In an article published in 1882, Capistrano de Abreu wondered why nobody had yet written about the history of the Garcia d’Ávilas family (a.k.a. Casa da Torre), the largest landowners in Brazilian history. The public had to wait for more than 50 years for Pedro Calmon’s book about this family. Now, six decades after the appearance of Calmon’s study, the reader may again indulge his/her curiosity about that long chapter of the Brazilian history with a new book by Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira.
Funded by the Brazilian government’s Cultural Ministry, Moniz Bandeira, aided by a group of research assistants, did thorough research in various archives located in several different countries in order to locate sources and data concerning the history of the Garcia d’Ávilas family from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
He begins his work discussing the legend and times of Caramuru and Catarina Paraguaçu, supposedly the great-grandparents of...
