Patient Anthony - A Brazilian Boy's Walk to Slavery - 3 (Republished to Groups)

On the last stage of the journey, one theme dominated the concerns of Patient Anthony and other slaves: the senhor to whom they would be sold.

Policarpo was in his late twenties. He'd had two masters in the thirteen years he'd been in Brazil -- one a Recife merchant, a Portuguese Jew, and the other a cotton grower.

"Why did the Portuguese sell you?" Patient Anthony asked.

"Why?" Policarpo said. "I don't know why. Nothing was said. One morning we got up and were ready for work but were taken to the slave market instead."

"Your master was angry?"

"He was calm. He took us to the market with the few things we owned. That was the last we saw of him."

"And the other one? Why did he sell you?"

"Pascoal Sampiao? Ai, yes -- God is merciful."

The cotton grower and his overseers had lashed Policarpo and locked him up in the tronco, the stocks, more times than he could remember. "Not the tronco simples. The tronco duples!" Policarpo said, holding his wrists up and giving a look of mock terror. "Tronco diabo!" The double stocks where you sat with your body hunched forward, your legs through two lower holes, your arms through two upper holes, for the duration of your punishment, day and night. "Pray, boy, that the one who buys you isn't like the keeper of dogs I knew."

"My senhor will be a good master," Patient Anthony replied, with blind confidence.

Patient Anthony was now nine, still very much the thin, gangly youth tall for his age, but with a longing, distant look in his big brown eyes. On the long march, he'd learned much from Policarpo and other slaves, all of whom counseled him to abandon hope of returning to Jurema.

The column had reached the fazenda of Saturnino Rabelo near Sorocaba, sixty miles west of Sao Paulo, at the beginning of December.

Since then, the slaves who'd walked sixteen hundred miles through the northeast backlands and over the highlands of Minas Gerais had found life at Rabelo's barracks surprisingly easy.

For the first two weeks, there'd been no work, just hours lazing beneath the trees outside the dormitories. Morning and night, they were fed copious quantities of food. During the next six weeks, they'd worked in Rabelo's fields.

"Why doesn't the Portuguese bring our new owners?" the boy asked Policarpo.

"Patience, Antonio Paciencia! Patience," Policarpo said. "They'll come."

"Why do we wait?"

"Look around you, boy. What do you see?"

Patient Anthony didn't know what Policarpo was driving at. "Slaves?" he ventured.

"Slaves, yes -- slaves who walked sixteen hundred miles. Saturnino Rabelo sees, too, and he doesn't hurry us to market. Even the smallest calf like Antonio Paciencia must be fattened for the better price he will fetch!"

At daybreak on January 28, 1856, when the bell rang and overseers hollered for all to rise, the slaves knew that the days of fattening were over.

At roll call the previous evening, Rabelo had announced that the first group of fazendeiros were coming to make their selection. Rabelo exhorted the slaves to do their utmost to gain acceptance by the senhores: "You'll be inspected. Stand straight; keep your eyes bright and lively. You'll be asked questions. Answer immediately -- no lies, only the truth."

Patient Anthony got up off the straw mat where he slept. He walked behind Policarpo as the slaves filed out of the dormitory and streamed toward an open cooking area with cauldrons of porridge and weak coffee.

After the meal, the slaves were separated into batches: those in prime condition, who were to be sold individually; a mix of the strong and the weak, to be offered in lots; thirty-eight women and girls to one side. The molequesI -- little black boys -- and three mulatto children, Patient Anthony among them, were kept separately.

By ten o'clock, Saturnino Rabelo was conducting prospective buyers on an inspection of slaves whose upper torsos gleamed in the sunlight. A glossy, healthy sheen obtained as the result of Rabelo's longstanding instructions that prior to auction, the skin of pecas ("pieces") be rubbed with pan grease.

Rabelo was particularly attentive to one fazendeiro, who was seeking no fewer than thirty purchases, and whom he knew to have the means for this enormous investment.

"Not a raw peca among them; each one broken in by his owner in the north. Not one with less than five years' service.

"I suppose the Englishmen must be thanked for this," Rabelo said to the fazendeiro. "Without them, there would've been no need to drive the slave herd from the north. But damn them anyway! I was a wealthy man, senhor. British cruisers took my ship in the bay of Porto Seguro -- my ship and eight hundred slaves! I ask you, Your Honor, was that not plain theft? Was it not an invasion of Brazil's waters?"

Since 1819, the British antislavery movement had been agitating for an end to the slave traffic between Africa and Brazil. An abolition law providing stiff penalties for importing blacks, confiscation of slavers' ships, and liberation of captives had been passed in 1831. During the next twenty years, despite the law and patrols by British cruisers, 600,000 Africans had been landed in Brazil.

In the three centuries since Nicolau Cavalcanti, the founder of Engenho Santo Tomas, had stood on the beach at Recife to greet the arrival of the first sixty slaves shipped from Mpinda at the mouth of the Congo, 3,650,000 blacks had been transported to Brazil, almost ten times the number that reached English America.

"Eight hundred pecas, senhor," Saturnino Rabelo continued to complain. "I was locked up for a year and fined -- it's been five years and I still owe others for loans to pay those fines."

"Some fine-looking blacks here, Saturnino Rabelo," the fazendeiro said, observing the group with Policarpo. "You chose well."

"Thank you, Your Honor. I never buy one I haven't personally inspected. Their owners will do anything to hide their vices and defects. And the cost? Each journey I make, they ask for more money."

The ban on the slave trade between Africa and Brazil had come at a time when the coffee growers' demand for labor was never greater. Thus this new trafficwithin Brazil, as barbarous as the African trade had been but sanctioned by the imperial government.

The fazendeiro to whom Saturnino Rabelo addressed his remarks was in his late sixties, a man of medium height and dignified bearing, who, despite the heat, wore a frock coat of English broadcloth, black trousers, and a high black silk hat that made him seem taller than he was. His upright carriage was helped by a corset, which, though now out of fashion, the fazendeiro continued to use suffering the discomfort of tight stays rather than reveal a spreading paunch. He'd deep-set eyes, gray-green and flinty, and a broad forehead. His full mustache and whiskers were white and perfectly groomed. He carried a light cane, and about his neck he wore a gold chain reaching to a heavy watch fob in his waistcoat pocket. A sweet and powerful perfume didn't quite mask the unpleasant odor from a body encased in apparel more suited to northern climes.

Walking just behind the fazendeiro was a pale, slender youth, the fazendeiro's grandson. The young man was dressed in similar fashion with frock coat and black hat. He'd the same gray-green eyes, with a brightness that contrasted strikingly with his earnest countenance.

The fazendeiro carrying himself with all the dignity of an English country gentleman was Ulisses Tavares da Silva, the son of Silvestre Pires da Silva, who'd been the first to break from the nomadic ways of his ancestors and from the daring canoe convoys of his own father, Benedito Bueno, grand admiral of the seasonal monsoons. Silvestre had turned his back on the mighty rivers to devote himself to his nine children and the raising of sugarcane at Itatinga, there within a great bend of the Rio Tiete, 125 miles northwest of Sao Paulo.

In the mid-1830s, fazendeiros above the Rio Tiete had begun to grow coffee. A decade later, Ulisses Tavares came to the realization that the rolling hills behind the riverine headland at Itatinga were rich in terra roxa, the purple earth, ideal for coffee. By 1855, the fazendeiro was working 112 slaves at Itatinga and had planted 300,000 coffee bushes on one thousand acres of land.

On January 10, 1853, Dom Pedro Segundo, in recognition of the fazendeiro's services to the empire, made Ulisses Tavares a baron, with his title derived from the great lands he owned: Barao de Itatinga.

Accompanied by his favorite grandson, Firmino Dantas da Silva, the baron strode slowly among the slaves at the barracks of Saturnino Rabelo this January morning. He halted to single out one with his cane, quickly bringing the individual to his feet.

"What is your name?"

"Policarpo, senhor."

"Where do you come from?"

"Mozambique, Master."

Saturnino Rabelo interjected: "In my fields, Your Honor -- a strong and uncomplaining worker." There was a belief that blacks from Mozambique and Angola were natural enemies of labor, as opposed to slaves from the Gold Coast, who'd a reputation for diligence.

"Do you want to work for me, Policarpo Mossambe?"

"Yes, senhor. I will work." Policarpo's head was bowed.

"Docile, Barao," Rabelo suggested. "The Pernambucano who owned him was a thorn in the side of slaves, a man not to be disobeyed."

"Nor I, Senhor Rabelo." Ulisses Tavares jabbed the air with his cane.

"Turn around," he told Policarpo, and pointed to scars on the slave's back. "Docile?"

"The Pernambucano wasn't a patient man. His overseers saw the chicote as the only means of teaching right from wrong."

"Did this Mossambe learn?"

"I believe he did."

"How would you know, Rabelo?"

"Policarpo gave no trouble on the journey. When he was rested, I put him in my canefields. A good worker, Your Honor."

Ulisses Tavares's brow contracted. "Why did they beat you, Policarpo Mossambe?"

"It was necessary to learn, Master." Policarpo knew well enough not to challenge the reasons for his lashings.

"You learned obedience and respect?"

"Yes, senhor . . . I learned."

"I hope so, Policarpo Mossambe." And, to Rabelo: "I'll buy this Mossambe."

"Yes, Your Honor!"

"Jesus Christ be praised!" Policarpo intoned.

An illegal import to Brazil, Policarpo bore no royal brand on his breast, but a traveling padre had baptized him at the fazenda of Pascoal Sampiao. Not once had Policarpo been inside a church, and the mysteries of the faith were unknown to him, but he'd learned that such statements pleased masters.

"Praise Him," Ulisses Tavares responded just above a whisper.

Patient Anthony sat with the moleques and the two other mulatto boys. He'd seen Policarpo taken from the main group and had kept his eyes on Policarpo's new owner, hoping that the fazendeiro would come to him.

But the White Beard hadn't done so and sitting there in the hot sun, realizing that Policarpo would soon leave him, Patient Anthony felt again the misery of parting such as he'd known that day at Fazenda da Jurema.

End of Part 3 of 4

Patient Anthony: A Brazilian Boy's Walk to Slavery (Part 4)