Life Stories - José Francisco Leopoldino and Terezinha Pereira da Silva

Table of Contents

Introduction 

The Leopoldino Family of Fazenda Baú 

Sr. José’s Paternal Line 

Sr. José’s Maternal Line 

Leopoldino – The Family Name 

The Pereira da Silva Family 

Mineros become Goianos 

The Backdrop 

Brasilia 

Goiânia 

Introduction

José Francisco Leopoldino and Terezinha Pereira da Silva are my parents-in-law and their lives are set in central Brazil. They emerge from a little-chronicled past of rural workers whose ancestry owes much to a European heritage, but certainly too something to South American indians and African slaves. The history of their forebears can only be inferred, from the accounts that deal with the larger national and internal histories of the discovery of Brazil by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, and the subsequent slow settlement of the interior of the country from the coastal strip. Inference covers the whole period up to about half way through the nineteenth century. There are few records of the lives of ordinary Brazilian citizens during this long period, and even those that exist can be hard to find, and contradictory and confusing when tracked down.

The short account presented below has its value in the history of Brazil in that it shows how some unremarkable people strove to find a better life for their children and grandchildren by hard work with almost no help, often under circumstances made more difficult because of a lack of education, opportunity, work and money, and sometimes with poor health. The broader political currents of Brazil sometimes swept them forwards, at other times left them stranded. Would that more such stories emerge to provide further insight into how the exciting and dynamic society that is the Brazil of today emerged from what is too often an anonymous past.

There is a version of this article in Portuguese on my site, which can be accessed here. If anyone can add information or corrections to this article, or has any helpful suggestions or comments, please contact me by e-mail here.

The Leopoldino Family of Fazenda Baú

José Francisco Leopoldino – from here on referred to as ‘Senhor José’ (or ‘Sr. José’ for short) – was born on 5^th March 1928 into what was in the process of becoming a large family. Evidence about his birth comes from an official document in the notary public office at Lagoa Formosa, a town in the state of Minas Gerais. Neither he, nor any of his siblings, was registered at birth by their parents, but, at ages varying from eighteen to twenty-six, at least seven of the nine siblings made personal registrations of their births, probably in connection with a legal requirement to get onto the electoral roll. A summary of the registrations can be consulted in the attached Table.

Each birth registration included statements about the circumstances of their births and the names of their parents and grandparents. There are significant discrepancies among the various registrations, indicating that the registrants were unsure of the facts of their own births and their parents’ names. The notary public could do no more than chivvy the registrants and then record what he was told, and, although it would certainly have been possible for each registrant to state whatever he or she felt inclined to say about their family circumstances, it seems that none of them told other than the truth as they knew it. None of the seven had much schooling, though only one, Francisca Maria – ‘Nene’, was unable to sign their name.

Sr. José and his Eight Siblings

1.      Mario José Rodrigues – ‘Marico’ – b. 28/3/1921, d. 25/4/2007

2.      Diomara Candida de Jesus – ‘Diomara’ or Guiomara’ – b. 24/6/1922, d. 21/11/1976

3.      Candida Maria de Jesus – ‘Candida’ – b. 17/8/1926

4.      José Francisco Leopoldino – ‘Sr. José’ – the protagonist of this story

5.      Francisca Maria de Jesus – ‘Nene’ – b. 16/9/1930, d. 13/12/1973

6.      João Francisco Leopoldino – ‘Zico’ – b. 4/2/1932

7.      Manuel Francisco Leopoldino – ‘Neca’ b. 16/9/1935

8.      Otildes Francisco Leopoldino b. 24/8/1939

9.      Norziro Francisco Leopoldino b. 30/6/1941

When he registered his own birth, at age 22, Sr. José stated that he was born at a house on Fazenda[1] Baú in the district of Lagoa Formosa. He was the fourth of the nine children, six boys and three girls. Some mystery surrounds the parents. The mother was recorded by Sr. José as ‘Maria Francisca Cupim’, but it seems likely that her real name was Maria Francisca de Jesus and that ‘Cupim’ was a nickname. In Portuguese, a ‘cupim’ is either a termite mound – common in the area – or the hump on the shoulders of some races of tropical cattle, such as the Zebu; but ‘Cupim’ is also a family name that is common near Fazenda Baú and as a nickname it might indicate a person associated in some way with the Cupim family – perhaps as a servant, for example. It is almost certainly too late to discover the truth of the matter. It is possible that Maria Francisca Cupim was married in church, but this mother of nine children never married via the civil registration process. All seven known birth registrations note this as a fact, and five of them say that when she died, on 6^th May 1950, she was single.

Sr. José’s Mother:

Maria Francisca Cupim or Maria Francisca de Jesus, d. 6/5/1950

In none of the seven birth registrations is the name of the father (or, indeed, the names of the paternal grandparents) mentioned. It appears that, having declared that their mother was not married, it was not permitted to state the name of the father, even if the registrant knew who the father was, unless the father was prepared to publicly acknowledge parentage. Two of Sr. José’s brothers, João Francisco – ‘Zico’ – and Norziro, both recall taking his lunch to their father at his work while they were children, so they were clearly knew their father's identity. Again, it may be that there was a church, but no civil wedding, or perhaps the father was married to someone else, or was simply one of those men who would not marry. Perhaps Zico, Norziro and other surviving siblings don’t want to say all they know, even these many years later.

Sr. José’s Paternal Line

So, who was Sr. José’s father? The first-born child was Mario José – ‘Marico’ – who registered his surname as ‘Rodrigues’; he was born in 1921. Marico said that his father was José Jacinto Rodrigues – usually called ‘Zeca Jacinto’, and it seems likely that he was also the father of the other eight children. There are strong family resemblances among the siblings of Sr. José and all are ‘moreno’ (brown skinned). Furthermore, there is a photo of Maria Francisca Cupim and José Jacinto Rodrigues together (see below).

Sr. José’s Father:

    José Jacinto Rodriques – known as ‘Zeca Jacinto’, d. about 1960

Sr. José’s Paternal grandparents:          

            Male: Jacinto Rodriques Magalhães     

    Female: Candida Mota

Sr. José’s Paternal great grandparents

            Male: Manuel Rodrigues Magalhães

            Female: Unknown

According to Zico, Sr. José’s paternal grandfather was Jacinto Rodrigues Magalhães and he had something of an oriental look about him and was pale skinned. His wife was  Candida Mota. Jacinto Rodrigues Magalhães’ father was Manuel Rodrigues Magalhães and Zico said that he lived on a farm at Monjolinho, which is just a few kilometres from Fazenda Baú, and was well off. There are no dates available for these ancestors but, based on the date of birth of Marico, it would be reasonable to assume that Zeca Jacinto might have been born in about 1900. On the assumption that each generation is 25 years, Jacinto Rodrigues Magalhães would have been born about 1875 and Manuel Rodrigues Magalhães might have been born around 1850.

The village of what is now officially called ‘Monjolinho de Minas’ started to be settled by Brazilians of European origin in about 1840 and the Magalhães family could have been early on the scene, but this is conjecture as there are few written records. The first glimpse of certainty comes only in 1948 when ‘Sr. Mario Jose da Silva (Marico), a builder, came to start building a chapel, followed by other inhabitants’. There is also a note that ‘the builder Marico Jacinto began construction of the chapel’. These are spoken statements from residents of Monjolinho (translated from the Portuguese), recorded and placed on the internet[2].

There is no doubt that this ‘Marico’ is Sr. José’s oldest brother, because Antonio Graciano, an elderly resident of Lagoa Formosa, who knew both Marico and Sr. José when they were young, confirmed that it was Marico who built the chapel at Monjolinho[3]. It is therefore interesting to note that Marico is remembered both as ‘Mario José da Silva’ and ‘Marico Jacinto’ although the name he used when he registered his own birth was Mario José Rodrigues. This gives an insight into one of the difficulties of uncovering family history in Brazil.

In 2010 Monjolinho is a small, but pretty, village, lost at the end of red dirt roads on slopes cut into the plateau that extends across much of central Brazil. After the rains it is a green land well suited to agriculture, nowadays with an important output of coffee, but typically it produces maize, beans and rice, and provides good grazing for cattle. The nearest substantial town is Lagoa Formosa, some twenty kilometres distant. Right up to the time that Sr. José and his brothers and sisters lived in the vicinity, transport was on foot, on horseback or by oxcart. There appears to have been only one shop in the village and most of life’s necessities, and sales of produce, took place at Lagoa Formosa.

Most people worked directly or indirectly on the land. The natural vegetation of the area was savannah with low drought-resistant trees and grassland, but with wooded areas that included substantial trees, especially in the valleys. These would be used to build houses, bridges and other structures, but over time the savannah was cleared for agriculture and many of the larger trees were felled.

The day started before dawn when the cattle became restless and the cock crew. After breakfast the men went off to their work, which varied throughout the year as crops were planted, grew and were harvested. Lunch was usually left-overs from the previous night’s meal and was eaten cold. The evening meal was followed by the lighting of oil lamps – later pressure lamps – and conversation round the table, or outside, perhaps accompanied by board or card games. At different times of the year there were ‘festas’ (festivals) in Monjolinho, and there was certainly a ready consumption of alcohol that might lead to either merriment or to disputes. There was always some type of arm at hand.

Sr. José’s Maternal Line

Marico registered himself as ‘Rodrigues’, believed to be his father’s name. However, the remaining five boys all took the surname ‘Leopoldino’ and at least two of the three girls took the name ‘de Jesus’. The weight of the evidence available suggests that Maria Francisca Cupim’s father was called Francisco Leopoldino and her mother Francisca Maria de Jesus, and, given that Maria Francisca never married (at least via the civil registration system), it was natural, and logical, that her sons should take their maternal grandfather’s surname and her daughters that of their maternal grandmother. This was a practice that was usual in the Roman Catholic Church of the time, and can still occur in Brazil even today[4].

Sr. José’s Mother:

            Maria Francisca Cupim or Maria Francisca de Jesus, d. 6/5/1950

Sr. José’s Maternal grandparents:

            Male: Francisco Leopoldino

            Female: Francisca Maria de Jesus (or Francisca Pereira de Jesus - see Table) 

The indication that two of Sr. José’s three sisters, Diomara and Candida were indeed both called ‘de Jesus’, comes from verbal family information, but unfortunately their birth registrations have not yet been found. The only known birth registration for the girls is that of Francisca Maria (‘Nene’) and, although she records that her mother’s name was Maria Francisca de Jesus, she did not record her own name as ‘de Jesus’, instead registering herself as ‘Francisca Maria Pereira’. Confusingly, several other names were given for the maternal grandparents in the seven known registrations - ‘Moreira’, ‘da Silva’ and ‘Pereira’ (see the Table), but ‘Coelho’ has also been mentioned by some family members. It may be that these, perhaps especially ‘Pereira’ and ‘da Silva’ were indeed family names, but it now seems impossible to be certain. In any case, all these names are traditional and common Portuguese names.

Maria Francisca Cupim was a domestic servant, who probably worked at Fazenda Baú. Although so little is known about her, she must have held down a steady job because she lived at Fazenda Baú at least from 1928 (the birth of Sr. José) until 1941 (the birth of Norziro), a period of thirteen years. It is most likely that she and her children lived with their maternal grandparents, as all of them had a good idea of their maternal grandparents’ names; according to Zico, their maternal grandfather was a ‘black carpenter’.

Some of the children stated that their mother was from Chumbo, a district of Lagoa Formosa that has its own Notary Public office (which needs investigating). Maria Francisca Cupim apparently died on 6^th May 1950[5]. If she was twenty years old when her first known child, Marico, was born, then she would have been about fifty when she died.

Leopoldino – The Family Name

It is usually impossible to establish with certainty the origin of a family surname, but it is often interesting to speculate. ‘Leopoldino’ sounds European but does not sound Portuguese. A brief search of the Lisbon ‘White Pages’[6] shows that it does exist in Lisbon – there are 25 people with the surname Leopoldino and 179 called Leopoldina. The name is most probably linked to Maria Leopoldina, born in 1797 to Francis II of Austria, the then Holy Roman Emperor. In 1817 she sailed for Brazil there to marry Dom Pedro of Alcântara, the future King Dom Pedro IV of Portugal and Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil. She was fluent in six languages, a lover of the natural sciences and played a significant part in the Independence of Brazil that took place in 1822. She died in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 29: ‘To this day Leopoldina is revered for her goodness of character. Her kindness and charity made her loved by the people, contributing greatly to the popularity of her husband, Dom Pedro, first Emperor of Brazil.[7]’

In the extreme southeast of Minas Gerais, in the year that Maria Leopoldina sailed for Brazil, a settlement called ‘Feijão Cru’ was founded. Over time it grew slowly to become a small town which in 1838 comprised 467 Whites, 225 Forros (freed people) and 602 Slaves living in 135 dwellings[8]. In 1855 the name of the town was changed to Leopoldina and today it is a modest regional centre with about 50,000 inhabitants. Unlike many of the towns of Minas Gerais, Leopoldina was never a source of minerals, depending instead on agriculture. From about the 1860s it became an important producer of coffee.

The interior of Brazil was populated by the migration of people from the coast, following in the footsteps of pioneering bands who hunted gold, indigenous people (‘indians’) for use as slaves and, from 1725, diamonds. Lagoa Formosa, for example, which is 660 km northwest of Leopoldina, was founded in 1858 (although there had been some settlers before that). As agricultural land was opened up by the granting of ‘sesmarias’ to those with some influence at court, there was a need for labour to clear the land and to tend the animals and the crops that were planted, so settlement slowly followed. Much of the early economy of Brazil depended on slaves transported from Africa, and though slavery gradually weakened in Brazil during the nineteenth century, it was not finally abolished until 1888.

Slaves, indians and former slaves would not have originally had surnames, but the needs of state administration made the adoption of surnames necessary. A person without a surname might come to be called after in relation to his occupation (e.g. Ferreiro = Smith, Pereira = Pear tree, Machado = axe), or his master or former master (such as Rodriguez = of Rodrigo or Gonçalvez = of Gonçalvo), or after the place he came from. A member of the extended Leopoldino family has a godfather called Antonio Graciano who, many years ago, moved from Goiás to live in Minas Gerais. His accent marked him out in his new life and to this day, now an elderly man, he is known locally only as ‘Antonio Goiano’. If the case had been that of a woman – Antonia – she would have been known as ‘Antonia Goiana’.

It does not take much imagination to think that a man called, for example, José, brought up in the town of Leopoldino might be called ‘José Leopoldino’ when he settled in a new part of the country, and that is probably how the Leopoldino surname came about in Brazil. If this is so, it is likely that the Leopoldino family of this history lived and worked in the area of Leopoldina before migrating to Lagoa Formosa.

The Empress Maria Leopoldina died in 1826. The town of Feijão Cru took its new name of Leopoldina in 1855. Francisco Leopoldino, the father of Maria Francisca Cupim, was probably born in about 1880. Therefore the theory that the family name of Leopoldino is derived from the town of Leopoldina can at least be accommodated to the timescale available

The Pereira da Silva Family

The available evidence indicates that Terezinha Pereira da Silva, hereafter called Dona Terezinha – abbreviated to d. Terezinha – was born early in 1938 in an old colonial-style farmhouse at Fazenda Santa Rose, which is near a village called Santa Rosa dos Dourados; it lies between the towns of Patrocinio and Coromandel in Minas Gerais, Brazil. She was the fourth of five children of Joaquim Pereira da Silva and Maria Candida de Jesus. Her siblings were Mariazinha, José, Augusto and Geraldo. So far as is known, all were born in the same farmhouse.

d. Terezinha’s parents:

       Joaquim Pereira da Silva, d. about 1941

       Maria Candida de Jesus, b. about 1908, d. about 1948

d. Terezinha’s Paternal grandparents:

       Male: José Pereira

       Female: Maria da Silveira

d. Terezinha’s Maternal grandparents:

       Male: Pedro José Alexandre – ‘Pai Pedro’, b. about 1865

       Female: Maria Candida da Silva

d. Terezinha’s siblings:

1.      Mariazinha Pereira da Silva – ‘Mazinha’, b. 1933, d. about February 1956

2.      José Pereira da Silva – ‘Zezé’, b. about 1934, d. about 1973

3.      Augusto Pereira da Silva, b. 29/8/1936, d. about 1963

4.      Terezinha Pereira da Silva – protagonist of this story

5.      Geraldo Pereira da Silva, b. about 1941

Joaquim was a farm supervisor and stock-runner (boiadero), but may have owned some land of his own. The farm is located perhaps five or six kilometres from Santa Rosa village. Today, Santa Rosa dos Dourados is accessible by 30 km of red-dirt road that runs south from Coromandel, or by a shorter dirt road that runs west from the paved road  (MG188) connecting Coromandel with the federal highway (BR365) that links Patrocinio and Patos de Minas. It lies in the pleasant valley of the Corrego[9] Sta. Rosa, which is cut into the wide-ranging plateau that in effect is the major watershed between the River São Francisco, draining north, and the River Parnaiba, that drains south. The area is much like that near Fazenda Baú. It is fertile and hosts a dairy industry, the production of coffee, and local plantations of maize, soya, sugar cane and other crops. The village currently consists of a couple of hundred modest houses with gardens that grow bananas, papayas, mangoes and flowers. There are a few small shops and bars. Surprisingly, the village has long had a small notary public office (cartorio civil)[10] that maintains its own records, and a church that stands in a tree-lined square. It has the odd public phone booth and is served by buses to Coromandel. Coromandel has its fame as an old centre of diamond production.

Everything about Santa Rosa indicates a history respectable in terms of Brazil’s relatively short independence. It is difficult to estimate the age of the old farm house at Fazenda Santa Rosa, but its structure is supported by columns and beams of aroeira, an extremely durable local hardwood, its walls are plastered and its roof is of red tiles (see the photo below). It may be about a hundred years old.

There is a fine old photo of Joaquim Pereira da Silva and his entire family, taken in front of a rustic building in about 1942. Joaquim stands proudly holding his youngest son, Geraldo, on his arm, a good-looking man in calf-length boots, plus-twos, a wide belt and a short-sleeved shirt with a knotted neckerchief. Maria Candida, a matronly figure who had borne five children, stands by him in a home-made dress and natty shoes. Mariazinha also wears shoes, but the other children are bare-foot. Little d. Terezinha’s dress was evidently made from an off-cut of her mother’s. The whole family look quite dark-skinned, but besides Joaquim stands a smallish black man in a pale suit and a broad-rimmed hat – evidently an esteemed farm-hand. The photo was perhaps taken on a family visit to Santa Rosa dos Dourados, or a neighbouring larger town, on the occasion of one of the annual festivals, when visiting photographers touted for trade. It shows a simple rural family, but one not without aspirations.

It must have been only a very short time after the date when the photograph was taken that Joaquim was unloading sacks of rice from a bullock cart at Fazenda Santa Rosa. The house is built on a slope that ran down to the river so that, although the front is level with the land, the back is built up on posts, creating a sort of cellar (‘porão’) that was very useful for storage. As Joaquim unloaded the sacks, he suddenly went down with what was probably a massive heart attack. Far from any medical help, he died and was probably buried in the small cemetery near the church at Santa Rosa dos Dourados.  He was only about 28 or 30 years old. Chagas disease, a parasite-born infection that attacks the heart or oesophagus, was endemic in the area at the time and there is a good chance it was Chagas disease that killed him.

When we visited Santa Rosa in 2007, we were kindly shown round by Zé de Iolanda, who took us to a farm about 2 km from the village (another Fazenda Sta. Rosa!) to talk to an old farmer who might have remembered Joaquim. Unfortunately he was away in Patrocinio but we were taken to the adjoining property to visit his son. Dona Terezinha thinks her father was brought up in the area by a man called ‘Limiro’, in whose house jam (‘marmelada’) was made. We asked the owner of the farm we were visiting what his name was, and he said ‘Limiro’! He told us that his grandfather, who had lived there, had also been called Limiro, but that he had no knowledge of his grandfather bringing anyone up, nor did he know the name of Joaquim Pereira da Silva. Sr. Limiro was then about 60 years old and evidently an intelligent and cultured man. He lives with his wife and a slightly retarded adult son, and he has a daughter who seems to live well in São Paulo. We were unable to gain access to the notary public records, because Iolanda, responsible for the office, was away in Coromandel. Nor were we able to see any church records because it was Saturday and the church was closed. However Sr. Limiro promised to inspect the notary public and church records for us to see if any of the family names are there and to let us know the outcome. Nothing came of this but it would seem important to gain personal access to the records and search them for relevant data.

Dona Terezinha says she was three years old when her father died at Fazenda Santa Rosa and the family was suddenly left without a bread-winner. Her mother’s father, Pedro Alexandre Rodrigues, always called ‘Pai Pedro’ took matters in hand. He lived near Monjolinho de Minas, about ninety kilometres east of Sta. Rosa, in the district of Lagoa Formosa, and he quickly arranged to sell the bereaved family’s surplus belongings and moved the family to live near to him at a place called ‘Lajeado’. The exact location of Lajeado is not certain.

It has been said that Pai Pedro was a local strong-man – it has even been alleged that he was a ‘jagunço’ (a man who could have contract killings carried out). In about 1946 Mariazinha, usually called ‘Mazinha’, who was then only thirteen years old, married João Pachola, better known as João Magro (or João Magrinho), who was quite a lot older than her. The marriage is believed to have taken place in the church at Lajeado.

At about this time Pai Pedro arranged work for his daughter, Maria Candida, at Fazenda dos Leontinos, and Mazinha and João Magro went to work at the adjacent Fazenda do Juca Bem. Maria Candida worked for Dona Leontina Aventura and became a trusted employee, helping to organize important events at the farm. Unfortunately, in about 1948, Maria Candida also died and was buried in a small, nearby, rural cemetery, which continues to be well maintained and has a chapel and an enclosing wall (see photo, above). After the death of their mother, d. Terezinha and her three young brothers went to live with Mazinha and João Magro at Fazenda do Juca Bem. In spite of the fact that they were now orphans, the children lived well at Juca Bem, and both d. Terezinha and Geraldo remember those days with affection. However, their time there was not to last.

Juca Bem, Lajeado and Fazenda dos Leontinos were all within a couple of kilometres of Fazenda Baú - where the Leopoldino brothers lived. In fact, the cemetery where Maria Candida was buried was known as the Cemeterio do Baú.

It may have been with her mother that Mazinha learned how to sew and while at Juca Bem she earned money making clothes for people in the neighbourhood. It seems to have been in this way that d. Terezinha and her family first became aware of the children of Maria Francisca Cupim, at about the time her mother died, when she was ten years old.

Mazinha and João Magro never had any children. The fact that João was a lot older than his child bride may have been a source of difficulties. One of Mazinha’s duties was to wash the clothes, by hand of course, in the local stream. There is a story in the family that on more than one occasion when people went to look for Mazinha they found the clothes and the basin, but no sign of her. It was rumoured that she was having an affair with the son of the land-owner, and, somehow or other, this led to the whole family leaving Minas Gerais. There are two versions of the story. One says that Pai Pedro, who had a reputation for violence, told João Magro he had dishonoured the family name and if he did not leave the area he would be killed, together with Mazinha and the supposed lover. The other version is that João Magro determined to take his erring wife away from the reach of the young lover and that Pai Pedro was devastated to lose his grandchildren. It is impossible to know which of these might be the true story. 

Mineros become Goianos

As mentioned previously, the Portuguese colonized Brazil from the coast, and there was always a tendency to move inland, seeking minerals, especially gold and diamonds, and good farming land. Northwest of Minas Gerais, occupying the heart of Brazil, lay the state of Goiás, the state capital of which was the old gold-mining town called Goiás Velho.

In 1930 the government of President Getulio Vargas adopted a policy to better settle the interior of Brazil - the so-called 'drive to the west' ('marcha ao oeste'). This would help secure the western borders of the country by inducing prospectors and farmers into a 'rush' to new areas, especially Goiás. The Vargas government decided that Goiás Velho was too remote and in 1933 it founded a new state capital, Goiânia close to the older settlement of Campinas. Goiânia was to be a planned city with a geometric layout that made, however, little or no provision for the accomodation of the under-class who would actually provide the labour for the huge construction works. Over the following years Goiânia quickly grew and prospered.

The people who lived in Minas Gerais were called ‘Mineiros’, whereas those from Goiás were known as Goianos. In about 1950 João Magro took his wife and her orphaned siblings on the trek into Goiás to begin a new life. The journey from Lagoa Formosa took several days on dirt roads on the back of a lorry and was very hard.

The family no doubt felt that their best chance of earning a living lay in agriculture, and this may be why they settled on a farm near to the small town of Xixá, which, like Goiânia, was founded in 1933. Perhaps the family were encouraged to make the move by a land-owner from Lagoa Formosa who had acquired land near Xixá, or maybe they were known to someone already in the area who was able to arrange work for them. Xixá, whose name was changed to Itapuranga in 1943, is situated about thirty-five miles north of Goiás Velho.

The newly arrived migrants seem to have established themselves on a farm belonging to Alvino Pereira Peres and Luiza Onesta Ferreira, near to the River Canastra. The farmer and his wife had two children, Beneditta, who was born in about 1947, and Carlos, born in about 1950.

At first d. Terezinha and her brothers made up one household, of which her oldest brother, Zezé, was the head, and João Magro with Mazinha lived nearby.  Zezé could only have been about sixteen or seventeen years old. Dona Terezinha was about twelve, and it was her job to do all the housework. Stories in the family say that she was forced to work very hard, preparing the food, cooking, cleaning and washing clothes to look after her three brothers.

It must have been almost exactly at the same time that d. Terezinha and the rest of her family, with João Magro, went to Xixá that several members of the Leopoldino family also moved there – and surely this must have been more than coincidence. At the very least they must both have responded to the 'drive to the west'. Soon after 24^th June 1950, when he registered his birth at the notary public office in Lagoa Formosa, Sr. José left Minas Gerais for Goiás. Diomara, his oldest sister, also went to Goiás and lived close to d. Terezinha and her family. Later, other siblings would follow.

Sr. José and Zezé, d. Terezinha’s brother, became close friends in Goiás. The country had much of the atmosphere of the wild west with bars, bordellos and little law enforcement. Young men might ride their horses into town, have too much to drink, get involved with the women (running health risks in the process) and break up any parties that they took a dislike to by letting off their revolvers. The Pereira da Silva and Leopoldino families would certainly have had to put up with such goings-on, whether or not the boys themselves ever got involved. The website for modern-day Itapuranga gives a good idea of how things were:

‘Day to day life for the inhabitants was marked by events on the farms, some of a religious nature, others not so. For example, a tradition developed of helping the neighbour with some particular construction or development project, such as clearing the land, and there would always be a party at the end. Such good-neighbourliness, however, did not mean an end to the violence that marked the region. Very commonly at such events there were fights and deaths, so that Xixá became known as ‘the land of killers’.

Because the people of Itapuranga were known as violent, some sort of justice was essential. With the growth of the settlement there were periodic police actions and when some accused person was caught they were tied to a bacuri tree until such time as they could be taken to a proper prison.

Transport in the area relied on animals: horses, pack-mules and ox carts were much used, the last to transport larger quantities of goods or food. Roads were opened through virgin woods and savannah with billhooks, axes and bush knives. The rivers Uru and Canastra ran with abundant water, the latter providing for the earliest settlers of the small town.

The first economic activity of old Xixá was all related to agriculture – rice, beans, maize – which was transported by trains of pack animals and ox carts, raising clouds of dust from the roads as they went, and crossing the streams and rivers of the area at fords. Manufactured products came in the same way, to be sold in small stores in the town – paraffin oil, salt, cloth, tobacco, alcoholic drinks and other basic necessities of life that could not be produced by people in the area.’

(From http://itapuranga.go.gov.br/historico.html). 

Close by the farm where d. Terezinha lived was one owned by a man called Zé Amador with a group of houses belonging to someone called ‘Modesto’. Among the residents was a young girl called Maricota who quickly became friends with Zezé. By 1952 they were married.

It was probably also in 1952 that d. Terezinha’s second brother, Augusto, left the farm and went to live in Xixá, and he invited her to live with him. She went, however, to live once more with João Magro and Mazinha.

Sr. José and d. Terezinha had known each other when they both lived near to Monjolinho in Minas Gerais. Sr. José would go to Zezé’s house, perhaps for a chat, a drink and a game of cards, and Terezinha would occasionally come in from the kitchen to attend them. Sr. José used to tell the shy girl, ten years his junior, he was waiting for her and that one day they would be married. Terezinha, who had seen her older sister marry at age thirteen to a much older man, probably thought it a good proposition.

But it was only after they were living in Goiás that a courtship developed and it was in September 1952 that Sr. José and d. Terezinha got married in the small church at Xixá; the witnesses were João Lopes da Silva (Diomara’s husband) and Zezé. Dona Terezinha was only fourteen but stated that she was actually eighteen years old, the minimum age to marry without parental consent. Both bride and groom gave their residence at the time as ‘Buqerirão’ (or possibly Boqueirão) and it may be that this was the name of the farm, or at least the area, where they had settled on leaving Minas Gerais.

Augusto’s move to Xixá was to learn to be a tailor with Senhor Enoque who had a well-known business in the town. He learned quickly and by 1955, when he was qualified, he married Maria Madalena, a primary school teacher from Minas Gerais. They went to live and work at Itapirapuã, about 100 km southwest of Itapuranga, still in Goias. Maria moved to Goiás from Areado in Minas Gerais and remembered that the journey took twenty-two days by oxcart! While living in Itapirapuã, in 1957 and 1958 their first two children were born.

Sr. José and d. Terezinha had already started their family. In 1953 their first child, Sonia, was born. D. Terezinha was innocent in all things and quite reasonably thought that the baby growing within her would get out of her body via her belly button! When someone eventually explained the truth of the matter, she didn’t believe them!

A second child, Nilma, followed in 1955. Both Sonia and Nilma were born at home and baptised in Xixá; the owner of the farm, Alvino Pereira Peres and Luiza Onesta Ferreira, were Nilma’s godparents. The following year, Mazinha, who apparently suffered from epilepsy, was taken ill and went into some sort of coma. The only person who could communicate with her was the tailor Senhor Enoque, who was considered to be some sort of medium. Mazinha died after an illness and confinement in Xixá[11].

By 1957 Sr. José  and his family were living in the small town of Morro Agudo in Goias, about 30 km north of Itapuranga, and it was there that their third child, Ilva de Fatima, was born in January. The following November a bout of whooping cough swept through the area and severely affected both Nilma and Ilva; although Nilma came through, sadly baby Ilva died and was buried in the town. The family then moved to join Augusto in Itapirapuã and it was there that their next child, Francisco, was born in 1958.

At some time, perhaps in 1958, Augusto taught Sr. José some of the arts of tailoring and they worked together for a time. Dona Terezinha also learned to sew, and it was the acquisition of these skills that enabled them to progress from being simple rural labourers, live in town and give their children access to schooling and the possibility of a better life.

Another move followed by the end of 1960. When Cilho was born, the family was living in Jussara, about 30 km west of Itapirapuã.  

The Backdrop

William Shakespeare said:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts.

In much the same vein Silvio Caldas wrote in Brazil:

‘Minha vida era um palco iluminado….’

The fact is that every act of every day of our lives is played out against a backdrop of the events of the wider world. We should look, at least a little, at the backdrop to the lives of Sr. José and d. Terezinha during their formative years.

Brazil was settled as a Portuguese colony in which land grants were made by the Portuguese crown. The idea that land is the fundamental base of wealth and the landowner the lord of all he owns are two themes that have always run through the history of Brazil. Land owners have often called the shots in Brazilian politics and the landless agricultural worker has usually been at the mercy of his employer. Even after the abolition of outright slavery, the system was at best paternalistic, at worst nearly feudal.

Sr. José was born in 1928 and the Great Depression was immediately upon the world. In Brazil coffee prices collapsed and led to a political crisis and the overthrow of the government in 1930. Out of the crisis Getulio Vargas emerged as the strong man of Brazilian politics. In one form or another he remained as the godfather of the nation until 1954.

Vargas was an astute political operator who skilfully made and unmade political alliances as occasion demanded. At different times he was dictator and elected President. In general his politics were based on nationalism, populism, a close association with the military and de facto recognition of the powerful regional landed interests that controlled affairs in the different states. There is a parallelism between Vargas in Brazil, Peron in Argentina, Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain and Mussolini in Italy, all of whom were authoritarian nationalists and anti-Communist; there was always something of what came to be called, after Mussolini, fascism about them. After he became dictator in 1937 Vargas suppressed the press, abolished political parties and locked up dissidents.

Before the Second World War, Vargas skilfully courted both Germany and the United States, so that it was not clear where his true loyalties lay, but eventually he sided with the Allies and sent troops to fight alongside them in Italy.

After the war, Vargas was deposed by the military, but was returned to power as President in a free election in 1951. He enacted a certain amount of social legislation, including the establishment of a minimum wage, but the legislation was often ignored in rural areas. In 1954 Vargas was implicated in an attempt on the life of his main political opponent, Carlos Lacerda, and in the ensuing scandal shot himself. He was succeeded by three short-term presidents until the election of President Jucelino Kubitschek in January 1956, as described below.

This, then, is something of the backdrop to the lives of Sr. José and d. Terezinha from the time of their births until they had grown up, met, married and started a family. It was a time of nationalism, a time when powerful landowners and local interests still carried much weight and a time when rural workers such as the protagonists of this story, were given little consideration in the life of the nation. 

Brasilia 

While Sr. José and his young family were flitting from place to place in western Goiás, great things were taking place some 300 km to the east. In 1891 the idea had been mooted in the Brazilian National Assembly to move the Federal Capital from Rio de Janeiro to a more central location within the national territory. In 1956, at the start of his four-year presidential term, Juscelino Kubitschek, began the Herculean task, and the new capital, Brasilia, was inaugurated on April 21^st 1960. Brazilians in their thousands, and then tens of thousands, flocked to the growing city to help in its construction and development, sensing new opportunities and an improvement in their circumstances.

Just before Brasilia was inaugurated, Augusto and Maria decided that they too would take their chance in the new capital. They travelled to Brasilia in January by lorry, selling chickens as they went. In February they moved to Taguatinga in a land-rush, and later went to live in Cidade Livre (Nucleo Bandeirante) and then Vila Planalto. For a time, Augusto worked as foreman making clothes for Senhor Itajubí, who became well-known in the area. In Vila Planalto Augusto then started his own tailoring business with the name ‘Alfaiataria Silva’. The business did well. Maria helped her husband while her mother, Carolina Marra da Silva, looked after their children, the last of whom was born in Brasilia.

Alfaiataria Silva was now doing so well that Augusto invited d. Terezinha and Sr. José to move from Jussara to Brasilia and they probably went towards the end of 1961. Although Sr. José and d. Terezinha had been married in church, they had never registered their marriage at the civil registration office. Before agreeing to go to Brasilia, d. Terezinha insisted that they rectify this situation, and also complete the civil registration of their four surviving children, which they did on 17^th August 1961.

At some point early in their stay in Brasilia the Leopoldinos lived at Velha Cap, where Nilma remembers she had a pet white mouse. One night she put the mouse in its cage near to her head where she was sleeping, but was devastated to discover the following morning that she had rolled over on it and the mouse was dead.

The Leopoldino family settled in Vila Planalto where Augusto helped Sr. José to open his own tailor’s business; about this time Sr. José learned to make jackets. The business was modestly established under an awning at the front of a small house that Sr. José bought and which consisted of three rooms.

Business at the time was very good and money flowed freely. Augusto had about twelve people working for him, and had to have a foreman (mestre de obras) because he was so busy. Dona Terezinha’s oldest brother, Zezé and his wife, Maricota, who had been living in the town of Faina (which is west of Itapuranga) also moved to Brasilia where they too prospered. Both Zezé and Augusto bought small rural properties (chacaras), that owned by Augusto being cared for by João Magrinho, who was by then widowed. The family would pile into Augusto's Volkswagen Kombi and enjoy weekend outings to the chacaras where they would cook home-grown food and party while the children played freely.

No more provision was made for the labourers who actually built Brasilia than had been made at Goiânia, and the workers were forced to settle where they could. Vila Planalto was a very primitive settlement (invasão – illegal settlement, land grab), the buildings were made of wood, cardboard, newspaper and so on, and there was one tap for the whole area. Water had to be paid for, but if you got the water after midnight, you could get it free, so that is what Sr. José and d. Terezinha did. It was very violent and there were bordellos, knifings and shootings; often there was the sound of gunfire.

It was while living in Vila Planalto that Shirley, their penultimate child, was born early in 1962 – her name was inspired by the American film star, Shirley MacLaine, whose name d. Terezinha read on one of the newspapers that was pasted onto the inside of the wall of her house. Dona Terezinha and Sr. José delivered Shirley on their own, at home, at night, after preparing clean sheets and disinfecting the scissors and a knife. Although Augusto called his mother in law, Carolina, who came running to help, they arrived too late because Shirley obligingly popped out without any trouble.

The family eventually moved to Taguatinga because of the violence, selling the property in Vila Planalto and renting a house in Taguatinga. Later they got permission to build on a plot of land at QNH 10, and put up their own home in just four months. It was built by Sr. José of adobe bricks, that Nilma and Sonia helped to make, and roofed with asbestos sheeting, commonly used then, and later, in Brazil.

During the first years in Brasilia, d. Terezinha was constantly occupied making clothes, because there was plenty of work. Later she baked cakes and savouries that Sonia and Nilma would sell to the workers on the building sites, to earn extra money. As if that were not enough, d. Terezinha used to pack a big cardboard box with cotton, needles and a great variety of sewing accessories and Nilma, a girl of only nine or ten years of age, would take the box on the front of a large bike, and her mother perched precariously on the back to local markets.

By 1963 it was obvious that Augusto was not well. He became extremely weak and it was evident that he was suffering from Chagas disease, which, as mentioned previously, is a parasite-born infection that attacks the heart or oesophagus. Chagas disease was incurable and Augusto soon died, aged only 29, leaving Maria with three young children. In 1964 she remarried, her second husband being Filemon Gomes de Alencar, who was from Bahia and had worked at Alfaiataria Silva. In 1965 Maria gave birth to twins in Hospital São Vicente de Paula in Taguatinga. For company she had d. Terezinha who gave birth just one day later to her last child, Silvio. Silvio was the only one of her children born in hospital, and d. Terezinha says it was the only one of her births that was difficult! Maria and Filemon later had two further children who were born in 1966 and 1968.

After the presidency of Juscelino Kubitschek ended in January 1961 there was considerable instability in Brazilian politics. Janio Quadros succeeded Kubitschek, but rapidly became unpopular and after eight months he resigned. At that time Brazil elected the President and Vice President separately and Quadros had been forced to accept as his Vice President João Goulart, his political enemy. After an interlude of one week, Goulart, who had also been Vice President under Kubitschek took office. Goulart remained as President for two and a half years but his government drifted to the left and seriously alienated the urban middle class.

The military establishment was so concerned by the leftist drift of the government that it decided to intervene. At the beginning of April 1964 a military coup took place and it was the military that oversaw the following twenty-one years of Brazil’s development.

The confusion of 1963/64 brought Brasilia to a standstill and there was no work. Sr. José’s family experienced hunger and d. Terezinha was reduced to washing clothes and doing cleaning to try to earn a little money to feed the family. It may also have been at this time that d. Terezinha used to help at a local community centre that was run by nuns, supported by American charities. In exchange for her help she received parcels of food and clothing sent from the United States. About this time, too, Sr. José managed to get work for the local council collecting rubbish, and later had some work making uniforms for a bus company called TCB (perhaps Transportes Coletivos de Brasilia).

The chacaras of Augusto and Zezé did not have the full required legal documentation and to avoid the risk of losing them completely it was during the political confusion that the two brothers decided it would be better to sell them cheaply rather than risk losing them completely.

After the sale, João Magro went to live with d. Terezinha in QNH 10 and Zezé and Maricota lived in QNH 8. They later returned to live in Faina, where Zezé retired to work as a carpenter. In about 1973 Zezé died, like his brother Augusto, from Chagas disease.

Not only was there unrest in Brasilia, neither d. Terezinha nor Sr. José were very well at the time and under these circumstances they sold their house in Taguatinga, for very little money, left Brasilia and went to live in Goiânia.

xxx 

Goiânia

In Goiânia, the Leopoldino family first lived about five kilometres northwest of the city centre in the Fama area. Sr. José worked selling fruit and vegetables at local markets, but was unable to earn enough to keep the family and, in some difficulty, they decided to return to Jussara. There Sr. José tried his hand running a small bar in the square near the church, but after a time it became clear that this would not pay and once again the family made its way to Goiânia. All this happened in 1966.

In Goiânia once more, Sr. José rented a single room in the Pedro Ludovico sector, about five kilometres south of the city centre, and there the family of six children lived. Sonia and Nilma went to school at Colegio Dom Abel while their parents began sewing and tailoring from home for a firm called Confecçoes Iram Limitada whose premises were in the Dergo area of Goiânia (about seven kilometres to the west northwest of the city centre). Sr. José and d. Terezinha had two sewing machines at home and cut their cloth on a large table that occupied a good part of their only room. At night a mattress was placed on the table to make a bed, and other mattresses were placed on the floor below the table for some of the children. To cook their food, the family packed dampened sawdust, bought from local carpenters, into a twenty-litre paraffin can and used it as a stove. The family's existence was cramped and precarious.

What the two parents were able to earn was insufficient to pay the family expenses so Sr. José arranged with the owner of Confecçoes Iram, Manuel de Assunção, for Sonia and Nilma to work there. At the time Nilma was about eleven years old, Sonia thirteen; so much for those who speak out against child labour – had it not been for Manuel de Assunção agreeing to take on these two youngsters the family might have starved. Not only did he take on the two girls, he eventually arranged for them to be legally contracted and paid the appropriate social security taxes; in the case of Nilma this was from March 1969.

About this time the family went to live with Dona Persilia, Sr. Geronino Tiburcio and Carlos, their only child, still in the Pedro Ludovico sector of the city. This was an improvement because Sr. Geronino and his family treated the Leopoldino family very well.

With Sonia and Nilma working, the family’s circumstances improved markedly and Sr. José decided that instead of paying money for rent, the family should buy a building plot at Serrinha, an elevated area just west of Pedro Ludovico. Although they were able to make the payments on the land, there was no money to build a house. Undeterred, d. Terezinha begged some old scaffolding planks and empty cement bags from a firm erecting large buildings in the city centre. Using these the family contrived to build a house with three rooms and a bathroom, with a roof of cement bags which, wetted off, made quite a water-tight covering. Domestic water came from a well that they dug on the property and light was supplied by paraffin lanterns. After a time, with a little money accumulating, it was possible to buy bricks and build a small L-shaped house with a lean-to roof. There were two bedrooms, two living rooms and electricity. Things were getting better!

Serrinha, being on high ground, has since become a desirable and expensive part of Goiânia, but when the Leopoldino family lived there it was isolated and could be dangerous. Sonia and Nilma had to catch two buses to get to work, which was very tiring and potentially dangerous – they were still only children. They continued attending school in Pedro Ludovico and classes ended about 11 o’clock at night. They then had to walk home together in the dark, through an area that was virtually wasteland (‘mato’).

Some time later, Sr. José and d. Terezinha decided that it would be to the family’s advantage to rent out their house in Serrinha and use the money to rent a house for them to live in much nearer to Confecções Iram at Dergo, thus saving the bus fares and reducing the risks for Sonia and Nilma. They therefore moved the family to a house at Santa Helena in the Campinas area of Goiânia. Nilma remembers that life in Sta. Helena was much easier than it had been in Serrinha.

It was while at Confecções Iram that Sonia met José Divino – ‘Zezão’, who also worked there. They were married in March 1971 and lived with the rest of the family. Their first child was born the same year in the hospital Coração de Jesus in Campinas. After the birth, Sonia and her family went to live for a time at Acreuna, a small agricultural town which lies about 150 km southwest of Goiânia. They were followed by Sr. José, d. Terezinha and their four youngest children, and all worked harvesting cotton. In the meantime, Nilma stayed in Goiânia, living with Benigna and Zica, the mother and sister of her brother in law, Zezão. She continued her schooling at Colegio Assis Chateubriand in Campinas while still working at Confecções Iram.

When Nilma first started work at Confecções Iram at the age of about eleven, she was little more than an enthusiastic nuisance. Her job was to take new supplies of cotton yarn, cloth, or anything else that was needed, to the forty or so workers busy making clothes in the factory. In her enthusiasm she would run about the place, leaping over piles of clothing on the floor and constituting such a risk that the owner told Sr. José to take her away. After some pleading, however, she was allowed to stay and soon became an adept seamstress. She quickly learned how to thread up every type of sewing machine on the premises and then learned how to operate each machine so that she could work as a holiday stand-in wherever needed. By the time she left the firm, on August 3^rd 1972, aged seventeen, she had become the operations manager in charge of a substantial group of adults.

After the end of the cotton harvest, the Leopoldinos returned to Goiânia and lived in their house at Serrinha. It was there that d. Terezinha was taken ill with some sort of stroke and on 10^th June 1972 she was admitted to hospital at Clinica Isabel in the Setor Sul part of Goiânia where she remained for three months. Sr. José ended up in Brasilia, tailoring in a business that had been set up by his brother in law Geraldo, and Nilma was left in charge of her four younger siblings in Goiânia. Times were hard for her as, besides looking after the family, she was also working full time during the day, studying at night and visiting her mother twice a week in hospital. It was then that she left Confecções Iram.

Geraldo did well for a time in Brasilia. Besides running his own business he won a significant amount of money on the lottery. He was single and able to enjoy life. He expanded his business by putting in more machinery, but when a downturn came he was unable to keep up the payments and had to close down. Later he started up again.

When d. Terezinha was discharged from hospital (probably towards the end of 1972) the family went to join Sr. José in Brasilia and lived in an outhouse in front of the house that belonged to d. Terezinha’s brother, Zezé. This was in QNH 8 in Taguatinga. Zezé and his family were then living in Faina. Sr. José continued working for Geraldo and d. Terezinha did outwork for him at home. It was at this time, in May 1973, that Sonia gave birth to twins in Goiânia. D. Terezinha went to help with the birth and then brought the whole family to Brasilia for a visit, as shown in a photo (below) taken at the time.

Nilma was also then living in Brasilia with the rest of the family and in March 1973 she was contracted by a friend of her uncle Geraldo, who owned a business called Teçidos Martins which comprised a sewing factory in Taguatinga and a cloth retailing shop in Goiânia. It was only a few months after Nilma started work at Teçidos Martins that the owner decided to transfer the factory to Goiânia and he set up in Avenida Mato Grosso in Campinas. At the start of December 1973, Nilma went to work in the new factory in Goiânia as the operations manager, and four other key employees also made the transfer from Brasilia. The rest of the family returned to Goiânia too, including Geraldo. The house at Serrinha was tenanted and the family went to live in rented property at Avenida Mato Grosso in Campinas, the rent being paid by the company.

Although Nilma was now managing production at Teçidos Martins she wanted to better herself and did a typing course that she hoped would give her the opportunity to get into some sort of office or administration work. Sr. José tried his hand once more at running a bar, setting up in Rua Pouso Alto in Campinas, but again it did not work out. Geraldo, in the meantime, set up another tailoring business with premises off Avenida Anhanguera near to Rua 4, close to the shop owned by Tecidos Martins in the centre of Goiania. Sr. José went to work for him once more.

About this time the family decided to sell their house in Serrinha and were put in touch with an estate agent that operated from premises in Rua 7 in the centre of Goiânia. Nilma went to discuss the sale of the house with the owner of the estate agency and, while there, enquired about work as a receptionist. To her surprise the estate agent not only took on the sale of the house, but also gave her a job and in May 1974 she left Teçidos Martins. While working for the estate agent, Nilma met a sales agent who recommended her to SIMA Imobiliaria, then one of the two largest estate agents in Goiânia. Nilma was contracted by SIMA in July 1974 and, based on the security of the salary that she was then earning, the Leopoldino family was able to rent better accommodation at Avenida Sergipe in Campinas. Nilma continued working at SIMA and studying in the evening at Colegio Pedro Gomes in Campinas.

In August 1975, while working at SIMA, Nilma met her future husband, Philip, who was in the process of renting a house cum office for the use of his employer, Riofinex, which was then setting up in Goiânia. After a short courtship they were married in April 1976.

Already in 1975 Dona Terezinha knew that she had Chagas disease, and, aware that it was incurable, fully expected to die, as had her brothers Augusto and Zezé, within a year or two. Fortunately there was a research group under Dr. Anis Rassi in Goiânia that was testing experimental drugs which it was hoped would be able to kill the parasite, although it would never be able to repair any damage already done to the patient. Dona Terezinha enlisted in the research programme and the treatment was eventually successful. Later it turned out that Geraldo and Zezão also had Chagas disease, and they too were successfully treated. It was never easy for d. Terezinha to ajust psychologically to the fact that she would live to, and beyond, the age of forty, and not die young, as had her two older brothers. She is now seventy two years old.

Sr. José and d. Terezinha had put their names down on a list for social housing and it was probably at the start of 1978 that they were awarded a house in the new Itatiaia suburb of Goiânia and moved there from Campinas. The house came together with a mortgage finance plan supported by the state. This effectively enabled them to purchase their own home for the price of the rent that they would have in any case paid.

In 1976 Sonia, Zezão and their three children were living in poor accommodation in Campinas but Sr. José and d. Terezinha were able to build an outhouse behind their home in Itatiaia and in about 1979 Sonia and her family went to live there. In 1980 they moved to a house that was directly opposite that owned by Sr. José and d. Terezinha. Thereafter d. Terezinha would sit at home sewing for family and for profit and maintain large pans of rice, beans, a little meat and perhaps some vegetables on her stove, into which all-comers could dip at will. No-one was ever refused a good meal and everyone was grateful, even if they rarely said thank you. For d. Terezinha, the sense of family created round the big pans in the kitchen was thanks enough.

Sr. José and d. Terezinha had enjoyed their time at Avenida Sergipe and when they had to move across the city to Itatiaia, d. Terezinha cried. However the family soon became an important part of the new community, all of whom were newcomers, and, though there were inevitably problems, on balance life in Itatiaia was happy and gave them stability, at last. In 1980 d. Terezinha visited England and Portugal to help after the birth of Nilma's first daughter, and in 1986 she and Sr. José were able to visit Chile for a month, for the birth of another granddaughter. The visit to Chile must have been one of the highlights of Sr. José's life; it was the first time he had ever flown, he went up to the snowline in the Andes above Santiago, and he stood for long silent minutes watching the waves of the Pacific Ocean in unfriendly mood at Valparaiso.

As his sight deteriorated with age, Sr. José became unable to see well enough to continue tailoring but found employment as a security guard at a residential building near to Praça Tamandaré in Goiânia. Sr. José never retired. On 27^th July 1991 he died suddenly at his home in Itatiaia after a massive heart attack. Dona Terezinha continued living in Itatiaia until 2009 when she tried a move to Morada do Ipê to live with Sonia and Zezão.

I found Sr. José to be a fine person. He had few opportunities in life and little chance of education, but he was always interested in what went on in the world and would pay close attention to the news on radio and television and read newspapers when he could. He never had many possessions and his idea of relaxation was to go out for a couple of hours at weekend and have a drink or two and a game of cards with local friends. I never knew him to drink too much and I always found him very pleasant company. For many years he looked after a small stock of cash for me, in case of family emergencies, and never let me down. He was good to his children, and good to his wife. I am surely not the only one who misses him still.

Note: You can see more photos of the family in the Portuguese version of this account, here, or watch a slide show that has all the photos, here. 

This page was last modified on 09 May 2010