“O semeador e o ladrilhador” is the fourth chapter of Buarque de Holanda’s Raízes do Brasil. Having previously outlined the characteristics of Iberian culture [SEE DOCUMENT I.6.4], the author turns his attention to the implantation of European culture on Latin American soil. In this excerpt, Buarque de Holanda—who participated in São Paulo’s Semana de Arte Moderna of 1922—situates the establishment of cities as a strategy for domination during Europe’s colonial enterprise in Latin America. Buarque de Holanda outlines the differences between the Portuguese and Spanish colonies through their respective patterns of urbanization. Unlike Spain, Portugal had no Phillip II to develop the Laws of the Indies that regulated the locating, building, and populating of settlements across Spanish America. Instead, as a Portuguese colony, Brazil inherited a vision of its territory as a mere place of passage. De Holanda describes the fundamental difference as follows: The Spanish were akin to bricklayers, seeking to construct an orderly new Spain in the Americas; the Portuguese were like sowers, harvesting a new enterprise in the Americas, then departing with great wealth. This excerpt is translated from a 1995 version of Raízes do Brasil [(São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995), 95–138].
The marked preference for rural life agrees well with the Portuguese spirit of domination, which did not impose imperative and absolute rules and yielded every time immediate circumstances counseled [and] which cared less for building, planning, or laying foundations than for importing an easy wealth, almost within hand’s reach, [through coastal trading posts known as feitorias].
In fact, city life is essentially anti-natural, associated with manifestations of the spirit and will, since cities are opposed to nature. For many conquering nations, the building of cities was the most decisive instrument of domination they knew. [The German sociologist] Max Weber admirably demonstrates how the foundation of cities represented—for the Near East and particularly for the Hellenistic world and Imperial Rome—the clear means for creating local instruments of power. He adds that the same phenomenon is found in China, where, even during the [nineteenth] century, the subjugation of the Miao-Tse tribes could be identified with the urbanization of their lands. It is with good reason that these [different] civilizations applied a similar strategy, since experience has demonstrated that [city building], above all other [strategies], is the most enduring and efficient. The economic frontiers established in time and space by the foundation of the cities of the Roman Empire also became the boundaries of the world that could later pride itself on the inheritance of Classical culture.1 As the rural territories greatly gained in importance, the freer they became from the influence of the institutions of the urban centers, that is, the farther they were from the frontiers.
But we do not need to go so far historically and geographically. In our own continent, Spanish colonization was broadly characterized by what the Portuguese lacked: persistent diligence in securing the military, economic, and political domination of the metropolis over the conquered lands through the creation of large, stable, and well-organized centers of population. A conscientious and provident zeal directed the establishment of the Spanish cities in America. In the early days [of colonization], there was ample freedom for individual efforts, so that through memorable exploits, new glories and lands would be brought under the dominion of the crown of Castile. Soon thereafter, however, the heavy hand of the State made its weight known, imposing discipline on the new and old inhabitants of the American countries, mollifying rivalries and dissension, channeling the raw energy of the colonists to the greater advantage of the metropolis. Once settlement was accomplished and the construction of buildings completed, but “not before”—as expressly recommended by the Ordenanzas de descubrimiento nuevo y población [Ordinances for New Discoveries and Populations] of 1563—the officials and settlers should, with great diligence and sacred dedication, undertake to bring peacefully all the natives of the land to the bosom of the Holy Church and to obedience towards the civil authorities.
The characteristic layout of urban centers in Spanish America reveals the clear desire to master and rectify the capricious fantasy of the wild landscape: it is a resolute act of human will. Streets are not permitted to follow the twists and unevenness of the earth: rather, the [Spanish American colonizers] impose on them the gratuitous emphasis of the straight line. The grid plan was not born, at least here, from a religious idea, such as that which inspired the construction of the cities of Latium and later the Roman colonies in keeping with Etruscan rites: it is simply a triumph of the desire to order and dominate the conquered world. The straight line, expressing the direction of the will towards a preconceived and chosen end, clearly manifests itself in this resolution. It is not by chance that [straight lines] noticeably dominate all these Spanish cities, the first “geometric” cities built by Europeans on our continent.
Among the descendents of Castilian conquerors an abundant legislation precluded out of hand any fantasy or whim in the construction of the urban centers. The rules of the Laws of the Indies, which governed the establishment of cities in America, exhibit the same bureaucratic sense of minutiae that oriented the casuists of those times, occupied with enumerating, defining, and judging complicated matters of conscience for the edification and guidance of the father confessors. In the pursuit of a place to be populated, it was necessary, first of all, to examine carefully the healthiest regions, considering the abundance of men, young and old, well-built, of good disposition and color, free from diseases; with healthy animals of working size, with offspring and healthful fodder; where there were no venomous or noxious things; the sky clear and benevolent, the air pure and sweet.
If [the place to be settled] were on the coast, it was necessary to consider the shelter, depth, and potential for defense of the port, and, wherever possible, [to find a place] where the waves did not come in from the South or the West. For the inland settlements, extremely high places, exposed to the winds and of difficult access were not to be chosen, nor were those that were too low, which tend to be unhealthy. Rather [they should be located] at a median altitude, exposed to the north and south winds. If there were mountains, [the settlement] should be along the flank running east to west. If the choice were to fall to a place on the banks of a river, it should be situated in such a way that at sunrise, the [light should strike] the village first and, only afterward, the waters.
The building of the city should always start with the so-called Plaza Mayor [Main Square]. When by the seashore, this Square should be in the port, at the point of disembarkation; when in a midland zone, at the city center. The shape of the Square should be quadrilateral, its width at least two-thirds of its length, so that horses could run through it on festival days. In overall size, [the Square] should be proportional to the number of inhabitants; but since the population could increase, it should not measure less than two hundred feet in width by three hundred in length, yet never more than eight hundred by 532 feet. The median and good proportion would be six hundred feet in length by four hundred in width. The Square was the basis for laying out the streets: the four main [streets] would extend from the center of each side of the Square. From each angle two more streets would branch off, with care taken so that the four angles face the four cardinal points. In cold regions, the streets should be wide; narrow, in the hot ones. However, if horses were present, better they be wide.2
In this way, the town clearly arose from a center; the Plaza Mayor plays the same role here as the cardo and the decumanus plays in the Roman cities, with the two lines traced by the lituus of the city planner, from North to South and East to West, serving as references for the future planning of the urban network. Yet, while the methodical [Roman] plan intended merely to reproduce on Earth the cosmic order itself, in the Spanish American cities what is expressed is the concept that man can intervene arbitrarily in the course of things and that history not only “happens” but can also be directed and even fabricated.3 This concept attains its best expression and apogee in the Jesuits’s organization of their Indian settlements. They not only introduced [this concept] into the material culture of the Guaraní Missions, “fabricating” geometric cities made of carved stone and adobe in a region rich in wood and very poor in quarries, but also extended [this concept] to their institutions. Everything was so regulated, following specific guidelines, that in the [Jesuit] Indian settlements located today in Bolivian territory “conjuges Indiani media nocte sono tintinabuli ad exercendum coitum excitarentur.”4 In Portuguese America, however, the work of the Jesuits was a rare and miraculous exception. Beside the truly enormous phenomenon of will and intelligence that this work constituted and to which the Spanish colonization also aspired, Portugal’s enterprise seems timid and ill-equipped to succeed. Compared to the [effort] of the Castilians in their conquests, the effort of the Portuguese distinguishes itself mainly by its predominating character of commercial exploitation, thus repeating the example of colonization in Antiquity, above all in the Phoenician and Greek situations. The Castilians, in contrast, wanted to transform the occupied countries into an organic extension of their own. Although we cannot truly say that Castile followed this parallel course to the very end, it cannot be disputed that this was, at least, their intention and initial direction. In their eagerness to make of the new lands more than simple feitorias, the Castilians were sometimes led to begin the construction of the colonial edifice from the top down. In 1538, [for example] the University of Santo Domingo was created. The [University] of San Marcos, in Lima—with all the privileges, exemptions, and limitations of the [University of] Salamanca in Spain—was established by royal decree in 1551, only twenty years after the beginning of the conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro. Also dating to 1551 is the University of Mexico City, which inaugurated its courses in 1553. Still other institutions of higher education were founded in the sixteenth century and during the two centuries that followed. At the end of the colonial period, no fewer than twenty-three universities had been erected in the Castilian protectorates, six of them first-rate (without including those of Mexico and Lima). Even during the period of Spanish domination, tens of thousands of the sons of America would pass through these institutions, to complete their studies without having to cross the Ocean.5
This example is only one of the aspects of the Spanish colonization, but it serves well to illustrate its creative will. This is not to say that this creative will always distinguished the Castilian endeavor or that good intentions persistently triumphed and prevailed over man’s inertia. But it is, undeniably, for this reason that their work differs from that of the Portuguese in Brazil. We could say that here [in Brazil] the colony is simply a place of passage, for the government as well as for the subjects. This is, by the way, the impression that [Henry] Koster, [who wrote Travels in Brazil (1816)], would take away from our land as late as the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the Castilians would continue in the New World the centuries-old struggle against the infidels; the coincidental arrival of Columbus to America in exactly the same year that the last Muslim stronghold on the Peninsula [the Caliphate of Córdoba] fell seems to have been providentially calculated to demonstrate that there was no discontinuity between the two endeavors. In their colonization of America [the Castilians] only reproduced, with the improvements brought by experience, the same processes already employed in the colonization of their lands in the metropolis after the expulsion of the disciples of Muhammad. Moreover, there was the significant fact that in the regions of our continent allotted to [Spain], the climate did not generally present great difficulties. A considerable part of these regions was located outside of the tropical zone and another part at high altitudes. Even in the city of Quito, that is to say, exactly on the Equatorial line, the Andalusian immigrant would find a constant temperature which was not more severe than the one of his land of origin.6
The great population centers built by the Spaniards in the New World were located precisely on these sites where the altitude allowed the Europeans, even in the Torrid Zone, to enjoy a climate similar to the ones they habituated to in their countries. Unlike the Portuguese colonization, which was above all coastal and tropical, the Castilian one seems to deliberately flee the seashore, preferring the inlands and plateaus. Besides, there were explicit recommendations with regard to this in the ordinances for new discoveries and populations. You should not choose, said the legislator, sites for population in maritime places because of the danger posed by pirates; these sites are not very healthy; the people are not diligent in tilling and cultivating the land; and their customs are ill-formed. Only when there are good harbors should settlements be installed along the sea’s edge and then only those truly indispensable to the penetration, commerce, and defense of the land.
. . .
1
Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gessellschaft [Science and Society], vol. II, (Tübingen, 1925), 713.
2
Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de Indias, (Madrid: 1756), 90–2 ff.
3
We should not exclude the hypothesis of a direct influence of the Greco-Roman models on the design of the Spanish American cities. Recent studies even demonstrate the close affiliation of Felipe II´s instructions for the establishment of the New World cities to the classic treatise by Vitruvius. Dan Stanislawski, “Early Spanish Town Planning in the New World,” Geographical Review 37, no. 1 (January 1947): 94–105.
4
Cf. A. Bastian, Die Kulturländer des Alten Amerika, vol. II Beiträge zu Geschichtlichen Vorarbeiten, (Berlin: 1878), 838.
5
From only the University of Mexico, we know with assurance that in the period between 1775 and Independence 7,850 bachelor’s degrees and 473 doctoral and licentiate degrees were awarded. Cf. John Tate Lane, “The Transplantation of the Scholastic University,” University of Miami Hispanic American Studies, vol. I (Coral Gables, Florida: November, 1939), 29.
6
Bernhard Brandt, Südamerika (Breslau, 1923), 69.