Today we had another walk around Ouro Preto, and this time we had a much better idea of what we were seeing. We had a wonderful guide named John.
No, not the one of the left, although I think he is pretty wonderful. No, our guide was the John on the right. Here he is chatting in French with a couple of ladies in a museum.
Although he was born in Ouro Preto and has never traveled much farther than Rio, John speaks excellent English, French, and Spanish as well as Portuguese. And he loves his native city. As we walked from our hotel to the city center, the Praça Tiradentes, he explained the history of the place to us.
The Portuguese established control over the coast of what is now Brazil in at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But they generally did not venture inland much. It was only in the early eighteenth century that they came to the area that is now the state of Minas Gerais. And this happened because gold was discovered here. Deeply in debt from wars with Spain and the Netherlands, Portugal needed gold. And here in a town later called “Black Gold” — that is what “ouro preto” means in Portuguese — they found it.
Why black gold? Gold is normally found in in veins of quartz as it is here. But it can also be trapped in pieces of hematite. In a local jewelry shop, John showed us a piece of hematite with gold flecks stuck in it.
As in California, gold was found here at first in the streams. This is what we call “placer gold.” But this was soon gone and that sent the Portuguese deep underground to look for more. The first mines were established just after the beginning of the eighteenth century. As in other places in Brazil, labor was in short supply, particularly for such difficult and dangerous work. The Portuguese tried initially to enslave the native population, but most of them died either from the work or exposure to European diseases. And so the Portuguese began to bring in large numbers of African slaves to work the mines.
For a time, Ouro Preto became the largest city in the Americas. The gold rush attracted not only the Portuguese, but also large numbers of gold seekers from other parts of the world, particularly China. The British, whose skill at underground mining was generally the best in the world at that time, were actively involved in establishing and running mines here.
Money from the mines created a new city overnight. The first name given to the town was Vila Rica, or “Rich Town.” But Ouro Preto seemed a more suitable name and after a while that came to the the official name of the settlement. As it was a wealthy city, the miners and those who supported them built handsome private houses. The grandest houses belonged to the Portuguese officials. The mansion in the picture below belonged to a gentleman whose job was to collect one fifth of the mining wealth to send to Lisbon. This is now a museum.
And the leading citizens showed off their wealth by sponsoring grand churches. The Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel shown below, was one of the grandest.
The Church, unfortunately, was an incidental beneficiary of the gold rush, but was deeply involved in this brutal system. The Church provided the legitimacy for the Portuguese crown by teaching that God had appointed its kind, and it actively supported slavery by suggesting that Africans were a lesser class of humans who were therefore legitimately placed into slavery.
The Crown and the Church insisted on the conversion of the slaves from their indigenous faiths, but often this resulted, as it did in many places under Spanish ruler, with a syncretism between African religions and Christianity. The slaves generally had their own churches. Our Lady of the Rosary was one of the largest slave churches.
It may seem odd that the slaves would embrace so wholeheartedly an institution that was part of their oppression, but attending Mass was one of the few times that the slaves were permitted to form a community and they certain found ways of incorporating some elements of African culture into Catholicism.
While Ouro Preto thrived during the early part of the eighteenth century, the gold mines provided less and less for the mine owners as the decades passed. The crown, however, was certain that the mines were still highly productive and blamed the diminishing income on local corruption. They demanded review above the twenty percent originally required. This in turn bred deep resentment among the local elite, and they began to think about becoming independent from Portugal. In 1789, leading citizens in Ouro Preto were the leaders of a conspiracy to start a revolution. Unfortunately, one of the conspirators leaked the plans to the Portuguese government before the movement for independence could develop the resources needed for an effective revolt. The Brazilians refer to this as the “Inconfidência” or the “Betrayal.” The conspirators were rounded up and tried. Most were exiled to Angola or other Portuguese holdings in Africa. However, Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, usually called “tiradentes” or “tooth puller” as he was a dentist by trade, was hanged in Rio and then his head was stuck on a pole in Ouro Preto as a warning to other would-be revolutionaries. The large monument in the Praça Tiradentes in the center of town is set up on the spot where he decaying head was displayed.
We went through a museum on the plaza where some of the trials took place. We also stopped by the Church of São Francisco.
This church is regarded as the masterpiece of Mineras rococo. John was pretty strict about making sure we did not take pictures in churches — that’s the usual rule everywhere in this area — so I swiped this one from Google Images.
We had a buffet lunch at a place the specializes in the cuisine of this part of Brazil. It was all pretty decent, but I will not be rushing out to buy a Brazilian cookbook.
In the evening, we returned to town. John in particular wanted to look at the Grand Hotel. This was the work of Oscar Niemeyer, Brazil’s greatest modern architect. To me, it looked like a lot of ugly buildings I grew up with in the 1960’s. But it was built in 1938 and I can see how at the time it was a pretty revolutionary piece of work. Here is a shot we took earlier in the day.
And this is what the pool looked like at night.
It gave John Mad Men flashbacks and he just had to make it black and white.
Tomorrow we are off to the nearby town of Marianas.
