Brazilian Terms
Alagôano: native of Alagôas. Native of Amazonas State, amazonense. Native of Bahia, bahiano; of Ceará, cearense; of Espirito Santo, espirito-saniense; of Goyaz, goyano; of Maranhão, maranhense; of Matto Grosso, matto-grossense; of Minas Geraes, mineiro; of Pará, paraense; of Paraná, paranaense; of Piauhy, piauhyense; of Parahyba, parahybano; of Pernambuco, pernambucano; of São Paulo, paulista; of Santa Catharina, catharinense; of Rio Grande do Norte and Rio Grande do Sul, riograndense do norte, or riograndense do sul; of Sergipe, sergipano. A native of the north is a nortista; of the south, a sulista; of Brazil, in general, brasileiro.
Aviador: properly, aviator, but has special meaning on the Amazon; is applied to the dealer who supplies the seringaes with outfit and food for the season, and who purchases the rubber crop. The aviado is the customer of the aviador.
Bateia: bowl for washing out placer gold.
Borracha: any kind of rubber in Brazilian; the term goma is also sometimes used, but applied only to latex of hevea brasiliensis.
Braços: lit. “arms,” that is, labourers; hands.
Cabotagem: Brazilian navigation, whether coastal or riverine.
Caipira: countryman from the south—“hayseed.” The equivalent type from the north is a matuto.
Capoeira: second growth of vegetation after land has been cleared. Also applied to kind of basket made of native grass; also to the Brazilian equivalent to jiu-jit-su; genuine capoeira adepts have remarkable muscular control. The term capoeira is also applied to a certain dance.
Capim: grass (plural, capins) of different kinds, as capim gordura, capim panasco, capim sertão, etc.
Carioca: native of Rio de Janeiro City—from the Carioca fountain, once fashionable centre of city.
Carreiro: by-path of the interior.
Colono: labourer imported, whether from another country or a sister State.
Conto: (of reis); one thousand milreis, or 1,000,000 reis. In paper, worth normally over £66, but since European War value fluctuates about £50, or say $250.
Engenho: sugar mill.
Estrada de Ferro: railroad; Rede ferroviario, railway system, lit. “net” of railways.
Fazenda: in South, any farm or estate of coffee, cacao, cattle, etc.; in north more exclusively applied to cattle farm. Fazendeiro, farmer or estate owner.
Fallencia: failure, bankruptcy.
Farinha: flour. — de mandioca, of two kinds “white” and “yellow,” made from root of one of the Euphorbias.
Feijão: beans, red, black or white, universal Brazilian food; feijoada, special dish made with beans, dried meat, pepper, mandioca flour, etc.
Flagellados: lit. “the scourged,” applied to people from the northern drought districts.
Fluminense: native of Rio de Janeiro State, from Lat. flumen, river; Portuguese discoverers thought Rio Bay mouth of a river, and so named it “River of January.” There is no river, but the name remains, and the fluminenses are proud to call themselves “river folk.”
Frigorifico: cold storage, properly; applied to packing-houses also.
Gaiola: properly, cage; also applied to small open boats traversing Amazonian fluvial network.
Garimpeiros: diamond hunters of Brazilian interior.
Herva: lit. herb: applied to the leaf of ilex paraguayensis, known in Brazil as herva matte and in Spanish America as yerba maté. Herval, forest of trees from which leaf is obtained: pl. hervaes.
Matadouro: slaughterhouse.
Matto: wild Brazilian woodland: matteiro, expert forester.
Modinha: Brazilian folk-song: term fado also used.
Parecer: lit. opinion; generally applied to views given upon public matters by eminent men.
Paroara: person going from another district to work in the Amazon rubber country.
Pauta: rate of export tax; changed frequently in response to international market prices for such Braz. goods as cacao, rubber, tobacco, sugar, etc.
Patrão: owner or manager of estate or business.
Pelle: ball of rubber made by seringueiros.
Praieiro: one who lives by the praia, or shore.
Rebanho: stock of animals, herd or flock.
Regatão: row-boats of petty traders upon Amazonian waterways.
Resaca: violent wave-movement, often seen in Rio and Recife, when a receding meets an oncoming wave and water is thrown up; resacas along the Rio sea-front often throw spray sixty feet into the air.
Romaria: pilgrimage made by religious-minded to the places where there are churches containing images of special devotion.
Safra: time of harvest; the crop yield is the colheita.
Seringa: gum of hevea brasiliensis; seringueira, rubber tree; seringueiro, man who collects rubber; seringal, rubber district in forest—pl. seringaes.
Serra: mountain range; serro, small hill. (Montanha, mountain.)
Sertão: Brazilian interior; pl. sertões. Sertanejo, sertanista, one who dwells in the sertão.
Tropa: troop—generally of mules, used for cargo carrying in interior of central and northern states; term also used in original sense of military regiment or battalion; tropeiro, the conductor of a troop of cargo mules or other animals.
Vaqueiro: (from vaca, cow)—employee specially employed upon stock-breeding estates. Compare with gaucho, the cowboy of the South.
Notes
1. Martim Affonso’s capitania, then the most southern part of Portuguese territory, had one hundred leagues of coastline, with headquarters at S. Vicente; next came Santo Amaro (Itamaracá) and Parahyba do Sul (present Rio de Janeiro State); Espirito Santo; Porto Seguro; Ilhéos, stretching up to the south of the Bahia; Bahia itself, running from the Bay to the mouth of the S. Francisco river; Pernambuco; Maranhão, divided into 3 captaincies of which two, totalling 150 leagues, went to João de Barros, the third, of 75 leagues, to Fernão Alvares de Andrade; most northerly came Ceará.
2. Calculation of the Brazilian historian Theodoro Sampaio.
3. Brazilian historians differ as to dates, but Southey says that the first discovery of gold in Matto Grosso was made in 1734 by Antonio Fernandez de Abreu.
4. Portugal swallowed her loss without much protest, there was no serious excitement in Brazil, and the Portuguese troops stationed in Brazil were shipped home without violence from more than one district.
5. Bought by the Rio Jornal do Commercio company at end of 1916 and now published as the Jornal do Commercio de São Paulo.
6. There is another railroad running off from Santos. It does not attempt the Serra, but follows the flat coast to Itanhaen port, and then turns a few miles inland, passing Prainha, until junction is effected with the Iguape river. Boats sail down from this point to Iguape port, notable as the scene of settlement of Japanese rice growers a few years ago.
7. The Continental Products Company: capital and personnel came from the Sulzberger house in Chicago.
8. Message of Dr. Altino Arantes to the S. Paulo Legislature, July 14, 1916:
“Foreign capital flowed here in search of convenient employment, but, instead of being destined to new enterprises in the development of the great latent wealth of our State, it was localized in railways already prosperous, whose income and control are by way of being totally alienated, with grave prejudice and serious threats to the future of our State....
“It would be, in truth, blamable want of foresight to allow what is our own to pass to strange hands, when we created it at the cost of our best efforts, constituting thus the most worthy exemplification of our industry and our energy.”
9. Government: South of Pernambuco, Pernambuco Central, Paulo Affonso.
English: Conde d’Eu, Recife and São Francisco, Central Alagôas, Natal and Nova Cruz. The Conde d’Eu dated from 1857.
10. For details of extreme interest in this connection, see A Madeira-Mamoré by Julio Nogueira, printed by the Jornal do Commercio press of Rio in 1913, and A Crise da Borracha, by Eloy de Souza, printed by the Imprensa Nacional, Rio, in 1915.
11. 32 to 36 milreis for the first year and 40 afterwards, for Type Seven beans.
12. Alqueire = 40 litres: Farinha = flour (of mandioca).
13. Professor Green says that he found one of these tree cottons in Rio Grande do Norte, of the Mocó variety, sixteen years old and still yielding beautiful cotton.
14. In 1915 Brazil imported 805,000 barrels of American flour, 56% of the total and 605,000 barrels from the Argentine, or 41%, the remaining 4% coming from Uruguay; at the same time she imported 14,000,000 bushels of wheat, of which nearly 12,000,000 came from Argentina and about 2,000,000 from the United States. This wheat, at five bushels to the barrel, made another 2,750,000 barrels of flour, and the total Brazilian consumption may be reckoned at about 4,200,000 barrels of wheat-flour of foreign, plus 407,000 of native, origin. The c. i. f. price of United States flour in Brazil in 1915 averaged $7.49 a barrel, while Argentine was able to deliver hers, c. i. f., for $5.28.
15. Dr. Costa Pinto reckons over 58,500 tons; he counts 49,648 looms and 1,464,218 spindles, each spindle taking 40 kilos of cotton annually.
16. Bertholettia excelsa.
17. Refusal to accept its own paper would of course have had the immediate effect of dangerously depressing all Government issues.
18. There are in existence small copper coins, relics of the day long past when less than a hundred reis would buy something, but they are not in circulation because they have no purchasing power. The post office sometimes presents them as change for some fraction of 100 reis, and the recipient usually puts them into the hand of the first mendicante encountered outside.
19. Since 1916 half a dozen Federal or State loans have been made to Brazil, successfully floated by New York financial houses.
20. Brazil Railways securities are listed in dollars because the company which bought up or leased a number of European-constructed enterprises, was, although financed entirely with French, Belgian and British money, registered in the State of Maine.
21. Five years.
Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.