OCR Text |
Show KNOW YOUR : . Jg NEIGHBOR A.U BAHIA ALIAS SALVADOR One would look in vain on most maps of Brazil for a town by the name of Bahia which seems surprising sur-prising when one has been told it is the fourth largest city of the .ountry and its one-time capital Bania de Todos os Santos (Saint Of its full title of Sao Salvador da Salvador of the Bay of all Saints) the word Salvador has been chosen chos-en to be today the city's official name. Traditional Bahianos, however, how-ever, still cling to the old apella-tion apella-tion of Bahia by which their city has been known ever since its foundation. Thus Bahia is Salva- city, long the richest and mosH properous of Erazil, and their wealthy owners lived in great style at Bahia. Magnificent buildings build-ings were erected in perfect Portuguese-Brazilian Baroque style of the period, some of those of the 18th century already being six and seven stories high. Furthermore a large number of beautiful churches church-es were built in Bahia, called for that reason "the Rome of the Americas" and their gilded interiors inter-iors and bright tiles are still of great interest to visitors today. To serve on the estates of wealthy Bahia planters, negroes were soon imported, most of them coming com-ing from relatively highly civilized regions of Africa, which may in some sort account for their tremendous tre-mendous influence in every aspect of Bahian life. In cooking, music, dances and folk-lore, particularly, it is difficult to distinguish the Portuguese and Negro elements in fhpir riVhf nrnnnrtion. There is a dor on all official documents but still Bahia-the-bay in the hearts of its people. Few towns have had a more important im-portant and interesting place in the history and culture of Brazil than Bahia. The bay which it overlooks over-looks was discovered on Nov. 1, 1501, by a Portuguese expedition under Dom Nuno Manoel and with Ameriga Vespucci as navigator, the latter returning to Bahia in 150 to lead the first European expedition ex-pedition into the interior of Brazil. Bra-zil. In 1534 a small settlement was established on the present site of the city; this, however, was soon destroyed by cannibals and its inhabitants were taken prisoners. priso-ners. "In 1549 Tome de Souza, a military engineer, was sent by the King of Portuguese with a small military force to establish a strong government at Bahia. He sharp difference between the two levels of Bahia, on the upper town Alta, are located the public buildings, build-ings, the residences, hotels and luxury shops while on the lower section Saixa, just off the beach, are the commercial centers, markets, mar-kets, warehouses and wharves. It is here that comely Negro women sell native products, dressed in a combination of French and African Afri-can Empire style, with turban, shawl, wide, starched skirts, light chemise, wooden-soled slippers called chinelas, and pounds of gay jewelry making up a costume already al-ready famous in the United States thanks to Carmen Miranda. The so-called Brazilian costume is really real-ly exclusively Bahiano. A strong Asiatic influence, as well as that of the missionaries the Jesuits in particular also play an important impor-tant part in the formation of. what was the one to chose its site, much more adequate for a fort than for a city, on top of a cliff which rises ris-es perpendicularly above what it today the port. There is no doubt, however, that Tome de Souza's choice was a fortunate one, for two-tiered Bahia (the city is built on two levels) prospered and eventually even-tually became the capital of Brazil Bra-zil until 1763, with a brief interval when it was occupied by the Dutch in 1624-25. It maintained and still does, its original military character as a picturesque city of upper and lower settlements with steep paths and dominating ter-separated ter-separated from each other by vio-races vio-races the surrounding settlements elnt topographical accidents, although al-though today the two levels are connected by six lifts and several roads. Plantations sprung up on the region which surrounds the has become the soul or Jtsania. rne declining markets for sugar and tobacco, the removal of the capital capi-tal to Rio in 1763 and the coffee boom in Sao Paulo during the 19th century, all contributed to Bahia's loss of her title of "First City of Brazil." Today, however, with its 350,000 inhabitants, it flourishes as a producer of cacao, coffee, livestock, tobacco and castor beans and such little-known commodities as cocoa-butter, beeswax,- vegetable vegeta-ble wax for gunpowder and fibers for brooms and ropes. The surrounding sur-rounding land is rich in minerals such as copper, diamonds, graphite, graph-ite, silver, mica and manganese, while petroleum has recently been discovered. Thus Bahia stands, a city on two levels, "rising in a concentrated concentrat-ed mass of masonry from modern wharves and commercial houses on the waterfront to gleaming domes and dark towers of colonial churches imbedded in the modern city above. With the great bay a shimmering mirror ' of blue-green waters at its feet and radiant indigo in-digo sky arching above it, it appears ap-pears like a master painting placed plac-ed there for all the world to admire" ad-mire" and a spot where indeed, the old and the new America meet. |