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PORTO SEGURO
History
 "(...)
we had sight of land! As is known, first a large mountain, very tall and round,
and of others lowers hills to the south of it; and the land, with large trees;
which to the tall mountain the captain gave the name of the Monte Pascoal (The
Easter Mountain) and to the land A Terra de Vera Cruz (Land of Vera Cruz)!
(...). There we stayed all the night. Thursday in the morning, we raised the
sails and went ahead in direction to the land, going the small boots ahead (...)
until half a league of the land, where we all threw anchors in front of the
mouth of a river (...) And from there we saw men that walked along the beach,
seven or eight, according to the small boat that arrived first (...). Brown,
necked, with nothing to cover their shame. They carried bows in their hands, and
their arrows. They came all heavily in direction of the little boat. And Nicolau
Coelho made them a sign to lay down the lows. And they laid them down. But there
could not be any talk or understanding that you could use, for the sea breaking
on the coast. He only threw a red cap and a linen cap that he used on his head
and a black sombrero. One of them threw him a sombrero of bird feathers, long,
with a small crown of red and brown feathers, like a parrot (...)". This is the
way Pero Vaz Caminhas described the discovery of new lands, on April 22, 1500,
to the Portuguese Crown.
The place suitably described makes reference to the land of the Coroa Vermelha,
inhabited by the Tupiniquim Indians. During the three following years the region
was practically uninhabited by the Portuguese and it was only on the arrival of
the Jesuits in the expedition of Gonçalvo Coelho, that the land started to be
occupied. The zero mark of Brazil was stuck with a Cross that can be found today
in the city of Porto Seguro (Cidade Alta). It was only in 1534, with the
physical division of Brazil into hereditary captaincies by the King of Portugal,
Dom João III, the colonization was duly started.
Porto Seguro ended up being the headquarters of the captaincy of the same name,
belonging and come with his family and many settler to face "the land of the
giants", founding, besides Porto Seguro, seven other villages. He built mills,
planted sugarcane and systematized the cutting the wood. However, he had to go
back to Portugal because of bad conduct with the Jesuits and their settlers,
selling his land in 1556 to the Duke of Aveiro. Two centuries later, in 1759 by
the initiative of the Marquis of Pombal, the captaincy was returned to the Crown.
The first Brazilian housing center was elevated to the category of a city in
1891 by the president of the province of Bahia, José Gonçalves, being the first
"mayor" the doctor and professor Antonio Ricaldi. However, the development of
the place delayed a long time to reach there and it was only 20 years ago, with
the beginning of the tourism, the city started to develop and grow. The economy
of Porto Seguro passed through the cycles of the sugar cane and vegetal
extraction (wood) in the beginning of the occupation until the beginning of this
century when it passed on to cattle-breeding and the planting of horti-fruits.
As in all of Brazil, the mixture of races is very evident. The African presence
is the strongest in its roots, influencing mainly in the culinary (acarajé,
vatapá, ximxim de galinha, etc.)and so on, the dance (capoeira), the religion
and the musica with its uncountable rhythms that attract visitors from all over
the world, specially during Carnival. But the indigenous is present at all
times, through the Pataxó Indians, coming from the interior. They have a
striking presence in the city with their dances, food, handicraft and even
natural medicine. Recently the city received a great number of foreigners,
mainly from Argentina and Europeans and people that immigrated from other
regions of Brazil. |
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