CRUZ DAS A1,MAS: A BRAZILIAN VILLAGE — PIERSON 



29 



ties not over 60 miles away and only one moved a 

 further distance. Of these migrants, most had 

 been born in the village or had lived there from 

 15 to 40 years each. 



Indicative of the high degi'ee of solidarity in 

 the village is the fact that many persons, especially 

 among the older inhabitants, show considerable 

 reluctance to move away. The tax collector, a man 

 60 years of age who was born in the community and 

 who has been collector for 29 years, received an 

 order from his superiors some months ago to trans- 

 fer to a town about a hundred miles to the south. 

 He made every effort to have this order rescinded. 

 "If some way had not been worked out so that I 

 could stay here," he says, "I would have given up 

 the job. Imagine me going to that cafundo de 

 Judm ! "^ They ought to know I couldn't leave this 

 village like that." "I was raised here," said an- 

 other villager, "and I like this place. I wouldn't 

 live anywhere else." 



Moreover, migration from the community is not 

 necessarily definitive. Mobility fends to take on, 

 in many cases, the character of what might be 

 called extended fluidity. A man who came to 

 the community 46 years ago subsequently moved 

 to the neighboring town of Boa Vista where he 

 remained a few years before returning to the vil- 

 lage. "I like it here," he saj's, "I don't ever want 

 to leave again." Another village ofhcial who also 

 was born in the community, once worked for a year 

 in a nearby town but returned to the village with 

 immense satisfaction. A man 35 years of age, who 

 especially likes to hunt, is thinking of accepting 

 an offer to work in a nearby city. "I shall come 

 back often to hunt," he says. "When people leave 

 here," remarked a school teacher who has lived 

 in the village for many years, "they like to go to 

 Boa Vista, since it's close by and they can get 

 back without much trouble. When they move, 

 they seem to leave, thinking of the time when they 

 can return." 



Except in those cases, then, where ownership of 

 land links the individual more firmly to the soil, 

 there would seem to be considerable moving about 

 from place to place in search of more favorable 

 conditions in the struggle for existence. This 

 movement, however, is ordinarily made over only a 



"2 "The end of the world." Cafundd, apparently of African 

 origin, means "solitary place." The addition of de Judas (of 

 Judas) gives the expression superlative force. 



limited distance. It indicates, perhaps, a certain 

 restlessness in the population, especially of those 

 persons who do not own land. 



This movement may represent the persistence 

 of one of those few vestiges of Indian culture, a 

 restlessness handed on from seminomadic ances- 

 tors. It perhaps is also of considerable signifi- 

 cance in explaining the cultural homogeneity of 

 the region. It apparently has been going on in 

 the community, as elsewhere in the region, for a 

 long period of time. Of 77 free men, for example, 

 who were married in the community between the 

 years 1818 and 1828, about two-fifths (33) were 

 listed in the parish records as coming from out- 

 side the community. The distance they had trav- 

 eled, however, was not great. Eleven, or one- 

 third, were from neighboring communities only a 

 few miles away. Their meeting and marrying 

 local young women therefore may have in some, 

 if not all, cases, merely reflected contact between 

 neighboring communities. Twelve were from 

 other i^laces within 25 miles of the village. Nine 

 were from still other communities within 40 miles 

 of the village. Only one man had come a further 

 distance ; he was from a northern state, about 1,300 

 miles away. 



As is true today, the women at that time were 

 much less mobile. Of the 77 marriage partners, 

 only 10 were not born in the inunediate vicinity 

 of the village and 8 of these were from neigh- 

 boring communities. The other two came from 

 places not over 25 miles away. 



One of the effects of mobility, coupled with the 

 fragmentation of properties described below (see 

 section on Wealth and Property, p. 95), appears 

 to have been to remove completely from the com- 

 munity the class of fazendeiros, or large land- 

 owners, who supervised their agricultural holdings 

 but did not themselves work the land. At least a 

 few must once have lived in the community, al- 

 though no present resident recalls one having 

 moved away. There are, however, none today. 



HYGIENE AND BODY HABITS 



Children who have attended the village school 

 know at least the main principles of hygiene. 

 "You should wash your face, comb your hair, and 

 brush your teeth every day," wrote a school boy. 

 "When you cough, you should put a handkerchief 

 over your mouth so the microbes won't come out 



