that it was an “inside job” with a local townsperson signalling to the bandits by pointing the images in the oritorio in the direction the gold was heading. Perhaps as a result, they were almost all removed, but this one remains.

[ilbonito]

More than anywhere else in the Americas - except Haiti - Brazil has a long and proud history of resistance to the horrors of slavery. Of course, this is because it was also by far the largest slave nation. It is said that up to 70% of all the slaves who crossed the Atlantic came to Brazil, many more than went to America, and it was the last country to emancipate them.

But there was also heroic resistance in Brazil in the form of slave revolts. Maybe similar things happened in the US but their memory has been suppressed by the white authorities over the centuries, because I have never heard of them.

The greatest of the Slave revolts was undoubtedly the quilombo of Palmares. A quilombo was a community of escaped slaves, usually hidden deep in forests or swamps. Palmares, also called the Republic of Palamares, was by far the largest. In fact, it was the third largest city in Brazil in its time. Located in the country's Northeast, Palmares was attacked time and time again by the authorities in Salvador. Six times between 1680 and 1686 the Portuguese attacked, and were defeated. The population of Palmares had swollen, not only with escaping Africans but with poor whites and people of mixed race too, and was ruled in a semi-democratic and semi-African traditional fashion by a leader calleg "Gangazumbi".

The city-state sent ambassadors - wearing only leaves and animal skins - into the city of Salvador to negotiate for peace, causing a hysteria among the population there. Eventually a deal was worked out with the Portuguese, involving the return of all runaway slaves, and an abandonment of their fortified city. But a disgusted faction of Palmares citizens, not about to give up and head back into slavery, staged an internal revolution to replace Gangazumbi with his much more militant, and now legendary, nephew; Zumbi "The Zombie" (so-called because he was believed to be immortal). He immediately cancelled the truce, and reopened hostilities with the Portuguese. In 1694, after a proud century of independence, Palmares was finally conquered and Zumbi was killed, his immortality disproven. The date of his execution, November 20th, is Brazil's national day of black consciousness today.

The site of Palmares - one of Brazil's greatest historical sites - was later entirely covered by a dam.

The last of the great slave revolts was the 1835 Revolt in Bahia, this time lead by Muslim African slaves inside the city walls. They planned to wait until a new slaveship was in the harbor, then meet at the city gates at dawn, let in those who had managed to escape from the country sugar estates, capture the town's jail and weaponry storehouse, and commandeer the captured slaveship back to Africa, killing everyone in their way. Sadly, they were betrayed and the authorities managed to secure the vital armoury and put down the revolt completely.

Perhaps most interesting of all was Chico-Rei, who lived in Ouro Preto. He was a slave who claimed to have been an African king. By working overtime in the mine, he was able to buy his freedom, then that of his son and finally – and unbelievably – almost all of the slaves in the mine. He then bought the mine itself, and resumed rule of “his” people in traditional African royal garb. He died aged 72 of hepatitis, and has understandably been a folk hero for Brazil’s black people ever since.

[ilbonito]

After Ouro Preto, I drove up further into the mountains to Caraca. Here, there is a sprawling nature reserve covering what little is left of the Minas Gerais rainforest (home to almost the entire world population of the muriqui, one metre tall and the biggest monkey in the Americas). At Caraca the jungle meets 2000m high and the beginnings of the “cerrado”, the vast sea-like savannah that sweeps across South America for thousands of kilometres, home to animals like the emu-like rhea, and the animal I had come hoping to see, the tamandua or giant anteater.



(Not my anteater picture sadly, I didnt see one)

But Caraca’s most famous residents are a different animal; the wolves.

In the middle of the reserve is an odd, almost mystical little place called the Santuario do Caraca. It was built in 1789, (just one year after white people arrived in Australia) in the absolute middle of nowheresville, as a Catholic monastery. It also operated a famous school where (presumably far from all temptations and distractions), the sons of the local elite were educated. Many former pupils went to on to tread the corridors of power.

In 1968 a part of the remote old building was gutted by a fire, the famous library all but destroyed and the school closed. Today it is run as a hotel – although still with a very “boardinghouse” feel – by the same Catholic order who have lived here (and been buried in the onsite cemetery) for centuries. The gloomy chapel still stands, the old stone corridors are still filled with crucifixes and weird, dusty silence. The clocktower chimes the time every hour, echoing through the forest for miles around.

And every night, the guests gather on the steps of the old chapel to watch as the padres continue their famous ritual; the feeding of the wolves. The wolves here are not the same as in Europe. They have leaner bodies, more like foxes, and a reddish coat. They are called guara-lobo, “the red wolves”. Most unusually their black legs seem too tall for their bodies, as if they are walking on stilts, giving them an elegant silhouette. And each night they come to be fed at the Santuario.




It was a great, creepy feeling to be sitting on the steps of the Gothic church in the middle of nowhere, lightning flashing low over the tropical mountains, with vampire bats fluttering from the eaves of this weird, mysterious place -almost like a tropical Hogwarts with its old building and mysterious connections – and the wolves literally at the door.



I don’t think the wolves could take out a human (though I wouldn’t want to try it) though I did have one heart-skipping moment when the creatures looked straight past the metal tray of meat on offer, at a 2 year old baby playing obliviouly (and unprotected) at the church steps.



The next day I went for a hike. The reserve is filled with creatures; 300 species of birds, pumas, anteaters and even tapirs apparently, as well as huge caves and the ruins of little outlying chapels on rugged peaks. I saw strange, huge insects and heard the cries of birds and monkeys all around…but I didn’t see anything. I think its the kind of place you need to linger to appreciate. I would have loved to have stayed a few more days, done some of the longer hikes. But I had to be in Sao Paulo on Saturday night for a Kylie Minogue concert (!), so I said a regretful goodbye.

[auntieannie]

muinto obrigada, ilbonito!

Isn't it mind boggling how those who fight most for freedom (their own as well as others) will almost automatically impose slavery-like laws as soon as they gain whatever power they can?

How is the region faring nowadays when it comes to human rights, finances, etc? I understand that being a state full of precious metal and stone, it should be rich, but guess the money gets diverted?

What kind of food do people eat there? Do they grow it themselves? Is it safe or does the pollution that comes with mining affect the local population?

big questions, I know and you certainly notice I don't know anything about anything so feel free to ignore...

[ilbonito]

Its still a rich and powerful state in Brazil - the capital Belo Horizonte is probably the country's third biggest commercial city after Rio and Sao Paulo and so many Brazilian presidents have come from the state, there was some kind of saying about Brazil being "milk (from Minas Gerais) and coffee (the famous product of Sao Paulo) because the two states virtually monopolized the presidency between them. The local food is called "comida mineiro" - very hearty. Lots of pork and beans (as with everywhere in Brazil).

[bixaorellana]

Good grief ~~ there is material here for at least a couple of historical novels, perhaps with some magical realism thrown in, a best-selling history book, and a block-buster movie! What an intensely interesting area, and certainly a brilliant presentation of it.

I am fascinated by the mining towns in Latin America. Of necessity, they're in dramatic terrain, so naturally beautiful. However, it's their frequently horrifying history and the attendant extremes of lives led by the exploiters and the exploited that seem to be soaked into these areas. You've definitely caught that in your excellent photographs.

And then to go from Ouro Preto to that incredible expanse of nature reserve with the "almost mystical" Santuario at its heart -- you must have walked around with your mouth hanging open.
I do love that someone decided to paint the church door in that decorator color. Perhaps it was someone who decided a little grounding in present-day reality was necessary.

Thanks so much for this. You've opened a door to a hitherto unknown (to me) rich history and brought it to life.

[hwinpp]

Reminds me a lot of pictures of the Acores, where you also get Portuguese culture and architecture coupled with palm trees.

Very nice!

[ilbonito]

[ilbonito]

On the bus to Caraca I noticed a sign by the highway. We were passing through the town of Varginha, a name I recognised instantly, but which I hadn’t realised was enroute. I was excited because although Varginha is just a run-of-the-mill Brazilian provincial town in many respects, it is quite unusual in another. In 1996 the town was visited by aliens.

One of the (many) endearing quirks of the Brazilians is their love for the paranormal, the psychic and the new age. My local shopping centre in Copacabana had a supermarket, a bakery and two ” psychic energy” stores. And there is nothing the locals love more than UFOs.

Brazil has always been a statistical hotspot for alien sightings, with the highest number of people in the world who claim to have seen (and/or had sex with) interplanetary visitors. The Pedra do Gavea rock in Rio is said to be a favored landing spot ( as well as being inscribed with Phoenician carvings and containing a secret transcontinental passageway to Macchu Picchu). The whole area around Brasilia is also busy with alien visitors, if you believe the stories. One wealthy local landowner has even built an “Aeroporto de UFO” on his property near the town of Alto Paradaiso de Goias, to guide them down to land.

And perhaps dubiously, the two incidents regarded as the best “proof” we have of UFOs both occurred in Brazil. The first happened in the small fishing village of Ubatuba near Sao Paulo in the 1950s. Locals spotted a strange flying machine crashing into the sea. What makes the case unusual though, is that for once they were actually able to retrieve some of the ship; a small piece of metal flotsam. When tested, it ws found to be no metal known on this planet. Excited scientists sent the artifact to Washington Dc for further tests. There it was decided that it was an alloy of some kind; something that could possibly be made here on Earth, but that to the knowledge of the authorities, no-one had actually ever done so. How had a poor rural fisherman ended up with this super-rare alloy? Either an incredibly elaborate hoax, or a flying saucer had crashed into the sea near Ubatuba. Since then, scientists hoping to repeat the tests have been foiled; the metal has “disappeared”.

The second UFO incident was in Varginha. On January 20th, 1996, three teenage girls spotted a creature “1.6 metres tall , with a large head and very thin body, with V-shaped feet, brown skin, and large red eyes. It seemed to be wobbly or unsteady, and the girls assumed it was injured or sick” (according to wikipedia). They fled, telling their mother they had seen the devil.

But over the next few days more – dozens - of the townspeople reported sightings of the same strange creature. In one case a Brazilian military van was said to arrive and collect the almost unconscious being, before driving off, infront of a street of witnesseses. Others said they saw flying saucers in the sky.

One investigator wrote that there had been over half a dozen sightings of the creatures, though it was " unclear how all of these beings could have fit into the minivan-sized spacecraft that was spotted here in January.” There was disagreement as to whether one creature had been sighted multiple times, or if several creatures had been sighted individually.

The news made the small town of Varginha, in UFO-crazy Brazil, famous.

[ilbonito]

Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state, is Brazil’s third biggest and most economically important city. But its not the kind of place tourists go. Brazilians will tell you its boring. For a one-day visitor, this doesnt show. With its forest of skyscrapers and crowded footpaths, it feels much more vibrant than say, Melbourne.

Perhaps the problem is not that it is boring, but that it is undistinctive. BH has none of the flair of Rio or the cosmopolitan hugeness of Sao Paulo. Nothing in its architecture or ethnic mix sets it apart from the national norm ( as opposed to Brasilia’s 60s futurism, or Prudentopolis in Parana state which is 70% Ukraininan, or Salvador which is heavily black and 17th century). Belo Horizonte is just a generic mid-sized Brazilian city, a kind of Brisbane of Brazil. Probably not too bad a place to live, but a city to go through rather than go to.

For me, that meant staying in a youth hostel where I was not only the lone foreigner, I seem to have been the first foreigner ever. There was come confusion about what paperwork I needed to show since I had no national ID card. In the end a passport was fine. And I got adopted by a bunch of local university graduates, in from neighboring provincial towns to attend a conference in the big city on “tourism in the age of the new media.” They took me out to a bar where their friend was singing – she was awwwwesome! – for a night of samba and cachaca. It was great. One thing that stood out in BH was that a prolific, and talented, local grafitti artist had drawn pictures like this on walls all over the downtown area:

[ilbonito]

Belo Horizonte is also interesting as an early example of a "planned city" - Brazil has many of them, not just the famous Brasilia. Laid out in the 1890s on an odd diagonal-grid pattern, BH was designed to supplant Ouro Preto as state capital, hemmed in as the older township is by steep and rocky hills. Today BH has well and truly grown up. It feels organic, and lively. Perhaps this is what Canberra and Brasilia will feel like another 50 or 100 years from now.

Indeed, the seeds of Brasilia's 1960s futurism lie here, in the lakeside suburb of Pampulha, designed by the great architect Oscar Niemeyer in the 1940s. He later went on, of course, to design most of the monuments of the new Brazilian capital. His curving, ceramic white and blue tiled church in Pampulha was so radical in its day that the Catholic Church refused to consecrate it for almost twenty years with the Archbishop of BH decrying it as "the devil's bombshelter".

[Deleted]

Extremely informative and entertaining report, ilbonito. One thing that I found very strange was how much the area with the chapel and the wolves reminds me of Sapa in Vietnam, right on the Chinese border. It's not wolves there but packs of wild dogs, who really are dangerous. Even though there were 20 of us on a trek, we were told to pick up sticks when a dog pack showed up and started growling.

It's a shame you didn't get a photo of any of the aliens, even though I saw that they have been depicted on the walls by the local residents. They probably come to see the anteaters, which remind them of the ordinary animals on their own planet.

[fumobici]

Incredible report. Thanks.

[bixaorellana]

Yaaay, there's more!

Not to be greedy, but do you have more photos of Pampulha? Was that church actually designed in the 40s?! It is brilliant, with its wavy form right on the water, and the facade anticipating today's street graphics.

How wonderful that the modern design of the 1890s remained comfortable and useful for subsequent modernizations.

It's also wonderful that you got to be the resident alien in your time there. ;D

[auntieannie]

I just love the stories about UFOs! I wonder what the Brazilians think of Prof. Stephen Hawking's latest message wasrning we shouldn't try and communicate with aliens.

[ilbonito]

May 31, 2010 16:13:39 GMT bixaorellana said:

Yaaay, there's more!

Not to be greedy, but do you have more photos of Pampulha? Was that church actually designed in the 40s?!

Yes! It was amazingly ahead of it time, wasn't it? And beautiful. Bizarrely, a public housing block here in Melbourne has just built a replica of it on its roof (!!) as some kind of misguided "beautification" project ....

I'll dig around to see if I have any more pics ...

[ilbonito]

Music of Minas:

In the 1970s the state produced one of Brazil's greatest musical talents, Milton Nascimento, who sang of black freedom and mixed Hispanic influences like flamenco guitar with choral music and church bells to create songs like this:

[bixaorellana]

Once again youtube's pretty new player is malfunctioning. I had to click on on five different videos to find on that didn't have "an error occurred". Hope to hear the one you posted later. I'm glad I persevered, though, as Milton's voice is gorgeous and haunting.

Annie, what did Hawking say? It's too late, anyway, as Ilbonito has made it clear that they walk among us.

[auntieannie]

www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/26/hawking_aliens_warning/

[ilbonito]

I finally got around for looking for more pictures of Pampulha - the suburb Oscar Niemeyer designed for Belo Horizonte way back in the 1940s - a huge imaginative leap for those times, featuring what was to become the architect's trademark - curvaceous concrete buildings, amidst lawns and leafy streets, here wrapped around a quiet lake. I couldn't find any more pictures of my own but I plucked these from elsewhere online:





Another urban modernist point of interest in BH is the Edificio Maletta; a huge building designed as a self-sufficient housing block and commercial centre, holding 5,000 people in the heart of the city centre along with halls of hairdressers, internet cafes and cheap restaurants.




Many of the residents are students who are studying in the capital far from their home towns, and in the 1980s when Brazil was under military rule it was apparently an oasis of freethinking liberalism, like a kind of super-commune.

And the spirit of Pampulha's tropical futurism lives on in this new development, called Inhotim, about an hour out of the city. Built in 2004, it features a privately funded super-modern art museum in a lush botanical garden. I didn't go there. I didn't hear about it til after I had left. (Don't you hate that?) So again, all photos were google-imaged. It looks like paradise though, doesn't it?

[Deleted]

Brazil is full of surprises, which is scandalous. Most of us are so self-centered in our own countries and/or continents that we really have very little idea of how other people are living or what they are designing.

I really appreciate the glimpses that you are giving us of Brazil here. It will be one of the most important countries this century, and it is high time that we get to know it better!

[bixaorellana]

Yes, it does absolutely look like paradise! People talk about "organic architecture", and seeing those pictures, you know it's the correct terminology.

Whatever is that giant kaleidoscope?!

The Edificio Maletta is somewhat daunting, although the picture of the long balcony and your bit of positive history make it less so. Did you ever go inside?

[ilbonito]

No, as with the garden at Inhotim I only discovered it recently. I probably walked right past thinking nothing of it!
Brazil truly is a country full of the unexpected. There is an island there, the largest freshwater island in the world, covered with rainforests and home to an indigineous reserve, that is the size of Switzerland. And yet no-one knows its there. What other countries could swallow up a hidden treasure of that size? Or there are beautiful landscapes of huge desert-like sand dunes close to the Amazon rainforest. Or a bird-filled swamp the size of France. Or a little seventeenth century ghost town full of crumbling mansions covered in vines, with its own twenty-first century spaceport. Or cities unexpectedly full of Japanese or Slavic faces. Or, as these pictures show, pockets of startlingly lovely contemporary design. Brazil is really a country you could spend a lifetime exploring. Its the first foreign country I ever visited, and I fell in love with it.

[Deleted]

I expect to learn quite a bit about Brazil in the coming month because a friend's new 'significant other' is coming from João Pessoa (the eastern point of Brazil) to spend a certain amount of time here. I hope to even learn a bit more about Brazilian food.

[ilbonito]

My most memorable experiences with Brazilian food were chicken cooked in chicken blood, potato chips mashed up and using as a topping for hot dogs and farofa (a dry, gritty substance) sprinkled liberally over everything. And the fruits! Cupaucu and acai are to die for ...

[hwinpp]

I hope to even learn a bit more about Brazilian food.

Ask her to cook feijoada, then post the recipe here (I think we've talked aboutit before).