Read Online Brazil on the Move by John Dos Passos - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Dos Passos
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fever.” The men crowd around the jeep with a look of concern on their faces. “But that is nothing … For Sayão that is nothing.”
The Man Himself
A battered sedan drives up. There’s a pretty girl on the front seat. The freshfaced man in khaki shirtsleeves behind the wheel seems hardly much older. As he steps to the ground we can see that he is a broadshouldered sixfooter. He shows even white teeth in a smile as he walks towards us. His step has a vigorous spring to it. He is older than he looked at a distance. There are thoughtful crowsfeet round his eyes. In fact the pretty girl is his daughter.
“Sayão, at your service,” he says.
He rubs his hand over his rough chin and mutters apologetically that the barber is looking for him. He ate somebeans and manioc flour in Amaro Leite that didn’t set well. He isn’t quite up to scratch this morning. He’ll be all right. Let’s go. He waves us into the back seat of the sedan and introduces the pretty girl as his eldest. Her father ought not to be out, she starts to tell us in remarkably good English, but she long ago gave up trying to do anything with him. He is incorrigible.
Sayão is talking to his men. He addresses a few words directly to each man in a pleasant offhand leisurely tone. Now and then he taps a man on the arm or lets a hand slide along his shoulders. When he turns towards us to step into the driver’s seat we can see that he is a great deal older than he seemed at first glance. A man in his late forties. His eyes are a little bloodshot from the night driving yesterday. He swings the car around carelessly and drives down the highway. As he drives he leans back over the seat to tell us about the colônia.
Four years ago there was nothing. This was part of the federal government’s colonization plan. Colonization was not his specialty. He’s spent his life building roads. His pleasure has been in the fabrication of highways. It is the kind of outdoor life he likes.
“How many families have moved in already?” asks one of my companions.
“Around three thousand … This is cellular colonization, a lot of people crowding around a center …”
“The state land office says thirty thousand,” interrupts the judge.
“That includes settlers outside the colônia … What we need, I’m beginning to think, is strip colonization, that is, to build roads and settle the land on either side …” Sayão swerves the car off the gravel and up a hill and stops on a grassy knoll in front of another unfinished building of raw brick. “This is our sugar mill. While we are waiting for the rest of the machinery we are going to use the generators to give light and power.”
After looking through the mill we walk out among the hills of darkgreen corn sprouting vigorously out of the deep forest loam among the stumps and the charred trees so recently felled. “You see,” Sayão explains, kicking at a stump a good four feet across, “we are not quite ready to use farm machinery. Our machines are hoes and the muscles in men’s backs.”
“How does a man ever get started hacking down the jungle?”
“I’ll show you.” As keen as a small boy with his first erector set, driving with one hand on the wheel through the rutted trails, he points out to us the various stages of colonization. He handles the battered sedan carelessly, the way a man might handle a well trained horse.
“The first year is hard,” he explains. The newly arrived often camp out under a tree. Next they’ll put up a bamboo shelter thatched with palm.
In the Brazilian backcountry there’s a mutual aid system known as
mutirão
. You get together some food and
cachaça
and a guitar and invite the neighbors in. All the heaviest work is done that way. They’ll work like fiends all day and in the evening they have a party.
Felling the tough hardwoods of the jungle is a man’s work. Snakes are a peril. He tries to keep a stock of antitoxins sent up from São Paulo.
By the
The Man Himself
A battered sedan drives up. There’s a pretty girl on the front seat. The freshfaced man in khaki shirtsleeves behind the wheel seems hardly much older. As he steps to the ground we can see that he is a broadshouldered sixfooter. He shows even white teeth in a smile as he walks towards us. His step has a vigorous spring to it. He is older than he looked at a distance. There are thoughtful crowsfeet round his eyes. In fact the pretty girl is his daughter.
“Sayão, at your service,” he says.
He rubs his hand over his rough chin and mutters apologetically that the barber is looking for him. He ate somebeans and manioc flour in Amaro Leite that didn’t set well. He isn’t quite up to scratch this morning. He’ll be all right. Let’s go. He waves us into the back seat of the sedan and introduces the pretty girl as his eldest. Her father ought not to be out, she starts to tell us in remarkably good English, but she long ago gave up trying to do anything with him. He is incorrigible.
Sayão is talking to his men. He addresses a few words directly to each man in a pleasant offhand leisurely tone. Now and then he taps a man on the arm or lets a hand slide along his shoulders. When he turns towards us to step into the driver’s seat we can see that he is a great deal older than he seemed at first glance. A man in his late forties. His eyes are a little bloodshot from the night driving yesterday. He swings the car around carelessly and drives down the highway. As he drives he leans back over the seat to tell us about the colônia.
Four years ago there was nothing. This was part of the federal government’s colonization plan. Colonization was not his specialty. He’s spent his life building roads. His pleasure has been in the fabrication of highways. It is the kind of outdoor life he likes.
“How many families have moved in already?” asks one of my companions.
“Around three thousand … This is cellular colonization, a lot of people crowding around a center …”
“The state land office says thirty thousand,” interrupts the judge.
“That includes settlers outside the colônia … What we need, I’m beginning to think, is strip colonization, that is, to build roads and settle the land on either side …” Sayão swerves the car off the gravel and up a hill and stops on a grassy knoll in front of another unfinished building of raw brick. “This is our sugar mill. While we are waiting for the rest of the machinery we are going to use the generators to give light and power.”
After looking through the mill we walk out among the hills of darkgreen corn sprouting vigorously out of the deep forest loam among the stumps and the charred trees so recently felled. “You see,” Sayão explains, kicking at a stump a good four feet across, “we are not quite ready to use farm machinery. Our machines are hoes and the muscles in men’s backs.”
“How does a man ever get started hacking down the jungle?”
“I’ll show you.” As keen as a small boy with his first erector set, driving with one hand on the wheel through the rutted trails, he points out to us the various stages of colonization. He handles the battered sedan carelessly, the way a man might handle a well trained horse.
“The first year is hard,” he explains. The newly arrived often camp out under a tree. Next they’ll put up a bamboo shelter thatched with palm.
In the Brazilian backcountry there’s a mutual aid system known as
mutirão
. You get together some food and
cachaça
and a guitar and invite the neighbors in. All the heaviest work is done that way. They’ll work like fiends all day and in the evening they have a party.
Felling the tough hardwoods of the jungle is a man’s work. Snakes are a peril. He tries to keep a stock of antitoxins sent up from São Paulo.
By the
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