Filipe Rafaeli Paraty's well-preserved architecture:
During the colonial era Rio de Janeiro province had many ports along the Atlantic coast, on offshore islands, and around Guanabara Bay. They ranged in size from Brazil's most important city, Rio de Janeiro, to small hamlets. These ports included Cabo Frio, Niteroi, Mangaratiba, Angra dos Reis, Ilha Grande and Paraty. Most were only small coastal market towns and distribution points connecting a limited hinterland with Rio. Paraty, however, was important for three centuries as the terminus of the trail that linked the coast with inland regions.
Paraty: Gold and Coffee Exported to the World
Paraty, about 130 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro, was the sea terminus of the old trail of the Guaianas Indians that linked the coast with the Paraíba Valley and beyond. Lucio Costa, the designer of Brasília, called Paraty the city where sea routes and land trails meshed. The first European settlers arrived in the late 1500s from São Vicente and the vila of Paraty was established in 1630.
The Serra do Mar is the rugged escarpment from Bahia to Santa Catarina that makes access from the coast to the interior difficult. It was considered impassable behind Rio de Janeiro, blocking the city and its port from direct land communication with the Paraíba Valley and lands further west. The trail over the escarpment from Paraty became increasingly popular, going from sea level to almost three thousand feet before descending to the Paraíba Valley. Travelers and cargo went from Rio to Paraty by ship and from Paraty to the Paraíba Valley by mule train. The route of this ancient Indian trail was used by the Portuguese and Brazilians for three centuries.
Brazil produced more than four hundred tons of gold during the eighteenth century - about 40 percent of the world total mined in the 1700s. After the Minas Gerais gold discoveries the trail to Paraty became the main artery linking the mines with the coast.(1) For decades it was the only gold shipment route authorized by the Portuguese government. Mule trains brought gold from the mines centered on Ouro Preto to Paraty where it was transshipped to Rio de Janeiro by boat. The Casa de Registra de Ouro (Gold Registration Office) was established in Paraty in 1703 to insure that all gold exported was accounted for and the royal fifth paid. Gold shipments created Paraty's first Golden Age.
Mule trains took from four to six weeks to reach Paraty from Ouro Preto. Loss of cargo, mules, and human life was not uncommon on steep and dangerous stretches of the trail. Pirates attacked ships sailing to Rio from Paraty. Land routes were sought to link Rio de Janeiro with the mines. The Caminho Novo de Piedade, a mule trail from Minas Gerais to Rio de Janeiro, was opened in 1750. The fortunes of Paraty went into decline.
In the nineteenth century Brazil supplied most of the world's coffee. The Paraíba Valley was the early center of coffee production. The Paraíba River runs from the state of São Paulo through the state of Rio de Janeiro before flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. This strategically placed river in the region that was the main coffee producing area of Brazil from the 1830s to the 1860s was of little use for transporting coffee harvests because shallows, rapids, and waterfalls are found throughout its course to the sea.(2)
Mule trains brought the coffee harvests from fazendas to Paraty. The mules returned to the interior with cargo for the Coffee Barons - necessities such as salt and olive oil and luxuries including fine European wines, porcelain from Sevres and Limoges, silks from Asia, English and German pianos, and French perfume.(3) Boom times returned to Paraty. The port's second Golden Age lasted until the 1870s.
Fortunes were made by large landowners in Paraty who owned mules and slaves. Rented slaves repaired the trail and carried cargo when heavy rains made the trail impassable for mules. Mule train leaders were often Portuguese immigrants from the Azores who managed the mule skinners, usually slaves or free blacks. The Paraty municipal council levied tolls for trail maintenance.
Paraty had a rich agricultural hinterland where sugar cane cultivation using slave labor predominated. Plantation owners hired professors to teach their children, sons of the wealthy studied in Rio de Janeiro and Europe, and European theater companies performed in Paraty. Four churches flourished. The Igreja das Dores was exclusively for the aristocratic elite consisting primarily of plantation owners and their families while the Matriz dos Remedios was for white store owners and merchants. Igreja de Santa Rita was attended by the free, nonwhite population and the Igreja do Rosário was for slaves.(4)
Sugar plantations produced the "cachaça" (rum) that has been internationally famous for centuries. "Paraty" became synonymous with cachaca. Large amounts of "Paraty alcohol" were sent to Portugal from more than two hundred distilleries. In later years Carmen Miranda sang about the man who had a Paraty instead of tea and toast. The distillery owned by Prince Dom Joâo de Orleans e Bragança, a contender for the Emperor's throne should Brazil reestablish the monarchy, produces the much prized Mare Alta brand.
Paraty became one of the wealthiest cities in Brazil. The population, including the rural area, was about sixteen thousand. Fifty percent were slaves. In the city there were five thousand slaves working as stevedores, ship crew members, small boat operators, market salespersons, peddlers, street cleaners, and skilled and unskilled construction workers. Prosperous sugar plantations surrounded Paraty. Commercial houses thrived. Mule trains clogged city streets. The docks and harbor were crowded with sailing vessels.
The powerful and influential Coffee Barons of the Paraíba Valley complained to the government about the lengthy, dangerous, and costly route used to transport coffee by mule and ship via Paraty to Rio. They lobbied for a railroad from the national capital to the Paraíba Valley. Inauguration of a line from Rio de Janeiro over the escarpment to Barra do Piraí was a boon for coffee producers but it sounded the death knell for Paraty.
The abolition of slavery in 1888 was the final nail in the city's coffin. There were no more slaves to maintain the trail. The route over the escarpment was abandoned. Contact and commerce with the interior ceased. Paraty remained isolated on the coast. When connections with the interior were severed Paraty merchants and large landowners invested accumulated capital in urban real estate in Rio de Janeiro or in land and slaves. No employment opportunities were created. The city died. In the first decades of the twentieth century the city's population dwindled until it consisted almost entirely of old men, women and children. "Paraty became the image of death and ruin."(5)
Paraty's Third Golden Age
Since the last decades of the twentieth century Paraty has become an important tourist center receiving thousands of national and international visitors each year. The well-preserved architecture - Paraty's "our style" (Lucio Costa's term) - is a major drawing card. The art of making fine cachaça has also been well-preserved and is celebrated at the popular annual cachaça fair. Once again Paraty is prosperous and flourishing.
Adapted from the author's "Early Globalization and the Economic Development of the United States and Brazil" (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).
Notes
1. Stanley J. Stein, "Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983),7.
2. Richard Graham, "Slavery and Economic Development: Brazil and the United States in the Nineteenth Century," in "Comparative Studies in Society and History," 23(October 1981),623.
3. Thereza and Tom Maia, "Paraty" (Rio de Janeiro: ExpresSão e Cultura, 1991),16.
4. Heitor Gurgel and Edeliveiss Campos do Amaral, "Paraty: Caminho do ouro" (Rio de Janeiro: Livraia São Jose, 1973),63-5.
5. Gurgel and Campos do Amaral, 49-50.
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: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983),7. 
