Carter Daley

Individual Portfolio

Coffee Plantations in the Paraiba Valley, Brazil

LBST 2102.200

5 May 2017
 Beginnings of the Coffee Economy

Between the years 1800-1825, the Brazilian coffee economy centered in the Paraiba do

Sul River Valley took off and established the country as the largest coffee producer in the world

market. The Paraiba Valley, containing territory in the provinces of San Paulo, Rio de Janeiro,

and Minas Gerais, underwent a complete transformation in around 40 years. While more-or-less

unoccupied in 1800, the vast numbers of African slaves into the Paraiba Valley would help it

acquire the character typical of a plantation zone fifty years later.

This transformation took place in close conjunction with the transatlantic slave trade. The

initial workforce for plantations came from a countless number of the 450,000 African slaves that

disembarked between 1811 and 1830 to arrive at Brazilian ports. Even after the passage of the

Regency Law of 7 November 1831 declaring the slave trade illegal, expeditions to Africa

resumed as early as 1835 under pressures from the coffee planters and their representatives.

From 1835 to 1850 coffee plantations expanded rapidly as about 315,000 illegal African slaves

arrived at small ports along the coastline of Rio de Janeiro and San Paulo. When the

transatlantic slave trade finally did come to an end, demographic estimations in the valley based

on official reports of Rio de Janeiro were that 72% of the slave, 60% of the free persons, of

color and 49% of the whole population were African (Marquese, 196).

Landscape Management and Labor Processes in Paraiba Valley

The process of production used in Paraiba Valley contrasted sharply to the Arab model

of cultivation used during the Islamic monopoly. The Arab model saw bushes being planted in

the shadow of massive trees. They remained uncut and unpruned to reach median heights of 4

to 6 meters. The fruit was harvested by peasants who extend mats under the bush and shook

the coffee tree, dried by leaving those same mats out in the sun, and finally the pulp was
separated from the bean using millstones. A labor process was used in Paraiba Valley that was

adopted from the Dutch and French that was utilized in the Indian Ocean before being brought

across the Atlantic. Bushes were instead planted in vertically aligned rows allowing masters to

see with ease the work done by their slaves (Marquese, 198). The bushes also were cut off

when they reached an adult mans height so the highest branches were easily reached by

workers. This style of planting was used all throughout Atlantic slavery that started to produce

coffee on a large scale. New producing areas in Cuba and Brazil appeared in response to the

aftermath of the Haitian Revolution. As soon as wide-scale Brazilian coffee activity developed,

the production methods of aligned planting with bush topping were adopted. The local

knowledge of the Paraiba Valley plantations culminated into a progressive learning of

agricultural techniques. Up to 1835 the writings on coffee edited in Brazil only tried to spread

Caribbean techniques without referring concretely to the incredible growing rates on Paraiba

Valley.

The first work published based on the experience of Brazilian coffee production was

published in 1836. The local practice had demonstrated the soil in the undulating hills typical of

the valley landscape to be the most suitable for coffee culture. Preparation of fields followed the

tradition of cutting and burning the forest which implied a minimal expenditure of work time and

active growth of coffee trees. Planting ran in vertical lines from the top of hills to the bottom with

the spacing between lines ranging from 10 to 12 feet, depending on the quality of the land. For

the first three years the coffee plants matured and the wide spaces were used to grow corn,

beans, and cassava to both provide shade for the recently planted bushes and to maintain the

slaves production on food crops. Coffee bushes older than two decades provided a reduced

output that did not offset the cost of operation meaning it was necessary to plant new trees

every year, totaling around 10% of the total bushes on the plantation.

This method also contrasts with Caribbean techniques where the standard distance

between lines was 6 feet. This disparity in distance was partially accounted for because of the
larger amount of untouched soil available in Brazil compared to the Caribbean islands, but also

because of the organization of the labor process. The vertical alignments and large spaces

adhered to supervision as the means to control the work of the slaves. When assigned a row of

bushes to harvest or weed, a slave would work from the top of the hill to the bottom while

always remaining in view of the overseer or foreman at the base of the hill.

Labor Organization

Brazilian coffee plantations combined the two basic models of labor organization

employed in Atlantic slave plantations: the gang system and the task system. The task system

in Brazil was slightly different from what was used in Caribbean coffee zones. For example, in

good crop years in the Caribbean planters demanded from the slaves a task of picking a fixed

volume and would grant the slave the remaining free time at the end of the task. In Brazil, the

main difference was the incentive offered to the slave. After picking the specified amount, the

slave could either have the free time after accomplishing the task or a monetary reward for

exceeding the minimum quantity to be picked. However, there was a third incentivizing method

based on the quantity picked rather than quality. By aimlessly collecting green and ripe fruit, it

was clear that in years of good harvests the quantity from each slave would considerably

exceed the specified minimum demanded as standard. The third model became the norm in

Paraiba Valley.

But the Brazilian planters would find that they also had to motivate their slaves by

promising monetary gains for extra work. By doing so, they got the chance to bargain over the

very conditions of the coffee production process. The adoption of gang labor, indiscriminate

picking of green and ripe fruits and individual measurement allowed an incredible amount of

work to be had from the slaves. In the French colony of Saint-Domingues coffee plantations a

field slave usually accounted for between 1000 and 1500 bushes, about the same number a
Jamaican slave might be assigned. In the beginnings of the coffee economy in Brazil, a slave

would cultivate around 2000 bushes on average. The specialization of the Paraiba Valley coffee

plantations in the 1830s and 1840s increased the amount of trees allocated to the enslaved

workers. Data for the period 1847-1850 says a plantation in Rio de Janeiro with 72,000 bushes

was cultivated by 34 field slaves, an average of 2,118 trees per worker.

To elicit an ever increasing labor demand from the slaves, overseers and drivers had to

negotiate with them on common ground. In one case gone horribly wrong, a Portuguese man

was hired to replace an overseer who had been dismissed for knowing about, but not punishing,

slaves who stole coffee to exchange for liquor or tobacco with another former overseer who

continued to live on the plantation as a resident and owner of a small tavern. The Portuguese

man was murdered on the plantation after only two weeks. The slaves resented him because he

never forgave them and was always nearby, so they were not as comfortable with him as they

had been with the previous overseer. The Portuguese man also tried to increase the work

cadence to deal with the crops need in its final harvest from three alqueires (a measure of

volume) to four, and those who didnt meet the new demand were punished. The previous

overseer didnt punish the slaves. He was known to leave them in the fields and take a nap, and

the slaves were fit to do the same.

This exemplifies the stark contrast between the possible accommodation between field

overseers, drivers and slaves, and the tensions caused by attempts to increase coffee

production. The complexity of the hierarchal organization was highlighted in the case of a slave

gang member named Marcolino who, feeling cold one September morning was allowed by his

driver to leave the gang and return to the quarters to retrieve a blanket. Marcolino was

intercepted by another slave yard overseer who verbally scolded him before proceeding to whip

him because of his obligation to follow the gang. Marcolino then stabbed the overseer and

another driver who came to the overseers aid. The general manager of the plantation cited a

flaw in the organization of the labor management after the stabbings by saying Marcolino was
only subject to his personal driver, and that the yard overseer had no power or authority over

Marcolino because while he was a driver, he was a driver of a gang that Marcolino did not

belong to. The manager would state that the internal gang composition and chain of command

should be respected to maintain order. This left open the possibility for informal agreements to

be made between drivers and their gangs that could go unnoticed by the higher managers and

masters (Marquese, 206-8).

The vertical planted rows with large spaces in-between allowed for easy
supervision.
 Decline of Plantations in Paraiba Valley

The Paraiba Valley was indubitably the area of greatest production of Brazilian coffee.

However, a number of factors would inevitably begin to reduce productivity before slave labor

disappeared with the emancipation decree of May 13, 1888.

Plantations continued to expand through the cutting and burning of virgin forests with

reckless abandon. Young coffee bushes were being carelessly planted year after year as if there

would always be soil available, while the reality was that tired soil was being abandoned for

more distant, fertile areas. Planters doubled the number of weedings per year and brought in

more slaves only to repeatedly harvest less and less. The limited land reserves meant the

growing techniques of the past could not be used any longer. For over 300 years these wasteful

agriculture techniques tore the fertility from the soil. Planters on these coffee farms were often

second or third generation who would turn away from any sort of investigation into

meteorological changes in the area simply because the growing methods were familiar and

traditional for the area.

A second factor into the decline of production in the area was the problem of the sauva

ant. It seemed impossible to rid the crop of these insects as attempted means of eradicating

them included ditches laboriously dug by a half-dozen Blacks to extinguish only one ant heap.

Neither water nor combinations of heat and smoke blown by bellows could send them away

either (Stein, 335). The ants continued to bore holes in and harm the crops which amplified

other setbacks such as erosion from torrential downpours in the year 1876 and unexpected

plagues from grasshoppers and birds. Each of these hurdles exacerbated the effect of the

others. As the rainfall was no longer held in place by the topsoil, the flows of the streams had

also become irregular with the changing weather patterns. All of these summed to incalculable

losses of the coffee fruit (336).

 Even with the introduction of early industrial processes in the Paraiba Valley, the deficit

from the tired soil and an aging slaves and bushes could not be overcome. As was pointed out

in 1883, machines do not produce, they merely utilized production better (352). A financial

crisis was forming as planters increasingly had to take out loans while being unable to repay

them, in the process incurring massive debts to the state or other lenders. Plantation owners

were unable to replace slaves who died or improve and fully utilize their machinery. As the

plants aged and withered, debts accrued, and machinery continued to fall short of making

returns on investments, the only component of any value on these estates was the slaves

themselves and even that value was on the decline. This downward spiral met its absolute end

on May 13, 1888 when abolition was made law.

Principal Exports as a Percent of Brazils Total Exports, 1650-1970. The green bars
represent coffee exports and show immense growth from the mid-1800s to 1900.
 References

De Bivar Marquese, R. (2008). African Diaspora, Slavery, and the Paraiba Valley Coffee

Plantation Landscape: Nineteenth-Century Brazil. Review (Fernand Braudel Center),

31(2), 195-216. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40241714

Stein, Stanley J. The Passing of the Coffee Plantation in the Paraiba Valley. The Hispanic

American Historical Review, vol. 33, no. 3, 1953, pp. 331364.,

www.jstor.org/stable/2509584.