CRUZ DAS ALMAS' : A BRAZILIAN VILLAGE — PIERSON 



103 



There is only one radio in the village, purchased 

 about 2 years ago.^^^ It will be recalled that this 

 man's house is one of the two in the village which 

 is supplied with electricity from a small motor 

 turned by water power on the fazenda lying at the 

 edge of the village. The radio is used principally 

 on the occasions of a broadcast of a game of futehol 

 (soccer) in Sao Paulo, at which time several vil- 

 lage men and boys may come in to listen. 



A few of the men have had to leave the com- 

 munity for several months to undergo military 

 training. At the age of 18, all young men in 

 Brazil, unless physically incapacitated, become 

 subject to this service. Those actualy engaged in 

 farming are exempt, so that the number of young 

 men who have been away for this reason is small. 

 Training usually is in the city of Sao Paulo, but 

 may be elsewhere in the State. In only one case 

 known, has a young man failed to return to the 

 community when the period of service was over. 

 All the others, however, have returned much 

 changed. "They come back more active," said a 

 villager, "more wide awake." As a school teacher 

 put it, "They return more civilized." Occasion- 

 ally, a young man comes back no longer satisfied 

 with life in the community. After spending 13 

 months in military training, a young man, for 

 instance, whose mother is a widow, recently re- 

 turned and is at present engaged in cutting wood 

 on a neighbor's farm. "I'd like to get a job in the 

 city and get away from all this," he says. "Cut- 

 ting wood is too hard work. If it hadn't been 

 for my mother and my brothers and sisters, I'd 

 have stayed in the army. It was much better 

 there." 



The lack of communication in the region gave 

 rise to an expectation which came to be laid upon 

 all who traveled out of their communities to carry 

 messages and parcels which the need of a neighbor 

 or acquaintance required. Anyone who had occa- 

 sion to go to a nearby town would, upon departing, 

 ask any of his friends or neighbors whom he met, 

 '■^Que arguma soisa de Idf (Can I bring your any- 

 thing from there ? ) . In the course of this study, 

 for example, research personnel rarely left the vil- 

 lage without at least one encomenda (errand) for 

 some villager or farmer. Included were requests 



'" since this was written, one of the storekeepers has pur- 

 chased and installed In his store a cheap radio operated by 

 batteries. 



to purchase fishing equipment, a gasoline pressure 

 lamp, a Winchester rifle, a shotgun, parts for a 

 kerosene lantern, and playing cards ; earrings were 

 taken to the city to be repaired and a dress for a 

 woman who had been hurriedly taken to a hospital 

 was delivered. 



When, some years ago, trucks began to operate 

 in the region, their drivers, being more or less "per- 

 manent travelers," came to play, like the tropeiros 

 before them, an important role in communication. 

 In areas like this, where contacts were primary 

 and means of communication few, the driver of a 

 truck was expected to be not only a competent 

 chauffeur but also a willing and efficient courier, 

 with a memory cultivated for encomendas. Even 

 today, when mail comes regularly into the village, 

 truck drivers on almost all trips out of the com- 

 munity carry letters, oral messages, or parcels 

 which they deliver directly to the person in ques- 

 tion. The replies or parcels brought back are 

 sometimes left at a village store until the villager 

 or farmer comes in and asks, "Did the driver of the 

 truck leave something for me?" 



Since contact with the world outside the com- 

 munitj' so far has been quite limited and most 

 of that which has occurred has been with persons 

 in nearby rural neighborhoods and small towns 

 whose way of life is similar, comparatively little 

 strain for consistency has been injected into the 

 local mores. Even the foreigners, or children of 

 foreigners, who have come to live in the commu- 

 nity have been too few in number and their coming 

 has been spread over too long a period of time 

 and the local society and culture have been too 

 resistant, to alter appreciably the character of the 

 local situation. Like the Japanese storekeeper and 

 his wife, incoming individuals have been rather 

 readily assimilated and the diverse attitudes, senti- 

 ments, and points of view which they may have 

 brought with them have been filtered out of the 

 common life rather than admitted into it. 



The rather general condition of isolation, both 

 geographic and cultural, has not only made for 

 solidity in the mores but the consequent absence 

 of Alternatives of behavior for the individual has 

 at the same time increased that solidity and worked 

 against personal individualization and disorgani- 

 zation. Folk ideas regarding natural phenomena, 

 including means of magical character for dealing 

 with sickness and its cure, tend to prevail in the 



