For Latin America’s largest nation Alberto Passos Guimarães has written a study of a much discussed but frequently misunderstood institution, the latifundia. In Brazil before Cabral private ownership of the soil did not exist, for Indian property was communal. Martim Afonso de Sousa transplanted the Portuguese system of landholding in 1532, when he began to grant land by sesmaria to his followers. Thereafter, the traditional sesmaria was used to distribute the land, first along the coast for sugar, then in the interior for cattle raising, and finally in the south for coffee. Small- and medium-sized farms did not appear until the nineteenth century, and they resulted primarily from attempts to encourage European immigration.
According to the author, those small- and medium-sized farms constitute one threat to the latifundistas, but the major blows to the system have come from emancipation, overproduction, World War I, and the Depression. However, agriculture in Brazil is still in a predominately feudal or “pre-capitalist” stage. The author concludes: “In spite of rude shocks suffered throughout its four centuries of existence, the Brazilian latifundia system survives in our own time with sufficient powers to firmly maintain control over our agrarian economy.”
The author enters the hoary historical debate as to whether the colonial regime was essentially capitalistic or feudal. Refuting the statements of Roberto C. Simonsen, his answer is that it was emphatically feudal in nature. Few owned land in Brazil. Because of their wealth and property, landowners dominated the majority. “The monopoly of the land . . . assures the latifundia class . . . the extra-economic power. The extra-economic power is a characteristic and a residue of feudalism.” Millions of Brazilians today live, he points out, under feudal or semi-feudal conditions.
Passos Guimarães takes primarily a Marxian point of view, but he presents a much sounder and saner case than most books bearing the Editôra Fulgor imprint. The book makes good reading, and in his many charts and statistics, the author amply displays for his reader the sources for his interpretations.
