Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period; Vol. 2

At this period the important step was taken of transferring the capital of Brazil to Rio de Janeiro, the chief reasons of this decision being its vicinity to the mines and likewise to the Plata, the importance of which latter region was daily becoming more manifest. Rio de Janeiro likewise presented greater facilities for being fortified than did Bahia. The vigour which Pombal had infused into the administration at Lisbon was extended to the colonies; and Brazil felt the benefit of his enlarged views. One of his prudent measures in regard to this country was to put a stop to the highly unsuitable institution of nunneries. It had not been possible for ministers entirely to put down silly prejudices which were the growth of centuries; and we are told of a wealthy inhabitant of Bahia who, there being no more nunneries in Brazil, thought fit to send over his six daughters, each with a portion of six thousand cruzados, to be incarcerated for life in the convent of Esperanza, where none but persons of the first condition were admitted. Under Pombal the Brazilians were prohibited from sending their children to Portugal for such a purpose without the special permission of the King,—a measure so evidently beneficial that it won for the minister the approbation even of his enemies.

Another measure of the same statesman was even more to be commended. Happily for Brazil, that country never boasted an establishment of the Inquisition. Nevertheless, some of the agents of the Holy Office had found a field for their energies on the other side of the Atlantic. These agents had arrested and sent to Lisbon a large number of new Christians,—persons fulfilling every duty of citizenship, but whose crime it was to be wealthy. These unfortunate people, having confessed to being Jews, escaped with their lives at the expense of all their property, which of course went to the informers. In consequence of this profitable practice many engenhos had to be stopped, and widespread ruin ensued. Even Pombal did not venture to proclaim toleration for the Jewish faith, but he made it penal for any person to reproach another for his Jewish origin, whilst he removed all disabilities attaching to Jewish blood, even if their ancestors had suffered at the hands of the Inquisition. He likewise published an edict decreeing severe chastisement against such persons as should retain lists of persons of Jewish origin.

1765.

At this period Portugal was deprived by the Moors of the last remnant of her possessions on the Mediterranean. The inhabitants of Mazagam, who had defended their city in a manner not unworthy of their race, were transported to the province of Pará, where, in honour of their gallant defence, the name of Mazagam was given to the place where they settled, on the western bank of the Matuaca, a tributary of the Amazons. These eighteen hundred colonists, though adding to the military strength of the empire, were but ill-fitted for purposes of colonizing. The situation chosen for their settlement was unfavourable, and many of them perished from the climate. Near this position a strong fort was erected at Macapá. In his desire to strengthen Brazil, the minister despatched many families from the Western Islands to be settled at Macapá and Mazagam. He likewise did something to foment the trade of Brazil by withdrawing the prohibition which had hitherto prevailed against single trading ships, apart from the annual fleet.

As the Portuguese islands could not afford colonists in sufficient number to satisfy the aspirations of the minister, their complement was made up from the dregs of the mother country. But this measure was not followed by the good results for which no doubt its originator looked. Crime became so frequent in Matto-Grosso, Minas Geraes, and elsewhere, that orders had to be sent out from Portugal, compelling all persons without any settled abode to live in civilized communities, and to divide amongst them the surrounding lands. All persons who should evade this regulation, with the exception of three classes, were to be proceeded against as robbers,—the classes exempted from this rule being agriculturists with their slaves and servants on isolated farms; rancheros, or persons established on the public roads to facilitate communication or to entertain travellers; and bandeiras, that is to say, bands of respectable persons employed in making discoveries. The above three classes of citizens were empowered to arrest and imprison vagrants.

It is now necessary to review what had been going on during the last few years in the mining districts. The experience of fifteen years having according to general opinion proved the injurious nature of the capitation tax, the offer was accepted of the people of Minas Geraes to make up the annual assessment to one hundred arrobas, should the royal fifths be less than that amount. In the year 1753, the fleet from Rio de Janeiro was believed to bring home gold, silver, and goods to the amount of three millions sterling. In that year the fifths from Minas Geraes amounted to nearly £400,000. The bullion and jewels which were sent to Lisbon in the following year were estimated at a million moidores. On an average of sixteen years the royal fifths exceeded one hundred arrobas; but when the trade had been opened to single ships, the average production of gold was found to decrease,—probably from the conviction or experience that trade was on the whole more profitable than mining.

The temptation to evade the payment of the royal proportion was so strong that not even the severe laws in force were sufficient to overcome it. Gold might circulate within the captaincy before it had been stamped and before the royal fifth had been taken; but it was unlawful to carry it beyond the border until it should have paid the duty and passed through the mint. Gold-dust, which was the only circulating medium in Minas Geraes, was found to be so debased by the traders before it reached the mint that there was usually a loss upon it of 10 or 12 per cent. in addition to the 20 per cent. duty, a desire to avoid which loss, even more than to avoid the duty, led to the frequent practice of endeavouring to smuggle it across the frontier. When it had once reached the cities, goldsmiths were readily found either to convert it into bars or to work it into jewellery. The knowledge of these practices naturally led to a law against jewellers, whose presence had long been forbidden in Minas Geraes, and was now no longer tolerated in the sea-ports.

The less productive province of Goyaz yielded in some years a capitation tax of forty arrobas. This advanced province had to bear the burden of a war with a brave tribe, called the Cayapos. The province of Minas Geraes was likewise exposed to incursions from other native tribes; but, notwithstanding occasional disturbances, the interior of Brazil continued on the whole to make steady progress towards civilization.

1767.

The government, however, was still disturbed by the retention by Spain of her conquests in the province of Rio Grande. Portugal appealed to Great Britain to procure the execution of the Treaty of Paris in accordance with the intentions of the contracting parties, of which England had been one. It had certainly not been her intention that the Spaniards should retain their conquests in Brazil. It was to the Brazilians themselves, however, that they were to owe the recovery of the Spanish posts in Rio Grande. Aware that the Spaniards of the Plata were sufficiently occupied elsewhere, they secretly collected a force of eight hundred men, with which they took their enemies by surprise, thus regaining by arms that which Great Britain was engaged in endeavouring to obtain for them by diplomatic means.

CHAPTER XVI.

PARAGUAY; EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS FROM BUENOS AYRES AND PARAGUAY

1649-1805

From the date of the removal of Bishop Cárdenas as governor of Paraguay [1648], that province had enjoyed freedom from internal dissensions; until, in 1717, Don Diego Balmaceda was named governor by the Viceroy of Peru. His nomination was unpopular, and, after two years, serious charges were preferred against him before the Audience of Charcas, which that body were occupied during the three succeeding years in investigating. Meanwhile Don Jose de Antiquera had obtained the provisional succession to the post of governor; and he hastened to Paraguay to assume power. Balmaceda was, however, reinstated in authority, and he ordered the usurper to resign his pretensions. But meanwhile Antiquera had organized a considerable force, and he refused to submit to the orders of the Viceroy, and sent a party to Corrientes, who brought Balmaceda a prisoner to Asuncion.

On learning this rebellion against the Crown, the Viceroy sent instructions to the military commander of La Plata to dispossess Antiquera of his authority, and to reinstate Balmaceda. On reaching the river Tebicuari, General Garcia de Ros found Antiquera too strong to be opposed. On his retiring, Antiquera, with a view to conciliating Zavala, the governor of Buenos Ayres, sent six hundred troops to assist him in the defence of Monte Video against the Portuguese. This manœuvre, however, did not avail him, and Ros was sent a second time to assert the royal authority, with two hundred Spanish troops, backed by the forces of the Jesuit missions. The Jesuits had been expelled by Antiquera from Asuncion. On reaching the Tebicuari, Ros was encountered by Antiquera, with a force of three thousand men, and, being defeated, was compelled to return to Buenos Ayres.

1724.

The rebellion had now assumed such proportions that it could no longer be trifled with, and Zavala received peremptory orders from the Viceroy to hasten to Paraguay in person, and to send Antiquera to Lima for trial. The latter, now aware of his desperate situation, prepared to defend himself. His followers, however, began to desert him, and in March 1725 he fled from Paraguay, and took refuge in a convent at Cordova. Thence he proceeded to Bolivia, intending to throw himself on the protection of the Audience of Charcas. But he was looked upon as a public enemy, and was arrested at Chaquisaca, and sent to be tried at Lima. He was brought before the Audience, but, although his guilt was patent from the first, it was not until the trial had lasted for several years that he was condemned to be executed. The 5th of July 1731 was the day fixed for his execution. By this time the public feeling had completely veered round in his favour, and, as it was feared a rescue would be attempted, the Viceroy gave orders to fire upon the prisoner. The order was answered by a volley of musketry, and the condemned man and two friars near him fell dead from their horses.

After the flight of Antiquera from Paraguay, the Jesuits had been permitted to return to Asuncion. They were met at the distance of twelve miles from the capital by a procession headed by the governor, the bishop, and the chief civil and military functionaries. But the return of the Jesuits was displeasing to many, more especially to those who had been the partisans of Antiquera. When the governor resigned, the people claimed the right of choosing his successor—a right which in certain emergencies had been granted them by Charles V. When the news of Antiquera’s execution reached Asuncion, the indignation of the people manifested itself by their falling on the Jesuits, and expelling them from the city.

1733.

There were now two declared parties in Paraguay. That which was against longer submission to royal authority took the name of Comuneros; whilst those who were for the King were called Contrabandistas. On the resignation of Governor Barua, the Comuneros improvised a government composed of a junta, with a president as the executive head. A hostile collision was now to be feared between the dominant party at Asuncion and the nearest Jesuit “Reductions.” It was averted by the arrival of a new governor, Don Manoel de Ruiloba. Reaching the missions, he sent forward overtures to the insurgents, which so far satisfied them that he was permitted to take possession of the government. One of his first acts was to attempt to disband the Comuneros; but this was vehemently resisted; and he found himself in open opposition to the most numerous party in the state. The rebels defied him, and civil war was commenced. In the first action the governor fell.

The Bishop of Buenos Ayres, who happened to be at that time at Asuncion, was now elected governor; but he was a mere instrument in the hands of the junta, and was compelled to sign sweeping acts of confiscation against the Jesuits and the Royalists. Realizing his false position, he thought fit to embark for Buenos Ayres to resume his episcopal duties. The rebels in Paraguay had again to deal with Zavala, who had recently been appointed President of the Audience of Charcas, and who now blockaded Paraguay on all sides. Taking with him six thousand trained troops from the missions, he advanced to the Tebicuri, and, meeting with no opposition, proceeded to Asuncion, where he was received with acclamations.

As Zavala’s rapid success had been gained by means of the Jesuits’ troops, it was but natural that the Fathers should follow in their wake. They were now more powerful and arrogant than ever, and it became pretty clear that it was their intention to reduce Asuncion and all Paraguay to the same state of blind obedience to their sway in which they held their missions. To contend against them so long as they retained the ear of the King was hopeless; and the Spanish colonists now undertook to enlighten their sovereign by exposing the false pretensions of the Fathers. The Jesuits were accused of a design of founding an empire, and they were shown to have created in South America a more absolute despotism than Europe had ever known.

The reign of the Jesuits, however, was then drawing to its close. Their expulsion from the Portuguese dominions has already been recorded, and it was not long before the Jesuits of Spain shared the fate which had befallen their brethren of Portugal and of France. We have here to review the circumstances of their expulsion from South America. Zeballas had been recalled from his high post on account of his sympathies with the devoted order.

1767.

However strong may have been the reasons for the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, their suppression in South America, although it may have been a necessary sequence of the first measure, had certainly an air of gross ingratitude, and seemed likely considerably to diminish the Spanish power in its colonies. The Jesuits had been the means of greatly extending the Spanish territories in the interior, and had thereby prevented the Portuguese from securing to themselves a still larger portion of the centre of the continent. They had raised many thousands of native troops who had often done good service in Paraguay, and who had fought successfully against the Portuguese both on the Guaypore and at Colonia. They had likewise delivered the Spaniards of La Plata, Paraguay, and Tucuman from their formidable native enemies, whom they had been able to conciliate. The very latest Spanish successes in Rio Grande had been due in a great measure to their assistance.

But the expulsion of the Jesuits from their headquarters of Paraguay had been included in the plan of the King of Spain and his counsellors, and four days after the issue of the royal decree banishing the order from the mother country, a ship of war was despatched to the Plata, with orders to the Viceroy to take immediate measures for the simultaneous seizure of all the Jesuits within his jurisdiction. The Viceroy, Bucareli, who received his orders on the 7th of June 1767, lost no time in carrying them into execution. Without delay he despatched sealed instructions to the governors and local authorities within his Viceroyalty, which were not to be opened until the 21st of July. On the following day all Jesuits were to be seized in the name of the King and sent to Buenos Ayres.

It may here be of interest to give a short account of the condition in which the royal order found the “Reductions.” They were now beginning to recover from the evils which had fallen upon them owing to the Treaty of Limits. But on account of that blind measure, together with illness and a subsequent war, their numbers were now reduced from one hundred and forty-four thousand to one hundred thousand. The Fathers possessed large estates and many negro slaves, who are said to have been treated with every consideration. Whatever civilization penetrated into the interior of the country was through the Jesuits. For example, one Father Schmid instructed the Chiquitos not only in the common arts of life, but in working metals and making clocks. It is said that the Moxo and Paure missions displayed more civilization than did the important Spanish city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra; whilst to the Jesuits Cordova owes its press. The Jesuits of the Guaranís printed books in one of the “Reductions” before there was any printing press either in Cordova or in Buenos Ayres.

The news of the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain became public in Buenos Ayres on the 3rd of July, being eighteen days before the time fixed upon for their arrest. Orders were therefore sent to the provinces to anticipate this measure; whilst the Fathers in the college at Buenos were made prisoners on the same night. Those nearest to that city soon shared the same fate; and in the following month the college at Cordova was likewise taken possession of, and its inmates sent to the capital, whilst their invaluable library was destroyed. Nowhere did the Viceroy’s troops meet with any resistance; and the captured Jesuits were transmitted to Spain in groups of some forty individuals, being thence sent on to the Papal States.

The Fathers of the Paraguayan missions, however, had still to be dealt with. Their first move was to cause an address to be signed by their Guaraní foremen, and to present it to the governor, praying that the Jesuits might continue to live with them. That this petition came from the Jesuits themselves, and not from the Indians, was apparent. Bucareli, accordingly, taking it as an indication that they did not mean to surrender without a struggle, took energetic measures to compel them to submit. Occupying the pass of Tebicuari, and sending a force to S. Miguel, he ascended the Uruguay at the head of a further force. By way of proving the worthlessness of the Guaraní petition on behalf of the Jesuits, he caused another document to be prepared and signed by the Indian judges and caciques of some thirty towns, expressing thankfulness to the King for having relieved them from their former arduous life. Whatever else these respective petitions may show, they certainly prove how thoroughly the Guaranís had learnt the lesson of implicit obedience to whatsoever instructions they might receive, irrespective of their convictions, if they had sufficient individuality left to possess any.

But by this time it was evident that resistance was hopeless. Many of the missions had fallen into the hands of the governor, and the Fathers did not venture to bring their disciples into the field. They were sent to Buenos Ayres, and shared the fate of their brethren who had preceded them. There was indeed no discretion left to the authorities in executing the measures for the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions. One of the most able and conscientious of the number, the aged Father Chomé, being confined to his bed by illness, was carried from the Chiquito missions in a hammock to Oruro, where he died from the effects of the journey. Another missionary, Father Mesner, an old and infirm man, who had laboured for thirty years in the Chiquito “Reductions,” was sent on a journey of four hundred and fifty miles to Santa Cruz. After remaining there for five months, until the season for crossing the Andes had come, he was placed upon a mule, whilst riding upon which he died. It is right to add that the Spanish Minister, on learning these facts and others of a similar nature, indignantly reproved the South-American authorities for their inhumanity. In all one hundred and fifty-five Jesuits were expelled from La Plata, Tucuman, and Paraguay.

The suffering in the “Reductions” did not fall alone or chiefly on the Jesuits. Their system of government had been so absolute, and their disciples had been reduced to such a condition of being merely thoughtless animals or machines, that, when the guidance of the Fathers was withdrawn, the whole system established by them suddenly and absolutely collapsed. No plan of government suitable to the altered condition of affairs was devised by the Spanish authorities. Priests of the mendicant orders replaced the missionaries, but without their temporal authority. The missions were formed provisionally into two governments, and an administrator was appointed to superintend each “Reduction,” with which last measure the prosperity of these communities ceased. The administrators, ignorant of the Guaraní tongue, made their commands obeyed by the lash; and before a year had elapsed the Viceroy had the mortification to learn that the Guaranís, in order to escape from the intolerable oppression of their new masters, were making their escape in numbers to seek the protection of their old enemies, the Portuguese.

On learning this unexpected occurrence, Bucareli displaced the administrators and appointed others in their stead, but with no better result as regarded the Guaranís. As the governor and the priests disputed regarding their respective powers, the Viceroy decreed that the former was to reside at Candelaria, where he was to be assisted by a staff of administrators, under whom the Guaranís were to labour as of old for the benefit of the community. The end was that cruel and compulsory work made the Indians miserable or drove them into the woods. The arts introduced by the Jesuits were neglected; their gardens and fields lay uncultivated, and their once flourishing villages, which had contained the evidences of a civilization of a century and a half, were almost deserted.

1803.

From the date of the rebellion of the Comuneros in 1735 until the close of last century, Paraguay enjoyed uninterrupted peace and quiet. In the year 1796, Ribera Espinosa was appointed governor, who, by the aid of his agents, constituted himself a general exporter, monopolizing the whole trade of the country; so that the producers realized for their goods about a tenth of what these were worth in the markets of Buenos Ayres. This state of things naturally produced such grave complaints against Ribera’s government as to provoke the intervention of the Crown. He was recalled, and was replaced by a man of a very different character, Don Bernardo Velasco, who was destined to be the last Spanish governor of Paraguay.

In the year 1803 the King of Spain issued a decree constituting the country lying between the Paraná and the Uruguay, which included all the missions, a separate province, which was called Misiones, of which Velasco was appointed governor. In 1805, the same officer was appointed governor of Paraguay, another of the same name being instructed by him as his lieutenant in Misiones.

CHAPTER XVII.

BRAZIL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; ARRIVAL OF THE BRAGANZAS