Diogo Álvares Correia, better known as Caramuru, is a central figure in the secret history of Salvador de Bahia.
There are historical fragments hidden in the heart of the city. They are hidden stories that sleep before our eyes, on street corners, in squares and in urban monuments.
The city is always calling out to us, with its secret stories in the concrete jungle that we are going to discover today.
Beautiful and safe, the route was frequently visited by squadrons of caravels in transit (the tourist vocation of Salvador was already present). However, there was no settlement at the beginning of the discovery.
Video about the Secret History of Salvador de Bahia
História Secreta de Salvador da Bahia
See also the History of the Bay of All Saints
The Secret History of Salvador de Bahia
Our history begins in 1501, when Américo Vespúcio discovered the Bay of All Saints. His possession was made official with the placement of the Portuguese crown’s landmark, where the Barra Fort and Lighthouse stand today.
In 1510, Diogo Álvares Correia, who was bound for the Indies, ended up shipwrecked in Todos os Santos Bay.
The Tupinambás Indians ‘fish’ the crew and devour them. Only one survives, spared by the tribe because he was extremely thin and tall, and therefore not a good ‘dish’, which explains the nickname given to him and how he came to be better known: Caramuru.
He won the trust of the Indians and married the daughter of the chief Taparica, Paraguaçu, who was later given the name Catarina when she was baptised in France. The first settlement in Todos os Santos Bay was born.
It was located between the Graça and Vitória neighbourhoods and, some historians believe, was called Salvador in reference to the shipwreck. Considered a patriarch, his offspring were so numerous that Gregório de Matos called him ‘Adam of Massapê’.
This is where miscegenation, which is now a defining feature of the city, began. Portugal, however, had little interest in what was happening here.
Not having found precious metals, like Spain in its colonies, it occupied itself with the still profitable spice trade from India. Only with the threat of the newly-formed nation states of France, England and Holland, which, because they were late, were left out of the treaty dividing the world between the Iberian countries, did Portugal decide to occupy the colony to avoid losing it.
D. João III, the Portuguese monarch, then divided Brazil into hereditary captaincies, a colonising measure that was more appropriate for the situation – it reduced the crown’s direct investments, since it was up to the grantee to ensure the defence and generation of exploitable wealth in the colony and, of course, to pay taxes.
The captaincy of Bahia was given to Francisco Pereira Coutinho, who arrived here in 1536 and founded the town of Bahia, on the site where the Fort of São Diogo and the Church of Santo Antônio da Barra still stand.
It is said that the crew that accompanied him were startled by the presence of a white man among the natives; it was Caramuru, now their closest neighbour.
Pereira planted cotton and sugar cane in Bahia, but his settlement efforts came to an end a year later with a shipwreck in the Bay of All Saints.
On this day, the Tupinambá tribe had a hearty meal, the main course: Francisco Pereira Coutinho.
Caramuru founded the two towns, which were renamed Vila Velha, as opposed to the city that was later founded. The captaincy of Bahia was not the only one to fail.
The lack of resources for investment and security, and the isolation of the captaincies from each other, were factors that combined to define the failure.
D. João, also concerned about the absolute power of the grantees in their captaincies and suspicious of tax evasion, set up a general government that could centralise the crown’s interests.
Pereira Coutinho‘s family, unwilling to continue the endeavour, sold the captaincy to Portugal, where the seat of the general government would then be founded. King João ‘s idea was “to have a fortress and a large, strong settlement built in a convenient place”.
The person in charge of the mission was Tomé de Souza, Brazil’s first governor general, who arrived here in 1549, on 29 March, the official date of the capital’s birth (in the Catholic calendar, the day of Saint Saviour, a fact to which another group of historians attribute the city’s name).
In the early days, his crew occupied Vila Velha (led by Caramuru), a not very prosperous settlement whose location seems not to have pleased Tomé de Souza, who went on to establish Brazil’s first city, where the Praça Municipal is today.
The drawings and building plans came from the kingdom. Its boundaries were as follows:
- To the south: through the gate of Santa Luzia, where today Rua Chile meets Praça Castro Alves.
- To the North: at the Santa Catarina gate, on the current boundary between Praça Municipal and Rua da Misericórdia, near the corner with the Praça slope.
- On the east side: a small baroque – called Barroquinha.
Salvador was born, and would become the gateway to Brazil, the capital of the South Atlantic until 1763. Thus began the effective occupation of Brazil by the Lusitanian administration.
Secret History of Salvador de Bahia.
Tourist guide to Salvador, Bahia and the northeast
