Northeast

Brazil

Northeast

The Northeast (nordeste) of Brazil covers an immense area and features a variety of climates and scenery, from the dense equatorial forests of western Maranhão, only 200km from the mouth of the Amazon, to the parched interior of Bahia, some 2000km to the south. It takes in all or part of the nine states of Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia, which together form roughly a fifth of Brazil’s land area and have a combined population of 36 million. When nordestinos living outside the region are included, they make up about a third of Brazil’s total population. Within Brazil, the Northeast is notorious for its poverty, and it has been described as the largest concentration of poor people in the Americas.

Yet it’s also one of the most rewarding areas of Brazil to visit, with a special identity and culture nurtured by fierce regional loyalties, shared by rich and poor alike. You’ll come across echoes of Northeastern culture all over Brazil – in the Amazon highway towns or the favelas of Rio and São Paulo – engendered by the millions of Northeasterners who migrate out of the region.

The Northeast possesses an identity forged by geographical contrasts, as most of the Northeastern states have three distinct areas. First is the flat coastal strip, the zona da mata, which literally means “forest zone”. Little, apart from the name, is now left of the coastal jungle which greeted the first European settlers in the sixteenth century: at the same time as they marvelled at its beauty they cut it down and planted sugar cane, taking advantage of the heavy tropical rains and rich soils.

It was on the coast that the first towns and cities of the Northeast grew up – not for nothing are all the region’s state capitals, save one, coastal cities – and to this day the coastal strip is by far the most thickly populated part of the Northeast. Unfortunately, this fertile coastal belt is rather narrow, and nowhere does it extend inland for more than a hundred kilometres. It gives way to an intermediate area, the agreste, where hills rear up into rocky mountain ranges, and the lush, tropical vegetation of the coast is gradually replaced by highland scrub and cactus. Finally comes the sertão, the vast semi-arid interior that covers more than three-quarters of the Northeast but houses a relatively small proportion of its population. The soils here are poor, the rainfall is irregular, and only the hardy can scrabble a living out of the harsh landscape.

The contrast between the coast and the interior is the most striking thing about the region. You could have a fascinating time in the Northeast without ever leaving the zona da mata, but unless you make at least one foray into the interior you’ll only get a partial view of what is the most varied region in Brazil. It is not just a difference in the way the country looks. Much of it also has to do with the racial mix, a product of the region’s economic history. Blacks were imported to work on the coastal sugar plantations, and relatively few of them made it into the interior. The Northeast has the largest concentration of black people in Brazil, but most of them still live either on or near the coast, concentrated around Salvador, Recife and São Luís, where African influences are very obvious – in the cuisine, music and religion. In the sertão, though, Portuguese and Indian influences predominate in both popular culture and racial ancestry.

As far as specific attractions go, the region has a lot to offer. The coastline is over two thousand kilometres of practically unbroken beach, much of it just as you imagine tropical beaches to be: white sands, blue sea, palm trees – the stuff advertising campaigns are made of. The colonial heritage survives in the Baroque churches and cobbled streets of Salvador, Olinda and São Luís, often side by side with the modern Brazilian mix of skyscrapers and shantytowns. And in Salvador and Recife, with populations of around two million each, the Northeast has two of Brazil’s great cities. Head inland, and the bustling market towns of the agreste and the enormous jagged landscapes of the sertão more than repay the journeys. But above all, in both city and countryside, there’s the force of a richly diverse popular culture which you will find reflected not only in arts and crafts, but in the texture of everyday life. The Brazilian caricature of frenzied partying and football worship fits this region better than most.

History

The Northeast was the first part of Brazil to be settled by Europeans on any scale. The Portuguese were quick to recognize the potential of the coast, and by the end of the sixteenth century sugar plantations were already importing African slaves. Salvador and Olinda developed into large towns while Rio de Janeiro was no more than a swampy village. Indeed, Salvador became the first capital of Brazil, and by the end of the sixteenth century the Northeast had become Europe’s main supplier of sugar. The merchants and plantation owners grew rich and built mansions and churches, but their very success led to their downfall. It drew the attention of the Dutch, who were so impressed that they destroyed the Portuguese fleet in Salvador in 1624, burnt down Olinda six years later and occupied much of the coast, paying particular attention to sugar-growing areas. It took more than two decades of vicious guerrilla warfare before the Dutch were expelled, and even then they had the last laugh: they took their new experience of sugar growing to the West Indies, which soon began to edge Brazilian sugar out of the world market.

The Dutch invasion, and the subsequent decline of the sugar trade, proved quite a fillip to the development of the interior. With much of the coast in the hands of the invaders, the colonization of the agreste and sertão was stepped up. The Indians and escaped slaves already there were joined by cattlemen (vaqueiros), as trails were opened up into the highlands and huge ranches carved out of the interior. Nevertheless, it took over two centuries, roughly from 1600 to 1800, before these regions were fully absorbed into the rest of Brazil. In the agreste, where some fruit and vegetables could be grown and cotton did well, market villages developed into towns. However, the sertão became, and still remains, cattle country, with an economy and society very different from the coast.

Life in the interior has always been hard. The landscape is dominated by cactus and dense scrub – caatinga – the heat is fierce, and for most of the year the countryside is parched brown. But it only takes a few drops of rain to fall for an astonishing transformation to take place. Within the space of a few hours the sertão blooms. Its plant life, adapted to semi-arid conditions, rushes to take advantage of the moisture: trees bud, cacti burst into flower, shoots sprout up from the earth, and, literally overnight, the brown is replaced by a carpet of green. Too often, however, the rain never comes, or arrives too late, or too early, or in the wrong place, and the cattle begin to die. The first recorded drought was as early as 1710, and since then droughts have struck the sertão at ten- or fifteen-year intervals, sometimes lasting for years. The worst was in the early 1870s, when as many as two million people died of starvation; 1999 was also a particularly bad year. The problems caused by drought were, and still are, aggravated by the inequalities in land ownership. The fertile areas around rivers were taken over in early times by powerful cattle barons, whose descendants still dominate much of the interior. The rest of the people of the interior, pushed into less favoured areas, are regularly forced by drought to seek refuge in the coastal cities until the rains return. For centuries, periodic waves of refugees, known as os flagelados (the scourged ones), have poured out of the sertão fleeing droughts: modern Brazilian governments have been no more successful in dealing with the special problems of the interior than the Portuguese colonizers before them.

Getting there & around

You can reach the Northeast from almost any direction. Direct, there are flights to Recife and Salvador from Europe and North America, and frequent buses to the main Northeastern cities from all parts of Brazil. From southern and central Brazil, buses converge upon Salvador. From the Amazon, buses from Belém run to São Luís, Teresina, Fortaleza and points east, or further south to Salvador.

Getting around the Northeast is straightforward thanks to the region’s extensive bus network. However, even the main highways can be a little bumpy at times, and minor roads are often precarious. This is especially true in the rainy season: in Maranhão the rains come in February, in Piauí and Ceará in March, and points east in April, lasting for around three months. These are only general rules, though: Maranhão can be wet even in the dry season, and Salvador’s skies are liable to give you a soaking at any time of year.

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