#1

Jan 25, 2009


It is easy to love the territory known as Recôncavo from Bahia, where the sun shines and the landscapes are always green. During XVII and XVIII centuries this region took an important role in world economy as high quality sugar producer. When europeans arrived, around XVI century, they had already been living in a sort of capitalism for some time. To find a paradisiacal continent must have been great, especially if it could be possible making some profits with it. And it was. 


Salvador city is situated in a peninsula that draws a bay with the continent. This bay is called Baía de Todos os Santos (Bay of All Saints). In there took place the administrative power from colony. On the bay's country side travellers would find lots of sugar cane plantations and a beautiful tropical forest. Weather and soil were good to sugar culture and, while those men didn’t find something rarer or more rentable to dedicate their energies, they should make fortunes over this place.

Nature is always present in this region, especially through foreign people eyes. At sunrise the weather is just fine. The sky turns bright and blue; a huge variety of vegetal starts to be seen, each one with its own peculiar tone of green; and we all enjoy the delightful and inoffensive morning sunrays. It’s nice to walk next to the rivers Paraguaçu or Jaguaripe at this moment. The sunrays spread the nighty hazes and we feel that day rise clean and immaculate.
A movement of life starts over these little cities around the bay. People must wake up early and do their duties soon, because it is not good to be outside between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. All over the rural areas farmers, who work for their own subsistence, organize fruits and vegetables to sell on small town's free-fairs. Each day in week it happens on a different town. 

At afternoons, when the sun burns, nature shows us how nasty it can be. Everything is quiet, streets are empty and shadows are rare. People avoid to walk outside. Women commonly use umbrellas to protect their skin and little towels to dry the inevitable sweat. Light in excess starts to hurt our eyes. Don´t you ever forget your sunglasses. Besides that, landscapes are green all the year.

While sun keeps his way to the west, people get outside their houses and start to talk about everything, enjoying the breeze and watching girls becoming women and boys making themselves men. In rural zones, nights are highly illuminated when the moon appears, and very dark when it doesn’t. Before electricity recôncavo’s nights must have been full of dangerous and adventures. How many conspiracies have been planned? How many histories, how many heroes and lovers, and how many dangerous curses have been said? Witchcrafts! Lots of amazings witchcrafts.

People who first arrived in this new world, both africans and europeans, had to face the weather issues, and had to learn efficient mechanisms to make life works here. Sure there were frequently contacts with native people, who shared their survival knowledge with foreigners. Unfortunately, christian's faith did not accept living together with other traditions, and it must have seemed impossible for those Tupi nation’s communities to keep their political and cultural autonomy among civilizables.

To keep the local economy moving, sugar-engine owners were always in need of workers. To satisfy this demand they started close relations with some african nations that used to conquer 

villages and make slaves.Lots of people were commercialised in change of tobacco those days. The arrival of different ethnic groups from African continent, allied with the dominant Iberia culture and native knowledge, gave origin to a brand-new culture. Recôncavo’s territory has watched the meeting of a bunch of different ways of life, a bunch of peculiar approaches to existence. They all had to learn how to live together.

That’s what I intend to post in this blog. Pieces of this culture displayed in videos, photos and words.  I know that my english is far away from perfection, but whatever, I think that I can be understandable. 

My desire is to talk with people from world, so I must use english... even a full of mistakes one! And you don't need to have a perfect english to comment, of course. 

0 comments:

  © Blogger templates Newspaper by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP