Long before the first villages appeared in the Prata basin, the people from São Paulo already roamed the sertão, looking for the means of subsistence in the indigenous population.
This "countryside vocation" was fueled by a series of geographical, economic and social conditions. São Paulo, separated from the coast by the wall of the Serra do Mar, turned to the hinterland, whose penetration was facilitated by the presence of the Tietê River and its tributaries that communicated the paulistas with the distant interior.
In addition, despite being far from the main commercial centers, its population had grown a lot because a good part of the inhabitants of São Vicente had migrated to there when the cane fields planted on the coast by Martim Afonso de Sousa began to decay, in the second half of the 16th century, ruining many farmers.
The reductions organized by the Jesuits in the interior of the continent were, for the Paulistas, the solution to their problems: they brought together thousands of Indians trained in agriculture and manual work, far more valuable than the ferocious tapuias, of "language locked".
In the 17th century, Dutch control over African markets, during the period of occupation of the Northeast, interrupted the slave trade. The settlers then turned to the enslavement of the indigenous to the work previously carried out by the Africans. This demand caused an increase in the prices of the Indian slave, considered as "the black of the land", and which cost, on average, five times less than the African slaves.
The Paulistas would not have attacked the missions for years on end if they had not had the support, overt or veiled, of the colonial authorities. Although it is not known for sure which expeditions are promoted by the Crown and which are of private initiative, being equally the inaccurate designation of entries and flags, the common feature to all of them was the direct or indirect presence of power public.
It was often the government that financed the expedition; others limited themselves to turning a blind eye to the enslavement of the Indians (illegal since 1595), accepting the pretext of the "just war".
Sponsored by D. Francisco went to the banners of André de Leão (1601) and Nicolau Barreto (1602). The second lasted for two years. He would have arrived in the Guairá region, returning with a considerable number of Indians, which some sources estimate at 3000.
In August 1628, almost all the adult men in Vila de São Paulo were armed to attack the sertão. There were nine hundred whites and three thousand Indians, forming the largest flag that had been organized until then.
The destination was Guaíra, to expel the Spanish Jesuits and arrest as many Indians as they could, to dump them in Bahia, lacking in arms for work.
The flag is divided into four sections, under the command of Antonio Raposo Tavares, Pedro Vaz de Barros, Brás Leme and André Fernandes.
There are weeks and weeks of virgin forest, of crossing great rivers, of the weight of the many currents. The vanguard, a small column led by Antonio Pedroso de Barros, free of almost all equipment, followed faster.
On September 8, it crossed the Tibagi River, right in front of the Encarnación mission. There, Pedroso de Barros orders the construction of a picket fence and waits.
For more than three months, the vanguard remained face to face with the enemies, awaiting the coming of the flag. Only in December, the entire troop gathered again. Now everything is ready for war. All that is needed is a pretext, a reason for war, to justify the attack.
The escape of a few Indians - imprisoned there - who seek shelter in the mission near San Antônio gives the people from São Paulo the reason they need it.
Immediately, the flag moves to that mission and Raposo Tavares launches an ultimatum: either the Spanish Jesuits deliver the Indians, or... Priests do not yield, prisoners are not returned to Raposo and the bandeirantes.
The fight begins. The sky darkens with clouds of arrows. As the siege tightens, shots, knives, sticks and brute force kill both sides. The Jesuits, clothes stained with mud and blood, gather the Indians in a desperate attempt to save the mission.
The church bells peal without stopping. Some priests hastily baptize the last pagans. The Paulistas, hard as the land they fall into, screaming and throwing, overcome the stone walls of San Antonio. On January 30, 1629, the noise ceases.
San Antonio had ceased to exist, decimated by the Paulistas. Brazil had grown a little more. And the two thousand surviving Indians, who surrendered en masse, will occupy the iron rings in the chains brought for them.
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Not even the struggle of the Society of Jesus managed to avoid the sacrifice of so many innocent people. The work of building the borders was done in the struggle of the bandeirantes, but it cost thousands of anonymous natives their lives or freedom.
There were, however, other Spanish missions in the region of Guairá. And behind them goes Fox, relentless. It will not rest until it has razed the last Spanish village and secured the last "piece". And while he has his strength left, one by one the strongholds of the Jesuits and their Indians fall: San Miguel, Jesus Maria, Encarnación, San Pablo, Arcangelos, San Tomé.
In San Miguel, Father Cristóbal de Mendoza, perplexed, inquires about the reasons for the war.
And Raposo Tavares replied: We must expel you from a land that is ours, and not Castile”. And so the flags incorporated the western regions of Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul into Brazil”.
Less perplexed, perhaps, was the governor of Paraguay, Don Luís de Céspedes y Xeria, who did nothing to prevent the destruction of Guairá, despite having attended the preparations for the flag in São Paulo.
Married to a Portuguese-Brazilian woman he met in Rio de Janeiro, when he was coming from Spain to take up his post in Paraguay, Don Luís must have met Raposo Tavares in São Paulo.
He would have made contact with him and managed to reach the vicinity of Asunción. There were rumors that he had been bribed to keep quiet, receiving sugar mills and slave Indians from São Paulo.
Others said that Don Luis could do nothing, since his wife was in Brazil, as if it were later the Spanish Government took all his titles and confiscated his property.
But Guaira was destroyed. In May 1629, after ten months in the sertão, victorious but exhausted, the paulistas returned to Piratininga.
With the bulk of the flag came two Jesuits, Fathers Mancilla and Mazzeta, who preferred to accompany the enslaved natives who went into captivity. These priests were the authors of the "Relación de los Agravios", a precious piece for the reconstitution of the expedition.
The lightning war was over and in it everything that the Girl Guides planned had been achieved. Raposo Tavares entered São Paulo, bringing, according to what they say, 20,000 "pieces" of slaves he had dragged through the backlands, prodding them to overcome hundreds of kilometers of woods, rivers, sunburnt fields, swamps, all under the weight of thick currents of iron. And, among all whites, no one like Raposo so much resembled the prisoners. Like the Indians, he too looked made of bronze.
The fight for these new lands leads us to think: Raposo claims the land for the Portuguese crown, the Jesuits represented the Spaniards; and the true native owner of the land simply overpowered, oppressed does not count.
This reductionist behavior that we need to review when we study history, whatever the subject. We have to be very careful not to fall into ethnocentrism, we must always consider all positions, see the other in itself even and not looking for a mirror like the Portuguese side that enslaved the native, or the Jesuit side that domesticated for Christian life.
The two sides aimed at domination only differed in form, the Portuguese through strength, domination and the Jesuitical, spiritual, through the imaginary.
In this fight between the Portuguese and the Spaniards, there is no right side, as in fact neither one nor the other would have the right to these territories that long before their arrival already had owners.
Text written by Patrícia Barboza da Silva.
Bibliographic References:
• DUEL, Enrique. Philosophy of Liberation. São Paulo, loyolo-unimp, s/d.
• FLOWERS, Moacyr. History of Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre, Nova Dimensão, 1996, 5th edition.
• HOOOMAERT, Eduardo & PREZIA, Benedito. Indigenous Brazil: 500 years. Sao Paulo; FTD, 2000.
• LAPLANTINE, François. Learn Anthropology. Editora Brasiliense, 1994, 8th edition.
• QUEVEDO, Julio. Rio Grande do Sul Aspects of the Missions. Porto Alegre, Martins Livreiro-Editor, 2nd ed, 1997.
Brazil Regional - history of Brazil - Brazil School
