Ouro Preto, Day 7
Ariadne had helped us organize a local guide for the afternoon, but our tour didn’t start until 1 p.m. so Dave and I decided to walk the 20 minutes into town earlier in the day. We passed the now-shuttered observatory and a number of attractive pousadas and a pair of spectacularly placed churches, with mountains and the apparently ever-present thunderheads framing their double towers. Our plan had been to visit the tourist office and get maps and city guides and whatnot, but we ran into Andy who’d had the same thought and she told us not to bother. And it did seem like the tourist office was mostly just a small office around which semi-skeevy guys were hawking “attractions” like ATV excursions and tours of abandoned mines. So we just started wandering the absurdly steep streets, poking into shops and the open air market and stopping for an extra caffeine infusion before meeting up with our lovely guide, Sueli.
At dinner the night before we’d discussed what we were and were not interested in doing with a guide. The one thing several people agreed was that they didn’t want to do a mine tour. So of course when Sueli said she intended to start our tour at a mine, everyone said “OK.” She was really sweet :)
But the mine tour turned out to be worthwhile, if a little sociologically problematic. We trudged a loong way through the city to Mina do Chico Rei where we were welcomed with pastel colored hard hats and an optional shot of cachaca. Sueli gave us a detailed if somewhat bowdlerized history of gold mining in Ouro Preto, highlights of which included that:
The enslaved miners were skilled laborers and therefore better treated than the poor bastards working the sugar plantations and other agricultural settings. (Interestingly, on our tour of Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana we learned that the people who “worked” there were better off than the enslaved agricultural workers and house servants in Mississippi. And according to various historical plaques, the enslaved builders of Masada had a pretty cushy gig, too -- they even had their own bathhouse. Guess no one wants to give a tour saying “this amazing historical site was built by people enslaved in abject misery by a bunch of rapacious sadists. But hey, it’s fun now, right?”)
Chico Rei -- a man with massive cojones as well as impeccable business sense -- managed to smuggle out enough gold dust in his hair and clothing over five years to buy the freedom of his son and himself, and then to purchase his own gold mine.
Portugal theoretically owned all the gold mined in Ouro Preto in the 18th Century, and about 800 tons of it were in fact shipped back to Europe. But you don’t have to visit very many churches there to understand that Chico Rei was not the only resident of Brazil, forced or not, hanging on to a LOT of gold.
In fact, after clambering back out of the cool, dripping mine (and having an interesting encounter with a truck much too large for the one lane bridge all of us were trying to cross at the same time) we hiked to the Basílica Nossa Senhora do Pilar, which appeared to be making use of a full 800 tons all by itself. It’s really hard to know how to feel about these churches -- they mimic the churches of Europe in an almost uncanny way, and yet their inappropriateness to their environment and their society is hugely apparent. There is a prominent statue of a black saint at Nossa Senhora do Pilar (since St. Anthony Vieira -- the African born in Portugal who because a Jesuit -- was not canonized until the late 19th century, I have to assume it’s St. Benedict). Other than that, and the fact that there’s wood where you’d see marble in a European church, the entire church is a testament to the human ability to shape its own psychic reality.
We headed back onto the cobblestone streets but after just a few minutes a pelting rain began, and a few minutes later it got strong enough to force us to seek shelter under what turned out to be an entirely inadequate overhang. Mary, Andy and Glenn opted for an Uber to our next stop, but Sueli, Jeremy, Dave and I braved the downpour, which became its own kind of entertainment. We arrived at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi wringing wet, but no one seemed perturbed as we squelched into the dim splendor of what’s considered the masterpiece of Antonio Francisco Lisboa, an early progenitor of single name celebrity known as Aleijadinho. Minas Gerias and Brazil are justifiably proud of Aleijadinho who designed, carved, painted and generally Baroqued and Rococo’ed the hell out of landmarks all over the region, from ornate small statuary in wood and stone to the literally overwhelming painted ceiling (done in collaboration with Manuel da Costa Ataide) depicting a mixed-race madonna. The facade of St. Francis of Assisi is typical of his cool touches -- standing close to it, the two “retreating towers” are invisible on either side, but come into view as you back away.
We’d hoped to visit the Teatro Municipal as well, but we were running late and it was closed. So we did what any sensible traveller would do -- we said an affectionate goodbye to Sueli and repaired to the Opera Cafe for some 600 milliliter beers and fried cod fritters. Damp heiny notwithstanding, Ouropretana Hefeweiss is an outstanding beer.
We made a 9 p.m. reservation at a traditional Minieran restaurant and then walked back to the hotel, the rain impending the whole way, but holding off the full lashing until we’d made it to our room. We regrouped (along with Holly, who’d skipped the tour, having visited Ouro Preto more than once already) and shuttled back to town to Casa do Ouvidor for the most humorous meal of the trip. Jen and Rob will immediately understand when I say it was reminiscent of our “lamb cooked under a hood” dinner in Croatia: the (very spacious) restaurant was dead empty. But there are seven of us and we bring our own party. Plus the food was good -- snacks of dangerously addictive pork rinds with our drinks, more huge salads, feijoada (a stew of meat and sausage, served with beans, rice, roasted cassava flour and slivered collard greens -- so good), more steak, hearty soup and very good bread. There was some communication issue around wine -- cocktails and beers could be ordered at the table, but wine required a long walk and a game of charades with the wine steward. (This same fellow hammered the limes for the caipirinhas with such violence that we had a moment of concern for his safety.)
After dinner we had a quick peek at the awesome B&B where Jeremey was staying just a few doors down. The charming maze of floors and rooms was bursting with energetic, fanciful, ornate and in some cases disturbing art -- religious images and objects of every kind shared wall space, table tops and little alcoves with frankly sexual bric-a-brac and the occasional fillip of political propaganda. The New Orleans resonances were impossible to miss. After admiring the fittings and furnishings for a while, we repaired to the convivial bar next door, but sadly the highly decorative piano was idle so we had to make do with the entertainment provided by one more round of elaborate, fruity drinks.
