THE MARBLE AND THE MYRTLE

What does the name of the project mean?

This is the central metaphor of the “Sermon of The Holy Ghost” by jesuitic priest Antonio Vieira where he explores his ideas about the soul fo indigenous Brazilians. According to him the catechism was like sculpting a statue. The natives where easy to convert but inconsistent and untrustworthy in their ways and needed constant tending, like a myrtle topiary that is easy to shape but hard to keep. Other cultures previously converted by the Catholic Church that had religions structured more similarly to Christianism (Islam, for instance) were much harder to convert but once they did, the form of those beliefs would stay firm, like sculpting in marble.

For Vieira the myrtle was a negative symbol: chaotic and unpredictable. The marble was solid and reliable. This project proposes a different interpretation: The myrtle is alive and prosperous while the marble is cold and still.

THE PEABIRU TRAIL (PART 1)

A transcontinental trail connecting South America long before colonization.

The creation of São Paulo is directly linked to the Peabiru trail. The small Portuguese population that already inhabited the São Vicente region had heard from the indigenous people about the existence of a path that led to “mountains covered with ice” and ruled by a “White King” full of gold and silver (it was Potosi, and the king was Inca). In light of this, Martim Afonso de Sousa decided to create a base camp there for future explorations. The Jesuits followed but had very different plans for that path. They dreamed of using the trails to expand their faith into South America and São Paulo was one of the first missions on that front. The traffic across what the priests called “The Way of São Tomé” was so intense that in 1553 Tomé de Sousa, Governor General of Brazil, decided to ban under strong protest from the Jesuits. Sousa feared the influence of the Spaniards who were making advances along the trail. The early closure of the path is the biggest challenge to establish its original location, and we have to rely on a small number contemporary reports.

A few historians believe that stretches of the trail were paved with stone and documents from the period mention an eight-foot-wide path covered by a kind of magical grass able to resist even fire. Others, such as renowed historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, do not even think that the Peabiru trail was a single path, but rather a network of footpaths and directions to navigate across the South American territory. Regardless of its origin and appearance, the Peabiru started (or ended) in the Andean foothills in Bolivia close to terminals of the Inca Imperial Road system, crossed the lowlands in Paraguay and divided into three branches in the Guayrá region. Those branches reached the Brazilian coast: the first one arrived in Santa Catarina, at Maciambu, the middle one reached the sea in Cananéia, and the northmost went down the Serra do Mar until it arrived at the mangroves where is now the city of Cubatão.

Little is known about these routes, since the official history of Brazil is mainly focused on the point of view of the colonizers. According to the myth, the Bandeirantes (colonial enslavers/explorers) opened up the roads to the interior of the country, considered completely wild and disconnected. The truth is that, long before the Europeans arrived, there was transcontinental communication between the different Amerindian cultures and one of the main tracks for this integration was the Peabiru. There has been a more effort in the last few decades to try to understand the indigenous perspective and to rewrite the narrative of the occupation of the American territory. Our project joins those efforts.