Liberty Farm: A Family Portrait

By Izai Amorim

Set in the semi-arid backlands of northeastern Brazil and spanning one century and three generations, this family saga is a complex psychological portrait of family life, intertwined with Brazil's history from the birth of the republic to the end of the military dictatorship in 1989.

Liberty Farm is a chronicle of family and so

• Language: English
• Publisher: Izai Amorim
• Release date: Jul 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9783982165684

Izai Amorim

"Make me think, make me laugh, make my day!" That's why Izai Amorim reads and writes books. He has great interest in the interplay of media, information, and politics in a globalized world and the quest for identity and borders in a worldwide cultural melting pot. Izai was born and raised in Brazil but spent most of his adult life abroad, briefly in the USA, mostly in Germany. He was trained as an architect and worked many years in this profession. But his real passion is story telling. At some point in his life he decided to mix storytelling with architecture, changed professions, and became a branding consultant, something that he loves and has been doing to this day.

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LIBERTY FARM

A FAMILY PORTRAIT

IZAI AMORIM

About

Liberty Farm: A Family Portrait

Set in the semi-arid backlands of northeastern Brazil and spanning one century and three generations, this family saga is a complex psychological portrait of family life, intertwined with Brazil’s history from the birth of the republic to the end of the military dictatorship in 1989.

Liberty Farm is a chronicle of family and society, history and geography, life and death, loyalty and justice, truth and connivance. It’s also a tale of paternal and filial love in all of its forms: strongly felt, unreciprocated, withheld, yearned for, never obtained. Father, please look at me...

The death of the favorite son creates a love black hole that sucks away the father’s entire love. Invisible like the ones in the sky, this love black hole will rule the family for decades, its existence only revealed by the odd behavior of the three older sons. The family must always stay together...

Copyright

Copyright © 2022 by Izai Amorim

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

First edition: 2022

Published by Izai Amorim

ISBN numbers:

978-3982165660 — Hardcover (black & white photographs)

978-3982165677 — Softcover (black & white photographs)

978-3982165684 — Ebook (color photographs)

Photographs and book design by Izai Amorim

Author’s website | Book website | Author’s mailing list

Dedicated to

Renate,

Julia and David,

and Paulo.

In memory of

my grandparents, Jacy and Izai Amorim.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Disclaimer

Liberty Farm is a work of fiction, inspired by actual events and actual people.

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

Albert Camus

Twin Projects: Brazil

Liberty Farm: A Family Portrait is the fiction part of the Twin Projects: Brazil. The graphic, non-fiction part is the photographic essay Sky Over Liberty Farm.

Contents

Read This First

Important Note on Brazilian Family Names

Maps

Brazil

Bahia

Liberty Farm

Prologue

Book 1: 1889–1929

Book 2: 1929–1945

Book 3: 1945–1955

Book 4: 1955–1964

Book 5: 1964–1968

Book 6: 1968–1971

Book 7: 1971–1972

Book 8: 1972–1979

Book 9: 1979–1989

Epilogue

Characters

All Characters

Main Characters

Secondary Characters

Other Characters

The Almeida Family

Timeline of Brazilian History

Glossary of Words in Portuguese

Read This First: Important Note on Brazilian Family Names

In Portuguese speaking countries, people have two surnames, one each for the maternal and the paternal lineage. The paternal family name comes last and is the primary surname. Jonas Duarte Almeida belongs to the Almeida family and is usually called only Jonas Almeida.

After the wedding, the wife drops her paternal family name in order to take her husband’s. But she keeps her maternal family name, which her children also inherit, unless a boy is named after his father or grandfather. In this case, he gets respectively the father’s or grandfather’s complete name with the word Júnior or Neto (grandson in Portuguese) attached to the end.

This leads to different surnames inside the same family. In this story Irene Campos Silveira marries Jonas Duarte Almeida and becomes Irene Campos Almeida. Three of her children are also called Campos Almeida. One son is named after his father and has therefore the surnames Duarte Almeida. Another is named after his grandfather (Ezra de Souza Almeida) and has de Souza Almeida as surnames. The only family name they all share is Almeida.

* * *

Many settlers in Brazil took indigenous women for wives, who had no surnames in the Portuguese language. The couple’s children had therefore only the paternal family name. When a woman with only one surname married, she could either replace it with her husband’s or keep it as if it were her maternal family name.

In this novel, Helena Duarte married Ezra de Souza Almeida to become Helena Duarte Almeida. Duarte is her father’s paternal family name. Helena has no maternal family name because her maternal grandmother was an indigenous woman.

* * *

The formal way to address people in Portuguese is using the words Senhor for a man and Senhora for a woman, equivalent respectively to Mr. and Mrs. While in English Mr. and Mrs. are followed by the person’s last name, in Portuguese Senhor and Senhora are followed by the first name. Jonas Almeida is respectfully addressed as Senhor Jonas and Irene Almeida as Senhora Irene.

In some parts of Brazil, Senhor is shortened to Seu and Dona is used instead of Senhora, resulting in Seu Jonas and Dona Irene.

Maps

Brazil

Brazil is the biggest country in Latin America and the fifth largest in the world by area (after Russia, Canada, the United States, and China). The Portuguese discovered Brazil in 1500.

Salvador, in the state of Bahia, was founded in 1549 to be the capital.

Rio de Janeiro, founded in 1565, became the capital in 1763.

Brasília, built from scratch in the late 1950s to be the new capital, was inaugurated in 1960.

São Paulo, founded in 1554, is the biggest and most important city in Brazil.

Bahia

Bahia is Brazil’s fifth state by area. It’s about the size of France and almost as big as Texas. The Sertão da Ressaca is the southern region, including the cities of Caetité, Bom Jesus dos Meiras, Vitória da Conquista, Condeúba, and São João do Alípio. Itapetinga, the closest city to Liberty Farm, is located outside the Sertão da Ressaca.

Cities and places relevant to the story:

Bom Jesus dos Meiras (since 1931: Brumado)

First settlement in 1809. Indigenous people decimated in 1813. Ezra’s birthplace. He lived there 1889–1907.

Caetité

First settlement in 1740. Biggest city and cultural pole of the Sertão da Ressaca. Juliano, and later Ezra’s son Jonas, went to school there.

Condeúba

First settlement in 1745. Indigenous people decimated in 1805. Juliano’s birthplace. Juliano lived there 1882–1904 and 1907–1915.

Itapetinga

First settlement in 1924. Closest city to Liberty Farm (about ten kilometers). First elementary school built in 1937. Family lived there during school year.

Liberty Farm

Area claimed by Juliano in 1912. Ezra bought a piece of the farm in 1922. Both Juliano and Ezra lived there. Juliano 1922–1945; Ezra 1924–1927 and 1929–1971.

Salvador (state capital)

First settlement in 1549. Brazil’s first capital. Most of Ezra’s children went to university there. Many settled there afterward.

São João do Alípio (since 1961: Presidente Jânio Quadros)

First settlement in 1876. Both Juliano and Ezra lived there. Juliano 1904–1907 and 1915–1922; Ezra 1907–1924 and 1927–1929.

Vitória da Conquista (usually called only Conquista)

First settlement in 1783, after the indigenous people were decimated in 1782. Second biggest city in the region. Many of Ezra’s children went to high school there.

Liberty Farm: A Family Portrait

Prologue

When a very big star dies, it becomes a black hole. It’s a fascinating physical phenomenon. After the star’s fuel is completely spent, the star collapses under its own weight. Because the star’s mass stays constant while its volume shrinks down, there is such an enormous gain in density and consequently in gravitational field that eventually even light can’t escape the star’s surface, making it invisible to the human eye. Only the abnormal activity of nearby stars due to the black hole’s gravitational pull gives away its existence.

What we could call emotional black holes exist right here on Earth, absorbing not light but feelings. Invisible like the ones in the sky, their existence is only revealed by the odd behavior of people around them.

In the backlands of northeastern Brazil, in a place called Liberty Farm, a love black hole was born in June, 1945. The cause was the death of a twelve-year-old child.

* * *

Dawn came a few minutes before six, announcing the end of the wake. The casket lay on a table in the middle of the farmhouse’s living room. The parents sat on one side of it, their children on the opposite side. On the veranda were relatives and friends, while outside the house were farmworkers and their families. All were silent, except for a few women praying the rosary in a low voice.

Shortly after dawn, two farmworkers began to dig the grave at the farm cemetery, close to the house. The ground in that part of the farm was full of stones. Each time a shovel hit one, it made a loud metallic noise.

When he heard it for the first time, the fifty-six-year-old father said No! in an anguished voice and started to cry. Shaking his head, Ezra kept repeating, Nelson, my little Nelson...

His favorite son would be under the earth in less than thirty minutes. That would have been hard under any circumstance. But he could have saved the boy if only he hadn’t been so stubborn. That knowledge increased his grief exponentially.

* * *

Seated next to Ezra, dressed all in black, his forty-year-old wife could hardly wait until the burial was over to lock herself up in her bedroom and cry her soul out. Helena never cried in front of the children. It was bad enough that Ezra did.

Keeping a straight face, she looked at her seven surviving children sitting opposite her. Helena could see how devastated the children were by Ezra’s meltdown, especially the sons.

Oh, Ezra, how can you cause so much extra pain to our children in such a terrible moment? Can’t you see that they are starving for a few drops of your love and attention?

* * *

In the first row opposite the parents, firstborn Jonas, almost twenty, sat next to his two-year-younger sister Lara, as in every wake. Jonas and Lara had learned to dread wakes in their childhood, influenced by the scary ghost stories told by their superstitious nanny. Since then, whenever they had to attend a wake, Jonas and Lara automatically sat together. They even had the urge to hold each other’s hands, as they had done so often in their childhood.

Ezra’s meltdown made Jonas want to cry. But like his mother, he believed that he had the duty to keep a straight face in order to calm his younger siblings. Being the firstborn was a burden he had to carry with dignity.

Thankfully, it didn’t take long to dig a grave. The suffering would end soon, and he would get as far away as possible from that farmhouse. That thought made him feel simultaneously relieved and ashamed.

Jonas wished his grandfather on his mother’s side had come. Juliano was away on one of his trips. The fact that someone didn’t come to a burial wasn’t anything extraordinary, and meant no disrespect in the backlands of Brazil. In that hot climate, people couldn’t wait long to bury their dead.

Jonas’s father and grandfather were almost of the same age, only seven years apart. To Jonas, it was like having two old fathers or two young grandfathers. He knew about the tension between Ezra and Juliano. The two had been at odds since Jonas could remember. The major problem was education, Jonas erroneously believed. There was much more, but he couldn’t see it.

Juliano had had only a few years of schooling, but it had been enough to give him a lifelong love of books and learning. Though he was an autodidact and had a huge library at home, Juliano hadn’t educated his own children beyond elementary school, wrongly assuming that they would continue learning by themselves. Unfortunately, his children never cared about books. This wouldn’t happen to his grandchildren, he decided. At least not to Helena’s children, since Ezra could afford to send them to school. There were better occupations in life than farming. A college degree was the best inheritance Ezra could leave to his children.

Helena agreed. She didn’t want her children to have the same fate as their parents. The boys shouldn’t become brute, uneducated farmers. The girls shouldn’t marry such farmers and bear children with the same frequency as cows bred calves. It was a life without meaning and purpose. The children must go to college, whatever it cost.

Ezra was illiterate and could only sign his name when the occasion required. He wished he could read the contracts he signed, and agreed that some education was indeed necessary. But college? What for? Despite his illiteracy, Ezra had made and lost fortunes. Juliano, with all his books, had never made any money. What good was an education if you had to sell land to make ends meet, leaving nothing behind to your children?

When Juliano first claimed Liberty Farm, it had an area of eight thousand hectares, about twenty thousand acres. He could have taken much more. The forest didn’t belong to anyone. But Juliano thought it would be enough. Ten years later, he sold a quarter of the farm to Ezra, who was engaged to Juliano’s oldest daughter, Helena. It wasn’t long before Juliano had to sell another piece. Then another. In the end, he was able to keep only twenty percent of the original area, which was divided among his eight children.

Juliano proved Ezra’s point — education didn’t put food on the table. College was a fool’s delusion. But Ezra couldn’t stop that delusion. It happened almost by stealth. First came elementary school. He agreed to it, having himself experienced the negative sides of illiteracy. When Jonas asked to go to high school, Ezra wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but he hoped that high school would keep the boy away from Juliano’s bad influence. Having allowed one child to attend high school, he couldn’t stop the others. But all would end well, he believed. After finishing high school, the boys would come home to manage their piece of the farm or start trading. It would be easier for the girls to find good husbands.

Six months before Nelson’s death, Jonas had finished high school and came back to Liberty Farm to tell Ezra that he was about to move to the state capital, the city of Salvador, to prepare for the university admission exams. He wished to become a civil engineer. The country was industrializing at great speed and couldn’t build roads fast enough. Having traveled so much on muleback in his childhood, Jonas could appreciate better than most people how badly the backlands needed paved roads.

When Jonas told Ezra about his college plans, Ezra didn’t explode, as Jonas had feared. Ezra choked, looked deeply disappointed at Jonas, shook his head, and said, You’re not going. I’m not paying for it.

Jonas told his father that he would use his own money. Children usually got heifers or calves from relatives and family friends on their birthdays. In twenty years, Jonas’s cattle had multiplied to a small herd. The federal university he was planning to attend charged no tuition fees. He only needed to cover his living costs. Now legally of age, he could dispose of his cattle at will. There was nothing Ezra could do about it.

Ezra felt betrayed. At that moment he realized that after Jonas left, he wouldn’t be able to stop any of the other children. He wasn’t about to lose only one child, but all of them. Ezra’s answer to Jonas was devastating. You can go. You can all go. I have Nelson!

That afternoon father and son had hurt and disappointed each other immensely. Afterward, Jonas couldn’t bear his father’s accusing eyes and spent most of the time at his grandfather’s house. Unlike Ezra, Juliano was very proud of Jonas, soon to be the first family member to attend college. Both talked for hours about the future: living in the capital, college life, building roads in the backlands. Jonas felt good on those occasions.

Jonas couldn’t understand why his father and grandfather were so different. He felt guilty for loving his grandfather more than his own father. Actually, Jonas felt a lot of guilt. For betraying his father. For loving his grandfather more. For not caring much about his eight-year-younger brother Nelson, now lying dead in the small casket in front of him. Jonas never had a chance to bond with the boy because he had already left for boarding school when Nelson was born.

There was no elementary school anywhere in the region at the time Jonas reached school age, so he had to go to boarding school in a town very far away. At that time, trade caravans crisscrossed the backlands. Juliano asked a caravan leader to take Jonas to school and bring him back for the summer vacation. The trip on muleback took three weeks each way, making it impossible to come home for the one-month-long winter break.

Only seven years old, Jonas was so small that his feet had to be tied to the saddle so that he wouldn’t fall off. He endured three weeks of riding a mule from dawn to dusk, eating fried jerked meat and manioc flower every single day, only to get to school. Jonas paid a very high price for his schooling, higher than any of his younger siblings. When an elementary school was built in a settlement close to the farm, all his siblings attended it, leaving home only for high school in the much closer town of Conquista. By then, one could travel from Itapetinga to Conquista on the back of a truck in only six hours.

The only child to stay behind after concluding elementary school was Nelson, because of his ill health. He suffered from cyanosis, what people in the backlands called blue-blood disease. Due to circulatory problems, not enough oxygen reached his blood. This made the skin on some parts of his body look blue, especially his lips, fingers, and toes.

Maybe that illness was God’s solution to the family’s problem, Jonas had thought at the time. Nelson would grow up safely on the farm, and later manage it. His father would have a companion. All other children could go to college. Everyone would be happy.

Now Nelson was dead and his father was a wreck. But what hurt the most was to know that Ezra wouldn’t be suffering so intensely if Jonas were the one lying dead in that casket.

Oh, Father, you never gave me a chance...

* * *

Lara was angry at her father. Had Ezra listened to her fiancé, a medical doctor, Nelson could still be alive. Ângelo said that the symptoms Nelson was showing clearly meant appendicitis. The boy had to go to the hospital in Conquista immediately and undergo surgery. But Ezra didn’t listen. It was only one of Nelson’s usual crises, he said, not trusting Ângelo’s diagnosis. When they finally took Nelson to the hospital, it was too late to save the boy.

Ezra should respect Ângelo more, not make fun of him behind his back, wished Lara. Ângelo didn’t have good manners, and had no social skills, but he had a good and generous heart and was incapable of doing harm to people. And he was a medical doctor, the best husband a farmer’s daughter could wish for.

* * *

Fifteen-year-old Sofia was praying the rosary. She was very religious, the most pious in the family, and attended the same Catholic boarding school as Lara. Sofia wanted to go to college and become a dentist. She wasn’t very sad about Nelson’s death because she hadn’t liked her brother much. Sofia found his illness creepy, and couldn’t look long at those blue lips. If God had chosen to give Nelson that burden, he surely deserved it, she believed.

Sofia was very worried. Her brother hadn’t received the last sacraments at the hospital, and no priest would be present at the burial. She feared for the boy’s soul. If only she had more time to pray. It was her duty to pray for the dead even if she didn’t particularly like them.

* * *

Sitting in the second row behind Jonas, ten-year-old Roberto was crying in silence. Roberto had loved Nelson above all things. Because Roberto didn’t want to go to boarding school and be separated from Nelson, he had sought Jonas’s help, impressed by how Jonas had imposed his will on Ezra and got permission to go to college. Roberto and Jonas didn’t have an intimate relationship, but it was worth a try, the boy thought. Jonas was very close to Helena and could convince her, the parent who cared about education.

When Roberto asked, Jonas got angry. What was Roberto thinking? Give up education for farming? Roberto was going to boarding school even if Jonas had to tie him up and carry him there.

Nelson told Roberto that Jonas was right. Education was important. Conquista was not very far, and Roberto would be back for both the winter and summer vacations. They would spend a third of the year together. That comforted Roberto.

Now Nelson was dead and Roberto was alone. If only his father would finally acknowledge his existence.

Father, please look at me...

* * *

It was six-year-old Olívia’s first wake. She couldn’t stand watching her father sobbing. When she cried, Ezra always complained. She was a big girl and should stop whining, he told her each time. What about him? He was a big, old man. Why was he crying? Only Helena’s countenance gave Olívia strength and hope that all would be well.

* * *

Little Esra Duarte observed everything with great interest. He was only four years old but could understand what was going on much better than Olívia. He could see that it was a special moment.

Esra Duarte was named after his father, and felt proud of it. Unlike Roberto, he hadn’t loved Nelson, nor could he forgive him for being Ezra’s favorite. When he heard that his brother was about to die he had rejoiced, but was smart enough to hide his feelings. What a chance! Now Ezra would finally have eyes for him, the son carrying the father’s name.

During the whole wake, Esra Duarte had to make a great effort to look sad. Luckily, no one was watching him closely.

Father, it’s my turn now...

* * *

Ezra cried for only the few minutes it took to dig the grave. When the noise outside stopped, he dried his eyes, stood up, and said, Time to go.

When four farmworkers entered the living room to close the casket and carry it away, everyone stood up. That was the moment when Helena almost broke down, and quickly turned away to dry her tears. But no one noticed. All eyes in that room were fixed on Nelson’s pale face and blue lips.

* * *

To all participants, Nelson’s wake was like all others. No one noticed the love black hole coming into existence that would rule that family for decades to come. It sucked Ezra’s entire love and left his surviving children dry, craving it, begging for it, never getting any. Especially the boys.

Book 1: 1889–1929

[1/01]

When the Portuguese discovered Brazil, they found an almost impenetrable jungle along its coast. Hidden behind the Atlantic rainforest were the backlands, an arid region they called the Sertão. Now that the forest has been almost completely destroyed, it’s difficult to imagine how isolated and hard to reach the Sertão was when the country was settled.

Rivers were the only roads into the forest. Explorers walked for days along riverbanks under the canopy of tall and exotic trees. When they reached the end of the forest, their surroundings turned abruptly from green to gray, and they found themselves in a dry land covered with low thorny bushes.

In the backlands there wasn’t enough water to support big trees. It rained only between January and April, summer in the southern hemisphere. Well adapted to the extreme climate, the small bushes shed all leaves during the long dry season. For this reason, the Sertão’s natural vegetation was called caatinga in the indigenous Tupi language. Caa meant white and tinga forest. White forest was the perfect description for the backlands during the eight dry months.

When the rains arrived, the long monochrome torpor ended quickly. Leaves appeared in a matter of days, followed by flowers. Almost every year Sertanejos, as settlers living in the backlands were called, could witness the miracle of nature coming back to life.

But sometimes it didn’t rain for the whole summer. When this happened there was no need to wait or pray for late rain. It stayed dry until the following summer. In the bleak drought years, Sertanejos faced a tough and long battle for survival.

[1/02]

It didn’t rain in the summer of 1889. When Ezra was born in May, the family had already sold their cattle to buy manioc flour, their main source of calories in the drought years. They lived by a river but had no irrigation system to water their crops. In the rainless years they did it by hand. Despite the brutal work under the mercilessly hot sun, they could save only a few crops for their own consumption: rice, beans, and manioc roots. The cash crops were entirely lost.

* * *

It’s a boy, said the midwife to the mother. Your husband will be pleased.

I hope so, thought Lea, but said nothing.

A boy. Would he survive his first year? Or would he die like three other children before him? If he lived, he would be the seventh child, fourth son. That would certainly please Elias. Like all men, Elias preferred male offspring.

Lea sent one of the girls to deliver the good news to her husband, who was working with his sons on a field by the river.

Father, it’s a boy!

Elias smiled, grateful. Your mother?

She’s resting now. The midwife says she’s well.

He didn’t bother going home to see his son. A child’s birth was no reason to stop working. On the contrary, it meant another mouth to feed in a very bad time.

* * *

Lying in his crib by the window, the little boy, still without a name, was oblivious to all the worries around him. He didn’t have the ability to fear or regret. He could only breathe and admire the blue sky above him, his first impression of this planet.

Ezra wouldn’t stop loving the Sertão sky for the rest of his life.

[1/03]

Ezra’s parents’ farm was on the banks of the Antônio River, close to the town of Bom Jesus dos Meiras in the south of the state of Bahia. This sub-region of the great Sertão was known as the Sertão da Ressaca.

The Antônio River was the site of a massacre in 1813, when an expeditionary force sent by the Portuguese colonial government decimated all natives living in the region. After that settlers started to come.

Ezra would never find out when his ancestors arrived there, or where they had come from. And he wouldn’t care about it. His parents and grandparents never did. History wasn’t a major concern to Sertanejos. Surviving in the harsh climate was more important.

[1/04]

Lea took the boy to the small church in town to have him named, as she had done with all her previous children. She hoped that if the priest found a good name for the child, its chances of survival would improve.

The priest suggested the names of the saints honored on the boy’s day of birth. Lea didn’t like any of them.

The Bible, thought the priest, and randomly opened it to the book of Ezra, called Esdra in Portuguese.

Esdra... What about that, Lea?

She didn’t like how the name sounded. Could you please try again?

The priest found her reaction insolent. What do you have against Esdra? He was an important priest.

Nothing. I just don’t like the name.

Not a very patient person, the priest sighed loudly. He was fond of Lea, the only person in the region to ask for his help in naming a child. He decided to try one more time, and was about to open the Bible again when he recalled that the Hebrew word for Esdra was Ezra. What about Ezra?

Never heard this name.

It’s another form of saying Esdra. Do you like it?

After saying the name out loud a few times, Lea smiled and said, Yes, Ezra is a good name.

* * *

A few days later the boy was baptized with a short, almost unknown biblical name, consisting of only two vowels and two consonants: Ezra. Throughout his life people would often ask where he got his name.

[1/05]

The Portuguese built their first settlements along Brazil’s coast. Sugar production was profitable only if done close to a harbor, because sugar’s weight made it expensive to transport.

As the sugarcane plantations spread, so did the need of foodstuffs to feed the slave workforce. The Sertão had a good climate to raise cattle. It was distant from the coast, but cattle were easy to transport. They could walk.

Cowhands moved the cattle from the farms in the backlands to the slaughterhouses on the coast. Jerked meat fed the slaves producing the sugar that Europeans so much craved. Slowly the sugar economy took off.

* * *

At the time almost only single men emigrated from Portugal to Brazil, and only very few male adventurers dared to move through the jungle into the Sertão. But after gold was discovered there in 1690, men started to come in droves to the backlands.

The Sertão indigenous population was ruthlessly exterminated, through murder and intermarriage. The settlers killed the men and kept the women as concubines. The mixed-race children of Portuguese men and indigenous women were called Mamelucos.

As Mameluco men moved farther into the backlands, they repeated the deeds of their fathers, killing the male natives and taking their women. The Sertão population was built on indigenous blood, but this became another historical fact irrelevant to Sertanejos.

The indigenous mothers didn’t speak Portuguese well enough to talk much to their children. The Mameluco fathers had no education. Most were illiterate. The notion of past or history disappeared in a few generations.

* * *

Sertanejos knew that they were part of a big country. When things happened outside their region, they eventually got the news. But what got people excited in the coastal cities of Brazil was of no relevance to them.

Ezra’s birth year was important for Brazil. In 1889, the emperor was deposed, the monarchy abolished, and the republic established. But in the Sertão da Ressaca it was only another drought year.

The previous year had also been important. Slavery was abolished in May, 1888. Since there weren’t many slaves on the Sertão da Ressaca’s subservient farms, it didn’t interest anyone there.

It was different in Brazil’s southeast, the world’s biggest coffee producing region. There, the end of slavery had consequences.

Abolition didn’t come as a total surprise. It was the culmination of a gradual process. In 1850, the government had forbidden the slave trade with Africa; in 1871, it declared any child born to a slave woman a free person. In need of a reliable source of labor, coffee barons encouraged immigration from Europe, especially from Italy. When slavery was finally abolished, many coffee producers were prepared for it. The ones who still relied on a slave workforce demanded financial compensation from the government, but got none.

The monarchy lost its last supporters, and it became a matter of time until the aging emperor was deposed. He had only a daughter, married to a Frenchman. People believed that the country would be better off in the hands of male Brazilians. A republic was the only way to guarantee this. In November, 1889, the army deposed the emperor.

When the news reached Ezra’s family farm many weeks later, nobody cared. It had started raining. The leaves were already coming out, and the caatinga was quickly changing from white to green.

The new republic of Brazil had fourteen million inhabitants. Only twenty percent of them could read and write. The economy was eighty percent agrarian. The country was open for immigrants from Europe. Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards settled in the southeast, helping to strengthen the coffee economy.

[1/06]

Ezra had a typical Sertão childhood. He had work to do, but also time to play. His favorite occupation was hunting. His oldest brother, Samuel, twelve years his senior, taught him how to build traps and use a shotgun. It wasn’t long until Ezra could do both much better than Samuel.

The boy roamed the fields under his beloved blue sky. He knew the ground well — it never changed. But each time he looked up, the sky was different. Sometimes the clouds moved fast. Other times they stood still. Ezra wondered if they were also hunting, and what.

Ezra’s father Elias had attended elementary school, but all his children grew up illiterate. Literacy was not a skill necessary on Waterfall Farm. There were no books in the house, no need to sign any contracts, and no letters to read or write. Everyone they knew lived nearby.

Ezra wondered why the farm had that name, since there was no waterfall in the Antônio River. He knew what a waterfall was, but had never seen one. He once asked Samuel.

I don’t know, Ezra. It’s always had this name. Whoever chose it is long dead.

Why would someone choose waterfall?

What’s the most important thing in life? Water. Maybe he was hoping to have water in abundance.

Have you ever seen one?

Yes, there is a big waterfall about half a day’s ride from here on horseback.

Will you take me there someday?

Sure, but now let’s go back to work.

* * *

When Ezra was nine, his oldest sister married a man named Augusto Silva. He was born and raised on a nearby farm but now lived in the town of São João do Alípio, about fifty kilometers to the south. Ester was Ezra’s favorite sister. The separation made him sad.

One day I’ll come for you, little Ezra, said Ester.

I don’t want to go anywhere! I want us to stay together.

I’m sorry. You’ll understand when you grow older. I won’t forget you.

Ezra was sad for many weeks. Samuel tried to comfort him. All women marry and move away. This will happen to the other sisters too.

I know. But they will marry someone from here, won’t they? Why did Ester have to move so far away?

Samuel could understand his sister because he also had the desire to start a new life somewhere else. But he didn’t dare to tell Ezra about his dream. She’ll have a better life there. Life in a town is not as hard as here.

How can you know? You’ve never lived in a town.

Look at Augusto. He’s doing well there. He doesn’t work as hard as we do.

But his family is here. Ester and Augusto are alone there.

It’s the price to pay, Ezra. Better than to worry about rain. It was already the middle of January and it hadn’t rained yet.

The rain is only late, Samuel. Like last year, remember?

I hope so.

* * *

When January ended without rain, all Ezra could see around him were worried faces. A rainless February turned worry into fear. A