Perspectives on Landscape Change in Brazil Author(s): Roberta M. Delson and John P.

Dickenson Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (May, 1984), pp. 101-125 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/157289 Accessed: 27/10/2010 13:03
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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. I6,

10I-I25

Printed in Great Britain

IOI

Perspectives on Landscape Change in Brazil

by ROBERTA M. DELSON and JOHN P. DICKENSON

The country is so well-favoured that if it were rightly cultivated it would yield everything. (Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha, I May 15oo.) It is a vast region with favoured terrain. On its soil grow all fruits; in its subsoil exist all treasures...Its fields give the most useful food; its mines the finest gold...It is an admirable country, rich in every respect, where prodigiously profuse nature sacrifices herself in fertile produce for the opulence of the monarchy and the benefit of the world. (J. da Rocha Pitta, 1724.) For love of an insignificant profit the population destroys one of the greatest resources that could assure its subsistence and the well being of its children, as well as the good fortune of coming generations. (J. Martins da Silva Coutinho, i 868.) There is such a want of neatness and order, such an appearance of neglect and decay, such evidences of apathy and indolence. (A. R. Wallace, 1889.) Immense areas are being destroyed for pasturage and colonization schemes. These areas are being transformed into deserts, because there is no precise knowledge of what to plant and what is best for the soil. (R. Burle Marx, I973.)1 Observations such as these reflect a long-standing and widely held view that the process of settlement and development of Brazil has been characterized by the destructive exploitation of land and resources. While it cannot be denied that such deleterious practices have operated over the five centuries since the arrival of the Portuguese, it is the purpose of this paper to argue that the cultural landscapes which have evolved are not merely the products of such negative processes, but are at least in part the consequences of deliberate strategies by central authorities seeking to shape the path of development. This interpretation allows the identification of three broad strands in
1 Sourcesof quotationsareas follows. Letterof Pero Vaz de CaminhaI 5oo, E. B. Burns, A documentary historyof Brazil (New York, Knopf, 1966), p. 28; J. da Rocha Pitta, ibid. p. I67; A. R. Wallace, A narrativeof travels on the Amagon and Rio Negro (New York, Dover, 1972) p. 5; R. Burle Marx quoted in S. H. Davis, Victims of the Miracle (London, Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 147.

o02

Roberta M. Delson and John P. Dickenson

the creation of the man-made landscape. These are, first, the landscapes produced by the processes regarded as most typical of Brazil's experience, in which man has operated upon the natural landscape in an uncontrolled and often destructive way. These may be described as 'spontaneous' landscapes. Secondly, there are landscapes produced and often deliberately designed by the policies of government to promote social and economic advance. These we have identified as 'controlled' landscapes. Finally, there are landscapes which have emerged as indirect (and perhaps unanticipated) consequences of centralized decision-making; these may be termed landscapes of' compromise'. Such a threefold distinction may be translated into a simple model with both spatial and temporal implications (Fig. i a and b).
(a)

* X O/ _ X, +- - //ly
/f///,"''
',

of Landscape control of J /. Landscape compromise Spontaneouslandscape

//'//^ /y///,~~
.?:

5t
-,'C

Natural landscape
Linesof penetration

(b) <----Space

U
e\^

Control

Z Compromise
/v

Z :[

Spontaneous

Fig. i. (a) Diagram of landscape elements. (b) Diagram of temporal-spatial landscape change.

Landscape Change in Brazil

0o3

Although estimates of the vegetation cover and its alteration are still in the formulative stage, we can derive some picture of the habitat encountered by the first European visitors from reports of Portuguese sailors and others who explored the Brazilian coast. We know that the initial Portuguese contact with Brazil occurred in the year 15oo, when Pedro Alvarez Cabral was blown off course on his way to Portuguese possessions in India. Whether intentional or not, Cabral's venture brought the Portuguese to Brazil, where they were suitably impressed by the landscape, bestowing upon it such lofty epithets as 'terrestrial paradise'.2 Others proclaimed that 'There is no healthier place in the world; fresh
air, pleasant countryside... delicious water'.3 If we take the year
I

500 as

a baseline for examining changes of the landscape, then we can apply our three-strand analysis to modifications which have taken place since that point. Within a few years of the discovery, the abundant praise gave way to sober calculations of how the new land might be made profitable to the Crown. A dichotomy arose between those predisposed toward quick, speculative gain and those who advocated a more rational settlement, carefully analysing existing resources. The former faction held sway at first, as the Crown awarded contracts to individuals willing to travel to Brazil and invest in lumbering in the thickly treed coastal forest. By far the most echinata pau brasil, a dyewood from or profitable tree to cut was Cesaelpinia which the name of the country is derived. This tree represented the first extractive basis upon which the Brazilian economy was anchored, and its marketing set in motion a pattern of production for exportation which has only been effectively challenged since the late nineteenth century. How great an impact did the lumbering of pau brasil and other trees for commercial purposes have on the coastal forest? Contrary to received wisdom, Brazilian dyewood was not completely destroyed in the sixteenth century. While it is true that the tree was not allowed to regenerate, and that its roots were also sold for profit, the fact that it grew independently, rather than in stands, probably prevented its extinction.4 Indeed, careful
This was the opinion of Cabral's scribe, Pero Vaz de Caminha, as cited in E. Bradford Burns, Nationalism in Brazil: A Historical Survey(New York, Praeger, I968), p. I2. 3 From an early Jesuit letter, cited in Burns, op. cit, p. 13. 4 Alceo Magnanani et al. Atlas de elementosambientais do Estado do Rio Ambiental II (Fortaleza/Rio de Janeiro, FEEMA, I98I), p. 2. That many other trees were cut for commercial purposes is confirmed in Helio de Almeida Brum, 'A Madeira no Brasil - Esboco Hist6rico Geogrifico e Economico', Carta Mensal, Ano xxvii, no. 3 (Junho, 1981), pp. 4-5. This paper suggests that lumbering provided the material for fuel for mills, for boxes of sugar and for construction of buildings.
2

104

Roberta M. Delson and John P. Dickenson

reading of the records suggests that the tree still had commercial importance in the early nineteenth century and was only phased out with the appearance of synthetic dyes. This was probably true of other commercially cut trees; we know that in the early nineteenth century the economist Azeredo Coutinho called for the establishment of a ship-building industry in Brazil, utilizing existing timber sources.5 Moreover, it would be impossible to explain the creation of a special bureau in Alagoas in I 809 for the conservation of the littoral forest if, in fact, the coastal forest had been completely eliminated.6 On a broad scale the natural environment in which change has taken place presents an apparently simple pattern. Much of the land consists of geologically ancient rocks forming the Brazil and Guyana shields, separated by the more recent depositional materials of the Amazon basin. The topography is relatively gentle, with extensive areas of upland plateaux at
between
200

and 800 metres. Most of the high land (up to 1200 metres)

is in the southeast and south, with the plateaux of limited relief sloping away towards the Amazon, and a more abrupt edge, sometimes consisting of a single scarp, towards the Atlantic, with only a narrow coastal plain. All of the country except the far south is subject to some form of tropical climate. The general pattern of vegetation shows some broad contrasts between the dense tropical forests of Amazonia, the coast and the tropical uplands, and the more open scrub and grassland vegetation of the interior Northeast and the Centre-West. In the sub-tropics there is a contrast between the Parana pine forests and the open grasslands of the campos. While it is difficult to assess the pre-Portuguese landscape with any degree of accuracy because of the lack of written accounts, it is unlikely that the natural landscape was much modified by the Amerindian population, which was limited both in numbers and in civilization, consisting of small groups of hunter-gatherers and simple cultivators. Much of the landscape change is, therefore, the product of the past five centuries, and its evolution can be most conveniently studied in chronological sequence. Extensive clearance of the coastal forest was a consequence of the influence of the faction which favoured a more rational development of Brazil. In order to initiate settlement, land was given in large tracts
5

J. J. da Cunha Azeredo Coutinho, Obras Economicas(I794-I804), reprinted in Roteiro do Brasil, vol. i (Sao Paulo, Companhia Editora Nacional, I966). In his writings, Coutinho argues for the creation of a shipbuilding industry in Brazil, utilizing local timber sources, which he suggests will endure for years, and prevent the unnecessary continual cutting of the forest (see p. I3 ). The creation of this bureau is discussed in M. V. G. Fraga, 'A Questao florestal ao tempo do Brasil-colonia', Anudrio Brasileiro EconomicoFlorestal, no. 3(3), pp. 7-96.

LandscapeChangein Brazil

105

(capitanias)to members of the gentry and lesser nobility of Portugal to develop. Each of the initial land recipients (donatarios)pledged fealty to the Crown and in return was given almost exclusive rights over a parcel of land defined neither by clear geographical nor physical markers. Much as the Crown would have preferred to colonize Brazil directly in these early stages, energies were required for the more obviously profitable portions to of the realm (Africa and Asia), leaving the Brazilian donatarios their own devices. The only restriction regarding the landscape which the government saw fit to insist upon in signed legislation was the stipulation that between chartered towns (by definition having over fifty hearths or families) at least six leagues of land (three leagues boundary around each village) be maintained. Presumably, this was to avoid future territorial disputes as the communities grew; it had the effect of stipulating precocious green belts for nascent urban centres.7 Otherwise, the donatario was free to cut down the forest, burn ground cover and practice agriculture as he saw fit. To the extent that no specific form for communities, nor legislation on the shape and size of plantations was decreed, the donatario system fell short of mandating controlled landscapes. We may summarize the first fifty years of Portuguese experience in shaping a new landscape in Brazil as a compromise, in respect to the donatario system, and spontaneous, in regard to the lumbering aspect. But by I 549 the government changed its policy and, in acquiring the Bahia captaincy for a royal possession, began the process of establishing direct colonial control. The first step toward stabilizing royal authority consisted of the creation of a capital city perched on the bluffs above the harbor at Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos. Salvador has been described by some art historians as replicating the medieval landscape of Portugal ;8 the town, precariously built on the heights and surrounded by fortifications, does indeed resemble medieval castrum towns. On the other hand the internal organization (a far-flung orthogonal network) suggests an awareness of Renaissance concepts, resembling ideal drawing-board cities of the sixteenth century.9
7

The forias (charters)given to the donatarios considered in R. M. Delson, 'Town was Planning in Colonial Brazil' (Ph.D. dissertation,Ann Arbor, University Microfilms,
I975), p. 65.

Cf. Delson, op. cit. and R. C. Smith, 'Colonial Towns of Spanish and Portuguese
America', Journal of the Societyof Architectural Historians, vol. xiv, no. 4 (1956), p. 7.

9 Indeed, the Portuguese had already constructed some 'drawingboardcities' in the easternportion of the realm (for example, Damao in India). See Mario T. Chico, 'A "Cidade Ideal" do Renascimentoe as cidades portugues as da India', Revista Junta da
das Missoes Geograficas das Investigafoes Ultramar, Numero Especial (i956), pp. 32 -8. e do

Io6

Roberta M. Delson and John P. Dickenson

From Salvador, settlers spread out to the rich soils of the surrounding bay region. Here sugar was planted by the recipients of government sesmarias(large land grants). But even the presence of latifundia did not automatically mean that the entire acreage would be deforested, burnt and planted in sugar. Total coverage would have been impossible given the current agricultural practices and the primitive condition of the infrastructure. Thus, even in the large landed estates, land was left fallow, given to smaller contract employees, or devoted to pasturing and the production of some limited kitchen crops.10 But if the external development of the plantation system was spontaneous, the internal organization of building elements gave a certain uniformity to the landscape of the sugar zone. These elements included the usina (or the plantation owner's residence, the so-called casa-grande, refining mill), the press, the slave quarters (sen.ala), and a tower or defense works (at least in the first century of Portuguese occupation).1l These architectonic elements were frequently arranged in linear fashion, suggesting, from the horizon, a vast agricultural complex. The zona da mata, the area where sugar was initially grown and produced, was then both spontaneously and uniformly transformed into a cultivated landscape. The repetition of forms was so commonplace that we can characterize this landscape as compromised, i.e. having indirectly responded to centralized decision-making. Two other types of general landscapes evolved in the first two centuries of Portuguese occupation. While at first colonization was restricted to the littoral, secondary landscapes were created above the coastal escarpment
10 The destructionof the forest of the Northeast to accomodatethe advanceof sugar is

discussedin Helmut Sick e Dante MartinsTeixeira,'Notas sobre aves brasileiras raras ou ameacadasde extincao', in PublicaoesAvulsasdo MuseuNacional,no. 62 (1979), p. 4. For referenceson the continuingdestructionof the forest in the Northeast,see Scott A. Mori and Brian M. Boom, 'Botanical Survey of the EndangeredMoist Forests of EasternBrasil' (New York, New York BotanicalGarden, 1981). Notwithstandingthe advanceof sugar and other cultivation, Mori and Boom find (pl. 53) that in southern Bahiaand north of Salvadorthereare still some significantforest remnants(as of I980). Face of NortheastBrazil (New York, According to Kempton Webb, The Changing
Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 2z, the changes which have occurred in the forest

cover of the regionareprimarily nineteenth-century late phenomena.In his evolutionary landscapetimeline, Webb suggests that in the baseline 1700 'much original forest remains'with most sugar cultivation centeredin the valleys. Not until the end of the last centurydid cane push out to 'bottom lands and adjacentlower slopes'. 11 The role of the tower in early Northeasternsugar plantationsis outlined in Francisco
Ruas Santos, 'O Conceito de Torre e Casa Forte entre 1548-1648', Revista do Instituto Historico Geogrdfico Brasileiro, Vol. 323 (Abril-Junho 1979), pp. 30-7.

LandscapeChangein Brazil

I07

on the interior plateau. At several places along the coast the plateau breaks abruptly, falling precipitously to the coastal plain. The sixteenth-century Portuguese occupants congregated on the flat littoral; by the seventeenth century, however, the Crown mandated expansion, ruling that livestock raising, which competed for space with sugar, must be conducted away from settlements.12 This automatically meant that the land behind the coastal plain would now be used by cattle drives. In the areas of caatinga scrub there now appeared small arraiai, literally campsites, often defined solely by the presence of a supply goods shack. While the arraia gradually came to be developed into a small community outright (especially as the interior treks attracted permanent settlers), these small nodes lacked any form other than that dictated by the cattle-raising function. The total impact on the landscape of the sertdowas minimal through the seventeenth century, and spontaneous according to our definition. The same assessment may be made of the mining camps which proliferated in the highlands during the seventeenth century. While some of these camps would serve as springboards for urbanization in the 700s, initially they were scarcely more than spontaneously generated residual nodes for explorers and hangers-on, the people whom the Portuguese unflatteringly considered the flotsam and jetsam of the backlands. To the extent that these sites obeyed neither external planning nor any internal guideline other than roughly following topography,13 they qualify as spontaneous in our scheme. This would soon be altered in the following century. If the first century of Portuguese occupation saw compromised landscapes, and the seventeenth, largely spontaneous settlements created out of the push westward, then the eighteenth century marks, for the first time, a critical attempt to come to grips with the interior and to pattern it according to preconceived, rational design. There is both a practical and a theoretical side of this plan to consider here. In the first instance, the discovery of gold in the highlands of Minas Gerais in the I69os precipitated a gold rush, causing an avalanche of miners to pour into virtually uncharted territory. To allow unsupervised exploitation in this
12

13

See Caio Prado, Jr, The Colonial Background Modern Brazil (trans. Suzette Macedo, of Berkeley, University of California, I967), p. 2z6. The hamlet of Sumidouro in Minas Gerais was an excellent example of a dispersed prospector camp. For a description of this camp see R. M. Delson, 'New Towns for Colonial Brazil: Spatial and Social Planning of the I8th Century' (hereafter referred to as New Towns), vol. ii, Department of Geography, Syracuse University, Dellplain Latin American Studies (Ann Arbor, University Microfilms, 1979), pp. 47-8.

io8

Roberta M. Delson and John P. Dickenson

potentially lucrative region was threatening to the colonial economy, now sorely beleaguered by the loss of a world sugar monopoly with the entrance of Caribbean competitors. Thus a master scheme for opening the interior under government supervision was dictated on purely pragmatic grounds. But theory echoed practicality; the eighteenth-century European statesman was predisposed to regularity or order as being synonymous with 'good government'.14 Progress (a condition thought the exclusive privilege of the European) meant to the Portuguese (and their contemporaries) regulation of life and style. The implications of this theoretical predilection and practical necessity for controlled development of the Brazilian interior were enormous. It meant that now the Crown would no longer tolerate random, spontaneous landscapes, or even compromised landscapes. Instead, the Portuguese envisioned a series of neatly aligned, standardized communities laid out orthogonally in the interior. At least fifty of these towns were actually built, not only in the mining region but in the Far West and along the Amazonian waterways. These towns were constructed as part of a larger scheme to bring law and order to the backlands. All along the Amazon-MadeiraGuapore river system, into the far south and even into Amapa, the Portuguese constructed communities where local Indians, vagabonds and settlers from overpopulated portions of the realm (such as the Atlantic islands) were congregated to form the core of urban centres. The end products of this master planning, namely the communities built under royal auspices, are strikingly symmetric and rectilinear. Nowhere is this linearity more apparent than in the images of riverine towns captured in the paintings of Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira.15 Proceeding up the Amazon from Belem, Ferreira chronicled the arrangement of the region's towns. Here houses were placed parallel to the river's edge, the angle from which the arriving visitor would catch a first glimpse of the community. The line of sight would be blocked by the first row of housing units and the perspective gained in this manner would suggest a community of great depth (although in reality there might not be more than one street of buildings). This arrangement suggested solidarity much in the manner that earlier sugar plantation compositions gave an impression of strength. The Crown purposely devised this arrangement, not only to indicate the extent
Montesquieu typifies the philosopher imbued in this viewpoint. The implications of 'good government' and eighteenth-century mores are considered in Eugen Weber, A to ModernHistory of Europe: Men, CulturesandSocietiesfromthe Renaissance the Present(New W. W. Norton and Company, I971), pp. 673-4. York, 15 Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, Viagem Filosoficapelas capitaniasdo Grdo Para, Rio Negro, Mato Grosso e Cuiabd, I783-I792. (Reprinted Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Federal de
14

Cultura, 1971).

LandscapeChangein Brazil

I09

of royal control to visitors from outside the region, but simultaneously to warn non-congregated Indians and others that regularity was the only pattern which the government would now accept.16 Thus, in small nodes, the Portuguese attempted to design the landscape systematically. Not content with architectonic control, they applied a standardized pattern to the embellishments of such towns, emphasizing the uniformity of building codes by planting symmetrically aligned avenues of trees. Formal gardens and rows of trees lining squared-off plazas symbolically suggested the authority of the Crown as much as the building composition itself. Similarly, the Portuguese sought to control the landscaping of gardens in the new communities. The senior officer of the Ilha de Marajo and the Tocantins, for example, instructed all community occupants under his control to plant their backyards with the following list of plants: 'two orange trees, one lemon tree, one pepper bush, two guavas, two cashew trees, two papayas and two coconut palms'.l7 This would assure each housing unit abundant fruit. Moreover, a birds' eye view of towns planted in this manner would certainly have yielded a repetition of greenery and shrubs, emphasizing the overall uniformity of the town. Evidence suggests that the momentum for controlled landscapes increased rather than decreased toward the end of the eighteenth century. For example, in the Pantanal region of Mato Grosso the Crown stipulated the creation of specific agricultural zones (for livestock, rice farming, etc.) to ensure productivity locally and avoid duplication. It was also during this period and extending into the early years of the nineteenth century that the Portuguese attempted forest conservation (as in the case of the Alagoas superintendency, begun to protect forests). In a similar vein, late eighteenth-century administrators of the mining town of Sabaraidecreed the necessity of planting trees along roadsides to check soil erosion and provide shade.18 This period also saw the creation of fantasy landscapes, especially botanical and public gardens created in the older coastal urban centres.19
16

See New Towns, chapters vi and vn. 17 This is reportedin Artur CesarFerreiraReis, 'Aspectos da Amazoniana sexta decada 18 Posturas da Camara Municipal de Sabard, Artigos 102 e so3 (n.d.) Reprinted in Augusto de Lima, As Primeiras vilas de Ouro (Belo Horizonte, 1962). 19 For example, the Horto Botanico de Belem (178 ), the Jardins Botanicos of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (created after 1808) and the Passeio Pdblico (Rio de Janeiro, c. 780). For a description of the latter see Jose Mariano, 0 Passeio Publico do Rio de Janeiro, i779-i783 (Rio de Janeiro, C. Mendes, Jr. 1903).

do seculo XVIII', Revista Servico Patrimonio do do Historico ArtisticoNacional, e vol. viii (I944), p. 68.

Roberta M. Delson andJohn P. Dickenson

Convinced both of the correctness of their aims and the efficacy of their methodology, the Portuguese proceeded with their regularizing plans despite what might seem to be insurmountable obstacles. Near present-day Manaus, for example, the community of Sao Jose do Rio Negro was constructed with as much formality as the topography allowed. The raison d'etre of this village was to serve as headquarters for a mixed border commission of Spanish and Portuguese officials who were headed to Brazil to demarcate the boundaries between their respective colonies. It was necessary, therefore, in the Portuguese view of things, to have the community appear as cultured as possible, given the Amazonian setting. Yet, in this watery environment, the town created in I750 was rapidly corroded by flooding and high humidity levels, and by the I76os almost all the original buildings had deteriorated. Undaunted, the Portuguese enjoined local administrators to reconstruct the township with even more regularity and care than in the original settlement. Apparently, the symbolic value of the Rio Negro community outweighed any costs
incurred.20

Ultimately, the Portuguese anticipated that with their regulated townships and delineated surroundings (in some areas a type of centuriation was tried) the local inhabitants might be induced to comport themselves with as much civility as possible. No matter that the community might be composed of what the Portuguese considered 'riff-raff', the overall impact of the landscape would belie the reality. In effect, the Portuguese of the eighteenth century engaged not only in landscape planning on the urban and rural level, but in what might be called 'social engineering' as well. The vehicle of direct royal control afforded the Crown a unique opportunity to combine stylistic preference with theoretical abstraction. Despite their monotonous aspect, these regulated townships and landscapes appealed to the Portuguese sense of practicality and aesthetics. The underlying moral assumptions girded the physical foundations of the contrived landscapes thus created. While the Crown was not entirely successful in regulating the development of the backlands, this master scheme, and the townships created under its auspices, clearly fall into the category of controlled landscapes. Those areas which did not receive official state planning developed in a more or less spontaneous manner. This was certainly true of the areas where mining was conducted in the Far West of Mato Grosso and Goias. But even in these cases, the Crown soon followed the initial strike and
20

Cf. New Towns, p. 94.

LandscapeChangein Brazil

11

quickly implemented regularity of both the claims and the general landscape (the case of Cuiaba being a good example).21 Overall, the preference was for regulated landscapes with rectilinear compositions. The prevalence of this type of thinking into the next century is ample testimony to the profound impact of these baroque landscapes. In the nineteenth century, however, control over the development of the landscape was difficult to maintain once the colony received its independence. Almost immediately after declaring its freedom from Portugal in I 822, the new nation considered the important question of land apportionment. A major concern was determining a standard by which the settlement of the interior might be governed. Equally significant was the creation of guidelines by which the already existing nuclei might accommodate a growing urban population.22 There can be no doubt that the government was not completely successful in its attempts; the rural landscapes created after independence typically fall into our compromised category, although urban landscapes were more controlled. The failure to oversee all interior development is related to the government's equivocal position on development. Ruled as a constitutional monarchy until i889, Brazil teetered between absolute authority and a mild laissez-faire attitude on development. Legislators in the newly created Assembly confronting the issue of land decided upon a course of abandonment of colonial norms. With a single legislative sweep the sesmarias of the colonial period were officially discredited, leaving landowners of enormous patrimonies without legal title. In effect, the rest of the century was a struggle to replace the sesmariaconcept with a more valid yardstick for land apportionment, and in essence the government lost. In retrospect, the struggle for control over the land was a double-edged sword, one which the often ineffectual imperial government stood to lose, no matter which course of action was decided upon. By I 828 the legislature had passed a Law of Municipal Ordinances23 which reinstated local municipalities with complete responsibility for their own development. Local townships were required not only to keep municipalities tidy and
21

22

Acting on a request from the town fathersof Cuiaba,the Lisbon Council ordered a do 2j realignmentfor the town of Cuiaba. Parecer Conselho, September 1z78, Arquivo HistoricoUltramarino 239. A 1777 map of the community (found in (Lisbon),Codice the Portuguesearchivesof the Casada Insua) confirmsthe changes. Law of I October i828, Colecfao as Leis do Brasil. The implications of this law are discussedin R. M. Delson, 'Land and Urban Planning: Aspects of Modernizationin
Early Nineteenth Century Brazil', Luso-Bra.ilian Review, vol. I6, no. 2, pp. See Delson, 'Land and Urban Planning...', p. 204.
I9I-214.

23

112

Roberta M. Delson andJohn P. Dickenson

healthful, but to oversee land usage and allotment and, by implication, to keep control over the landowners. Not surprisingly, the Ordinance instructed town governments to control urban growth by following uniform building standards of the baroque style. However, the political muscle required to enforce such standards and to keep control over the landlords was never given to municipal authorities. On the one hand, the townships were now re-cast in the mold of semi-autonomous bodies, responsible for internal upkeep and for land distribution locally. On the other hand, they could not enforce any restrictions they might want to impose on local landowners, because of lack of real power and funding.24 The result of this legislation was an impasse which lasted through mid-century. In 841 the legislature debated a measure which would have allowed local municipalities to collect property taxes from nearby landowners, thus providing revenue for beleaguered treasuries and exerting still further pressure on landowners to register titles.25 By these means, landscape changes would presumably have been closely monitored. However, the law did not pass; the mere necessity of conducting cadastral surveys of existing properties automatically put the proposal out of the range of most municipalities, all other considerations being equal. In the end, the landed vested interests (associated with the planters of coffee, sugar and cotton) defeated the measure. From this point, landowners sought to 'legitimize' their occupied properties by apportioning agriculturally undesirable land to peasants who were instructed to form a small township. Such small communities, dependent on the good nature of the patrdo for their existence, supposedly functioned as a parish, dedicated to the patron saint of the landowner. While in actuality a church might emerge on the landscape (otherwise distinguished only by a small group of buildings), the real purpose behind such patrimonioswas to form a bulwark against any official attempts to dispossess the landowner.26 Grateful small property recipients could be counted on as a core of loyal supporters should title questions have materialized. These landscapes, overall, may be termed spontaneous in our typology. Operating on just such real estate charades, the landscape of the Empire grew increasingly urban, notwithstanding the still overwhelming importance of agriculture in the economy. Ironically, even as Brazil grew yearly more involved in the world economic system as a supplier of raw
24 Ibid. pp. I94-5.
26

25 Ibid. p. 204.

The 'patrimonio'as a settlement form was first identified by the French geographer Pierre Deffontaines, in 'The Origins and Growth of the Brazilian Network of Towns', Review,vol. xxviii (July I938), pp. 340-91. Geographical

LandscapeChangein Brazil

I13

agricultural materials (cotton, coffee, sugar), her urban population kept growing.27 It was thus no coincidence that the preferred landscape of the i8oos was an urban one, denoting sophistication and awareness of European city norms. Not only did the eighteenth-century building codes inspire this imitation, but the escape in I 808 of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil (after the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal) heralded a new urban era. Rio de Janeiro became the official residence of royalty, as well as the colonial capital, and was suitably renovated to fulfill its exalted new position. To this end public parks were laid out (in the formal manner), paving and illumination proceeded apace, and the arrival of cultural missions (especially the French after the cessation of hostilities) meant, at least in the urban context, a concentrated effort to duplicate the trappings of European urbanism.28 Following on the heels of the transformation of Rio, scores of lesser Brazilian municipalities engaged the services of European engineers to re-design existing residential areas, or to lay out future zones to accommodate growing populations. Hiring such 'architects' as Vauthier of France and Bloem of Prussia provided the initial impetus. These new arrivals found themselves responsible for interpreting and applying the 1828 Law of Municipal Ordinances. Thus it was their models, derived from European cities,29 and not local ones which were superimposed on older urban patterns, or alternatively molded to fit as yet undeveloped real estate. Older cities, such as Rio de Janeiro, now sought to ease urban congestion by the opening of new suburbs, which by the nature of the interests which they served were more homogeneous and one-class than other Brazilian towns. Indeed, the new suburbs which emerged on the outskirts of major Brazilian urban complexes had a decidedly bourgeois middle-class orientation, although the fringes of such growth were often obscured in terms of physical stratification. Many landowners, as Gilberto Freyre has pointed out,30 sought to re-create the rural landscape in their town
27

28 29
30

For example, the population of Rio de Janeiro soared from 43,376 in 1799 to 81,1 58 in I856. Similar growth patterns are observed in other urban centres. These statistics are drawn from the chapter 'Brazil' in Richard E. Boyer and Keith A. Davies, Urbanizationin Igth CenturyLatin America: Statistics andSources(Los Angeles, University of California, Latin America Center, I973), pp. 11-29. For an overview of this formative stage see C. H. Haring, Empire in Bragil: New World Experiment with Monarchy(Boston, Harvard University Press, I95 8). The plans of these recruited engineers are considered in Delson, 'Land and Urban

Planning... '.

Gilberto Freyre, TheMansionsandtheShanties: TheMaking of ModernBrazil (trans. Harriet de Onis, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, i966), pp. 14I-3. The image of the city figures largely in the literary efforts of the last century, ranging from the portraits of the upper

II4

RobertaM. Delson andJohn P. Dickenson

residences; large gardens subdivided by various outbuildings housed not only the resident family but servants (often, as not, slaves) and retainers as well. Overall, the remodelling of nineteenth-century urban landscapes was a costly business. It was commonplace for the local government to be in arrears (indeed, even anticipate deficit spending) in order to meet the demands both of municipal legislation and of local citizens, who now equated city-scapes with modernization.31 The distinctively Brazilian forms of landscape which emerged in the nineteenth century were not, therefore, associated with the uban milieu. The evolving city-scapes belong to the controlled category in instances of direct planning and to the compromised category where suburban planning was left unsupervised, but officially sanctioned. It was the rural sector which provided the setting for more autochthonous forms. This was particularly the case with the coffee landscape, which evolved over the course of the century as a distinctive and local form. Unlike the urban patterns, the coffee plantations and their associated patrimoniosdeveloped out of economic and social considerations, rather than direct legislation. Placed in our spectrum, the coffee estate was a spontaneous landscape development, responding to market demand, sweeping across much of Southeast Brazil in less than one hundred years, and profoundly modifying its landscape. Coffee is probably the most notorious of the economic booms in Brazilian development and has been largely responsible for Brazil's image as a careless and destructive user of land. The advance of the 'green wave' across Rio de Janeiro, southern Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo is seen as responsible for the destruction of the forests, the erosion of the hillsides and the depletion of the soils, leaving behind a hollow frontier of exhausted and empty lands. The transitory nature of the coffee landscape is not in dispute, nor is the casual nature of the cultivation practices employed. Yet, even in this exploitative process there were elements of order and neatness. The typicalfaaenda Paulista showed some awareness of environmental conditions, with estates running from ridge top to valley bottom. Coffee was planted in regimented rows on the upper slopes, and the more frost-prone valley bottoms given over to other land uses.
and middle classes in Machado de Assis to the Zolaesque descriptions of urban decay in Alusio Azevedo (O Cortico). The urban theme is explored in Elizabeth Lowe, The City in Bratilian Literature (New Jersey, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, I982). For example, the municipality of Valenca in the Province of Rio de Janeiro showed an expenditure of more than i,ooo$ooo in excess of revenue for I84 . Cf. Delson, 'Land and Urban Planning...', p. I96.

31

LandscapeChangein Brazil

I5

Associated settlement also provided a degree of uniformity, with the small nucleation of thefatendeiro's house, the drying floor and other processing facilities and homes for the labour force. Before abolition this consisted of the rude senzalasof the slaves; afterwards of simple, uniform dwellings for the immigrant laborers. In the far south a distinct and more ordered landscape evolved. Concerned to secure these lands against Spanish-American claims, the Brazilian government organized their settlement and utilization through planned colonization schemes. These provided both creation of ordered landscapes at a regional scale and also planning in detail. Whether through direct colonization or by fostering private schemes, the government encouraged the immigration of European settlers, their installation on defined territories and the allocation to them of precise, and small, landholdings. Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and later Parana were the principal foci of such schemes. German and Italian colonists were the most numerous, but there was a variety of other southern and central European groups, Luso-Brazilians and later Japanese. In Rio Grande do
Sul alone, almost 5o German colonies were established between 1824 and I922.32 Layout of such colonies was usually regimented, with lots running

at right angles from trails driven into the forest, along which colonists' dwellings were built. This gave rise to a pattern of long, narrow strips up to 250 m wide, which were gradually cleared and planted. The settlement form was that of the strassendorf, with the dwelling frequently retaining many of the features of the housetype of the colonists' homeland. Small towns established to service these areas were frequently gridiron in layout. Elsewhere, military colonies, formed under government directive, fit our category of controlled landscapes. Created on Crown land, these communities were composed of former soldiers and their families and were designed to be agricultural and self-supporting.33 Although it was never clearly spelled out what these colonies would produce, the plans for them were frequently highly ambitious. Their deliberately formal character allows us to characterize them as controlled landscapes. By contrast late nineteenth-century development in Northern Brazil was essentially spontaneous. The rubber boom was quintessentially a period of resource exploitation. It lacked any central control and resulted in
32

33

allemande le RioGrande Sul (Paris, Institut des Hautes Etudes et do J. Roche, La colonisation de 1'Amerique Latine, 1959), pp. 74-6. The military colonies project was outlined in the Law of 30 January I854 (see article 13 18). Reprinted in Jose Marcellino Pereira de Vasconcellos, Livro das Terrasou Colledao das Leis, Regulamentos Ordens(Rio de Janeiro, Edward e Henrique Laemmert, I86o). e

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RobertaM. Delson and John P. Dickenson

extensive destruction of the resource on which it was based, though given the scattered distribution of the rubber tree within the rain forest the landscape impact was negligible. Even so, this phase of exploitation of the forest and the profligate urban lifestyle pursued in Manaus have been significant contributions to the image of Brazil as a casual misuser of the land and destroyer of the natural landscape. However, elsewhere in late ninteenth-century Brazil one can identify an example of the concept of the compromised landscape, where centralized decisions did not have the impact anticipated on the landscape. In the Northeast, following the' Great Drought' of I 877-9 the central government became involved in remedial measures, aimed at countering the impact of the droughts which sometimes affect the interior sertdo. The initial intention of government policy was to build dams to sustain irrigation agriculture and thus transform the regional economy and landscape.34This change was not fully implemented, so that, in its early phase at least, centralized action had only marginal impact, introducing limited areas of stored water into the traditional landscape of extensive pastoralism. In the twentieth century landscapes of compromise have become increasingly significant. The State has taken on an increasing role in Brazilian society and economy, with both planned and anticipated consequences for the landscape. This derives from increasing recognition of Brazil's vulnerability as a primary produce exporter, and a consequent attempt to reshape the economy in a less dependent, more diversified form. The watershed for this participation of the State was the revolution of 1930, which brought Getulio Vargas to power. The Great Depression had clearly revealed the weakness of the coffee economy and indicated the necessity for economic change. In consequence, State involvement in the economy has progressively increased, from tentative participation in limited spheres and through specific projects to a much more comprehensive shaping of economic development by a sequence of formal economic plans which have operated over most of the past 30 years.35 Such plans have sought to shape the path of economic development, but their concern for the patterns of development has been less overt, so that the landscape consequences have been those of compromise, where centralized decisionmaking has had unplanned impact. The predominant theme in this
34
35

J. P. Dickenson, 'Innovation for regional development in Northeast Brazil: a century of failures'. Third World Planning Review, vol. 2 (i980), pp. 57-74. For an outline of the evolution of development planning in Brazil, see R. T. Daland, Brazilian Planning (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press), I967.

LandscapeChangein Bratil

1 7

planning has been to foster industrialization, so that the bias of landscape change has been industrial and urban in character. At the same time, though, development of infrastructure has seen some penetration of landscapes of modernization into the countryside. A major feature, therefore, of twentieth-century change has been the introduction of factories, chimneys, dirt, pollution and other signs of 'progress' into the Brazilian scene. For much of this development the State has merely provided incentives to private and foreign industrialists to develop new factories, with little concern for their broad location or precise siting. In consequence such firms have tended to concentrate at the most attractive locations, that is, the major urban centres such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and these cities developed substantial industrial agglomerations, such as the 'ABC' towns of Greater Sao Paulo and the Zona Norte of Rio de Janeiro, with factory landscapes akin to those of Europe and North America. Other cities have developed similar landscapes on a lesser scale. In some cases, however, the industrialization process has resulted in more formal, ordered landscapes, rather than the spontaneous, disordered patterns of private capitalism. This is particularly the case with resourcebased industries such as mining and metal working, where firms have been attracted to virgin sites. A classic example is the state-owned Volta Redonda steelworks, located on an old cattle faaenda in the Parafba valley in 1941. In addition to the construction of a major steelworks and its related plant, it was necessary to design and build a town for the work force. Within twenty years this consisted of a community of 75,ooo people. Similar planned townscapes developed with other steelworks at Monlevade, Timoteo and Ipatinga in Minas Gerais, and at mines such as Nova Lima and Casa de Pedra (Minas Gerais) and Carajas (Para), such developments resulted in agglomerations of neat, orderly dwellings on a formal street layout, adjacent to the factory or mine. Although the principal concern of the State has been with the process of industrialization, there have been at least some attempts to influence its pattern, as part of regional or urban planning strategies. Industrial estates have been developed since I940 to attract factories to specific sites, in attempts to encourage industrialization in particular regions or states, or to concentrate factories into specific areas within cities.36 They gave rise to clearly defined industrial districts with precisely planned layouts. Such
36

J. P. Dickenson, 'Industrial estates in Brazil', Geography,vol. 55 (1970), pp. 326-9.

18

Roberta M. Delson and John P. Dickenson

estates have become important elements in the economy and landscape of Minas Gerais and the Northeast, and more recently have been used to decentralize industry from the city of Rio de Janeiro.37 As part of the development process, government at both the federal and state level has been active in the provision of infrastructure, such as energy and transport, on which economic advance might take place. State actions, therefore, have direct influence on the landscape through decisions to build dams, power grids, highways and railways. Major electricity projects such as those of Itaipu, Paulo Afonso and Itumbiara involve not merely the construction of large dams and power lines, but in some cases the creation of large reservoirs, which profoundly change in pattern of land use and settlement. Similarly the extent of the paved federal highway system has
grown from 7,000 km in I959 to 40,000 km in
I980.

The direct impact

of these points and lines may be localized, but they have profound and extensive indirect impacts, sustaining both continued growth in the cities and diffusing elements of modernity into the more traditional rural landscape, or into a new frontier. A striking example of this is provided by the Belem-Brasilia highway, built in the late 195os. The element of control was the construction of a dirt highway (later paved) of 2,25o km, along the periphery of Amazonia. The compromise landscape it engendered involved the opening up of this territory, the development of lumbering and pastoral industries, the influx of an estimated 2 million people and the creation of oo00settlements, largely unplanned.38 A major consequence of Brazil's economic progress has been the further growth of the cities and a consequent increasing importance of urban landscapes. Growth and change have been largely concentrated in the cities. The country has been transformed from a rural to an urban society. According to the official definition, the proportion of urban dwellers rose
from 3 I per cent in 1940 to 67 per cent in 1980. By I980 Greater Sao Paulo

had over 12 million inhabitants, and Greater Rio de Janeiro over 9 million. In addition Belem, Fortaleza, Salvador, Recife, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Porto Alegre and Brasilia each had over one million residents. These o0 conurbations contained almost 30 per cent of the total population. The urban landscape, and particularly that of the big city, has become the norm for the majority of Brazilians; for many of the remainder it is an aspiration.
37

38

S. Cunningham, 'Industrial estates as a planning tool: recent experience in Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states, Brazil'. Third World PlanningReview, vol. 4 (I982), pp. 44-60. Ministry of Transport, TransamagonianHighways (Montreal, Ministry of Transport, Federative Republic of Brazil, 1970).

LandscapeChangein Brazil

i19

The processes shaping the growth of the Brazilian city have been characterized as 'Americanizaton' and 'Africanization',39 with the thrusting upwards of the skyscraper core of office blocks and apartment buildings and the sprawling outwards of shanty towns. This is perhaps an oversimplification, but it does capture some of the dynamism and the striking visual elements of the late twentieth-century Brazilian townscape. Much of this change has been spontaneous, with only limited urban planning. Competing demands of office and retail functions, factories, the affluent, the working class and the migrant poor, and the motor car, have created intense pressures on urban land, generating dynamism and disorder. The result has been ill-ordered agglomerations of office blocks, factories, luxury apartments and villas, working-class districts,favelas, and highways, associated with destruction, construction, noise, pollution, elegance, squalor, progress and chaos. In the cause of development and change there has been little concern for preservation. The old has been sacrificed for the new. In the case of Rio de Janeiro, not only the historic townscape but its physical setting has largely disappeared, as the colonial and imperial core has been demolished and the small hills which formed its nucleus razed, to provide sites for the vertical growth of the central business district, and fill for land reclamation to extend the built-up area. If the transformation of the physical site of Sao Paulo has been less profound, disregard for its urban fabric has been even more marked, as the city has been constantly modified and renewed in response to the demands of its booming economy. Only in the last decade has increasing awareness of the urban problems of congestion, pollution and deficiency in the provision of services led to attempts to control and diffuse the growth of the cities.40 Even so, although the creation of spontaneous townscapes is most marked in the metropolitan centres, growth of both a high-rise core and marginal shanties is a feature of many other large and medium-size towns. Only in the small towns has there been less change or stagnation. The urban pattern of contemporary Brazil, however, is not associated exclusively with spontaneous, unordered forms. The principal exceptions are the planned towns, in which layout has been precisely defined. The best-known example is, of course, Brasilia, but earlier planned townscapes were created at Teresina, Belo Horizonte and Goiania. In each case these new towns replaced older and less accessible state capitals. They were given
39 40

J. Beaujeu-Garnier & G. Chabot, Urbangeography(London, Longmans, 1967), p. 82. Government recognition of these problems is outlined in Federative Republic of Brazil, SecondNational DevelopmentPlan (s97/-79) (Rio de Janeiro, Fundacao IBGE, I974).

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RobertaM. Delson and John P. Dickenson

formal layouts, in the case of Teresina and Belo Horizonte based on the grid; in the case of Goiania a more complex and less regular design. These designs incorporated locations for major public buildings and major functions. These towns, therefore, have elements of formality of design and regulation of function, but all three have substantially outgrown their original planned cores, and are characterized by the same phenomena of peripheral sprawl and central elevation. Brasilia epitomizes more than any other element in contemporary Brazil the creation of a controlled landscape. The new federal capital, planned in I956 and inaugurated in I960, was designed to come to terms with the urban life, and to symbolize the problem of mid-twentieth-century of Brazil. It involved the deliberate creation of a city at a virgin modernity site, in accordance with the precise and original design of Lucio Costa.41 His plan envisaged a complete entity rather than an evolving one, fulfilling not only the functions of any modern city, but those of a national capital. This planned form was embellished by the shaping of its fabric, under the direction of Oscar Niemeyer, who was responsible for the overall regulation of construction and who contributed many of the city's most famous and distinguished buildings, particularly those of its monumental core.42 Even in the case of Brasilia, though, there have been elements of compromise and spontaneity, as the unity of Costa's design has been modified in response to other pressures. The notion of a classless city based on uniform residential superblocks broke down under the influence of the affluent, desirous of living in single family dwellings adjacent to the lake, and the urban poor, forced by their poverty to move out to less comprehensively planned dormitory towns or to spontaneous settlements which grew up away from the planned city. A more positive feature of the contemporary townscape, which might be categorized as spontaneous, comes from the emergence of distinctive Brazilian styles of urban design and architecture. This derives from a combination of influences - the inspiration of new architectural ideas from Europe, their adjustment to local environmental conditions, the use of new building materials and techniques, and the talents of a group of architects, landscape designers and artists, including Costa, Niemeyer, Affonso Reidy, Roberto Burle Marx and Candido Portinari.43 Except in the case of Brasilia
41

For details of the planning of Brasilia,see N. Evenson, TwoBrazilianCapitals(New

Haven, Yale University Press, 1973). Thames and Hudson, 197 ).

42
43

(London, Examples of Niemeyer's work are illustratedin R. Spade, OscarNiemeyer

Comprehensivesurveys of modern trends in the arts in Brazil are to be found in in architecture Bragil (London, ArchitecturalPress, 1956) and H. E. Mindlin, Modern art P. M. Bardi,Profileof thenewBrazilian (Rio de Janeiro, LivrariaKosmos, I970).

Landscape Change in Bragil

121

and the residential district of Pampulha near Belo Horizonte, their work is represented in small developments and individual buildings. It represents, none the less, a striking, original and distinctive element in the townscape under the patronage of the State, private enterprise and the well-to-do. Change in the countryside has generally been slower than in the cities. Until recently the State has been less concerned with rural change, partly because the thrust of economic policy was towards industry and the city rather than to agriculture and the countryside, and also because of the entrenched opposition of conservative landowners. Brazil has not, for example, experienced any significant land reform which would transform the pattern of landholding. The inherited patterns of large landholdings persist; in 1975, 43 per cent of the farm area was controlled by holdings of over Iooo ha, which constituted less than one per cent of all farms.44A significant proportion of national territory has not yet been incorporated into farms, and even within the farms large areas remain unused, underused, or under secondary vegetation. The area under crops is relatively limited and much pasture land remains unimproved. In consequence, the characteristic agricultural landscape is not one of neat, ordered fields under a variety of crops. Instead it is an untidy patchwork of irregular plots (often lacking field boundaries), natural pasture, scrub and woodland. Some areas, particularly those associated with commercial monoculture, such as sugar cane and coffee, have a greater element of uniformity. In some areas, though, transformation to a more ordered 'modern' agricultural landscape has begun, in response to the stimuli of market demand and increasing government interest in the countryside. This has resulted in the introduction of machinery, new farm buildings for processing and storage, new cultivation techniques, and improved crops and livestock. This is the pattern, for example, in former coffee lands in eastern Sao Paulo and in Parana. Elsewhere, the long-established process of the spontaneous advance of the frontier persists. This uses traditional techniques of slash-and-burn cultivation - cutting down the vegetation, burning it off, taking a crop for as long as the land will sustain it, and then abandoning the plot to pasture or secondary vegetation. Following such processes, the frontier has pushed into the centre-west of Mato Grosso and Goias and into parts of Amazonia. There have, however, been some areas where controlled landscapes have been implemented or attempted. The most striking example is that of north
44 Data from Sinopsepreliminar do censoagro-pecudrio. Censoseconomicos I97/, vol. 14 (Rio de de Janeiro, FundaSao IBGE, 1977).

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RobertaM. Delson and John P. Dickenson

Parana, described as 'an outstanding example of planned economic development in the tropics'.45 Initially associated with British capital, this private scheme has opened up some 12,000 km2 since the 1930s, following detailed plans. There is a precise and careful layout of landholdings, transport links, service towns and regional centres, giving a rural landscape characterized by order and regularity, untypical of much of the Brazilian countryside. More recently the building of the Transamaz6nica highway and its associated colonization scheme represent a deliberate attempt by the State to create a controlled landscape of a planned and hierarchical settlement pattern and a precise structure of land ownership. As originally envisaged, this I,200 km highway was to open up the empty lands of Amazonia to settlement by the excess population of the Northeast. The settlement hierarchy was to consist, at the lowest level, of agrovilas, or planned villages, housing 48 to 6o families, and located at regular intervals along the highway and side roads. These would provide basic services of education and medicine. Groups of agrovilaswere to be serviced by an families. These were agropolis, again a planned settlement of up to 300oo to provide more diverse services, including marketing and some industry. In turn the rurdpolis,a planned city of ,000o families, was planned to act as a regional centre and growth pole. Around each agrovilaland along the highway and side roads was divided up into regular lots of 1oo ha in size. These plots were laid out without surveying or investigation of the physical conditions. One half of each lot was supposed to be left in forest, and the remainder taken into cultivation. Houses for colonists were of uniform design.46 Such a process would have created a controlled and regimented landscape, the imposition on to the Amazon environment of a drawing-board design. In fact, the process has been much modified in response to a whole variety of apparent influences - considerations of conservation, insufficient technicians, inadequate knowledge of the environment, unsuitable settlers, and demands for alternative forms of development. In consequence such developments as have taken place to date have been incomplete and less organized. What was intended as a showpiece of controlled development has become a compromise
45 C. Dozier, 'North Parana: an example of organized regional development', Geographical Review, vol. 46 (1956), pp. 38I-33. 46 E. F. Moran, Developingthe Amagon (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, i98I), pp. I-22. For a wide range of perspectives on the development of Amazonia, see F. Barbira-Scazzochio (ed.), Land, people and planning in contemporary AmaZonia (Cambridge, Centre of Latin American Studies Occasional Publication, no. 2, 1980) and N. Smith, Rain Forest Corridors(Berkeley, University of California, 1982).

LandscapeChangein Brazil

I23

of squatting, subsistence and commercial colonization, large-scale pastoralism, and extractive activities. Critics of Brazil would stress the destructive approach to land the country has followed, presenting evidence of the continued pillage of the beauties and riches of nature. Yet the clearance of the forest was as inevitably a part of the process of settlement as was the clearance of the European forests in the Dark Ages or those of New England in the eighteenth century.47 Furthermore, despite the image of despoliation, most of the lands cleared remain in agricultural use, and in some cases in the crops in which misuse was supposed to have been rife. The northeastern tona da mata remains a sugar zone, and has recently been stimulated by rising demand for sugar as a source of cane alcohol. Similarly, the coffee lands of the southeast not only remain in use but are major sources of agricultural production, and are the focus for the application of modern capital-intensive farming techniques. The retreat of coffee from its frostprone margins of cultivation in the south has been back into former coffee lands, which were not destroyed but are capable of sustaining renewed, more intensive cultivation. There is no doubt that there has been considerable ambivalence in Brazilian attitudes to land and landscape. This may be at least partially explained by the very cornucopia of resources available. There has always been more land beyond the frontier to move on to rather than caring for land taken into use. There has been the myth and reality of abundant mineral wealth - gold, diamonds, semi-precious stones and more recently more mundane riches of iron, manganese, tin and bauxite to attract people, settlement and exploitation. In consequence the spontaneity in the use of land and resources is unsurprising. For the feller of dyewood, the plantation owner, the miner, the coffeefazendeiro, the resources provided an opportunity to 'get rich', with little awareness or thought of the environmental landscape consequences. More recently the city has provided the magnet for those motivated by profit- whether large corporation, entrepreneur, bureaucrat, workman or poor rural migrant. The city has become the place of action and change, and this frequently has been with limited concern for form and fabric in the urban explosion. Yet there has been a longstanding awareness of the environment and
47 R. H. Brown records concern about the need for forest conservation,the control of fires and creation of forest reserves in late eighteenth-centuryNew England. They, andviews of the aestheticvalueof the forest, show close affinitywith opinionsexpressed about late twentieth-century Brazil.Brown, Historicalgeography United States(New of the
York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1948), p. Io9.

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Roberta M. Delson and John P. Dickenson

the threats to it. Early commentators described this new world in the tropics in terms of a paradise of rare beauty and riches. There were efforts to limit deforestation and reservations about the use of slash-and-burn agriculture, noting that though it was effective in clearing the forests, it reduced all to ashes and soon resulted in sterile land.48 There were similar criticisms of the use of streams to scour hillsides in Minas Gerais in the search for gold, which left the valley bottoms covered with unproductive eroded materials.49 The rapacious advance of the coffee frontier also provoked concern about its impact on the land.50 More recently a more overt conservation lobby has emerged,51 and fears about the impact of development on Amazonia have prompted interest both within Brazil and abroad. To date the organization of conservation remains relatively limited. A number of national parks were designated in the I970s, mainly incorporating areas of distinctive terrain, such as major waterfalls, mountains and unusual topographic features, but these have not all been implemented and some sites have been unprotected or subject to modification in the cause of national economic development. In Amazonia there have been recent proposals to create national parks and forest and ecological reserves.52 There have also been efforts to conserve the human landscape of archaeological, ethnological, historical and artistic remains, through the activities of the Institutodo PatrimonioHistoricoe Artistico Nacional. Under its care are not only individual sites and buildings, but also substantial parts of settlements which form coherent urban landscapes, including much of colonial Salvador, the baroque mining towns of Mariana, Diamantina and Tiradentes, and towns such as Parati and Vassouras, associated with the coffee boom. There is little doubt that the dominant element in the shaping of the Brazilian landscape has been that of spontaneity, as individuals have exploited it in search of wealth from the forest, the soil and the mine and,
48 Carta do Castro e Mendonga para D. Maria I, Sao Paulo, 15 Nov. 1798, in Catalogode documentos

de goverador e capitaogeralde capitania Sao Paulo,Antonio Manuelde Melo

de Ultramarino Lisboa,vol. Io, no Historico de sobre historia Sao Pauloexistentes Arquivo a

49

pp. 6i-65.

50

em o sobre estado atualdas minasdo Brasil,dividas duas Minasdo Brazil: discurso partes,in BibliotecaPublica Municipaldo Porto, codice 464, folha 5. e See, for example,M. Ellis, O cafe- literatura historia (Sao Paulo, ed. Melhoramentos,
I977), pp. 67-104.

51 Such views are

52

do naturais Brasil expressed,for example,in A. TeixeiraGuerra,Recursos IBGE, 1969) and 0. Valverde, Recursos (Rio (conservacionismo) de Janeiro, Fundamao e das naturais o equilibrio estruturas (Rio de Janeiro, FundacaoIBGE, 1977). regionais da brasileira e naturais Amazonia da A conservafao natureZarecursos (Edicao especialRevista
CVRD), vol. 2 (I98I).

LandscapeChangein Brazil

more recently, within the frame of the built environment. Such processes suggest, and have tended to engender, landscapes which were transitory, unordered and sometimes despoiled. Yet from an early date there were attempts to control the process of development, which directly or indirectly shaped evolving landscape. Within thirty years of Cabral's discovery the land was divided up, in theory at least, with some precision, with instructions about the location and spacing of villages and specifications about the use of resources.53 The influence of government has increased over time and has become more explicit in the last half-century as the State has taken a major role in shaping the direction and nature of economic development. Much of this activity, in terms of advancing the frontier, modernizing agriculture, constructing infrastructure, stimulating industrialization and seeking to control urban growth has not had an overt concern for landscape evolution; none the less, it has had significant influence on the nature and speed of landscape change. It is possible, in the context of a Third World country seeking to develop, that economic growth, per capita income levels, and job creation will have higher priorities than the conservation of the land, or of the past, or the construction of aesthetically satisfying environments, so that many of the landscape consequences of government policy will be those of compromise, in which planning decisions have landscape implications, not all of which will be anticipated or desirable. Yet there is evidence of increasing awareness of the need for control and conservation. The Third National Development Plan, I980-5, makes specific reference to environment and natural resources, noting the potential conflict between development and the environment.54 Areas of major concern include the need to restrain the uncontrolled growth of Greater Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, to promote more rational and non-predatory use of Amazonia, and reduce the pollution of water and the atmosphere. Finally, elements of central control throughout Brazil's history have created identifiable and clearly planned elements in the landscape: colonial new towns, agricultural colonies, the paraphernalia of the development process - highways, dams, factories and so on - the national symbol of Brasilia, and pioneer creation of conservation areas of outstanding landscape quality.
53

Such conditions are outlined in the Royal letters granting Pernambuco to Duarte Coelho 1534. See E. B. Burns, op. cit., pp. 33-50. 54 Third National DevelopmentPlan I98o-8J. Brazilian Gazette, Special issue, Year 7, issue 40/41 (Dec. 1979/Jan., Feb. i980).