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Raft fishermen
Black Magic
Sailing Rafts

It’s hard not to like them; strong, masculine, they drink, smoke, and can even dance. They may remind you of the American Cowboy. Instead of rustling cattle they wrestle 500 pound wooden rafts up and over crashing waves to harvest shark, eel, stingray and more. Like the West the wilds of Brazil are finally being tamed but not without a price.

Remote places, all over the world, like Brazils Northeast coast, are suddenly the darling of cable shows that regale their virtuous beaches. They may be beautiful but they certainly are not uninhabited.
 

When Portuguese immigrants from the Madeira and Azores islands arrived, they did the same. But, today many raft fishermen are putting down their nets and trying their luck luring tourists with jangada rides.
At five dollars a ride catching tourists can be far more profitable that fish.

Who are they?

The Brazilians named them Jangadeiros after their rustic sailing raft called a Jangada. Considered Brazils poorest of the poor they nevertheless posses a rich and storied history.

• Abolitionists and the Sea Dragon
• The Alligator and Mr. Welles
  
• A Raft to the World

Abolitionists and The Sea Dragon

“No more slaves will embark from our port” this historic phrase, spoken by jangadeiros, ignited the popular revolt in 1884. Local fishermen, balked at using their rafts to transfer slaves from the drought ridden state of Ceará to the booming sugar plantations of Pernambuco.

Even when threatened with military intervention, by the Emperor, the fishermen held fast to their conviction that slavery was unjust. Then in 1884 their leader Francisco Jose do Nascimento, known as ‘Dragon of the Seas’ sailed to Rio de Janeiro to convince Emperor Dom Pedro II to put an end to slavery.

Although unsuccessful in his demand to see the emperor he was given a hero’s welcome by the people of the capital.

Four years later slavery was abolished.

The “Alligator” and Mr. Welles.

In 1941 four jangadeiros led by “Jacare” (the Alligator) risked their lives to insist that President Vargas provide their people with the same social benefits enjoyed by other workers. They sailed their tiny raft from Fortaleza to Rio, an incredible 1650 miles - to make their appeal in person. TIME called it “a Homeric voyage that wrought a political miracle”

For 61 days they sailed, without the aid of a compass, stopping along the way for food and water. They were told it could not be done. That a jangada made of six tree trunks could not sail that far safely.

But they did. As they entered Guanabara Bay in Rio they were hailed as national heros. Vargas received the four fishermen still wet from the sea and promised the jangadeiros the benefits they sought.

The voyage was reported in Time magazine where the great film director Orson Welles first read about it. Moved by the jangadeiros courage he began shooting a film (while in Brazil) about their social struggle instead of the propaganda film the US government had sent him to make.

This action was not well received by the State Department and the Brazilian government and he was never allowed to finish the film. Forty year later, the surviving footage was released in a haunting documentary called “It’s All True”.

Then, in 1991 Brazil was once more electrified when four more fishermen took the same sea journey to protest the threat to jangadeiros by land speculation and environmentally destructive fishing techniques. For 76 days the crew battled storms and rough sea to reach Rio.
The voyage drew national media attention but little sympathy from government officials. One governor declared that jangadeiros were nothing more than museum displays. Despite the indifference the jangadeiros have kept up the pressure to assure their continued survival as fishermen.

A raft to the world

Although other fishing vessels have been introduced to the region, in the last century. it is the jangada that is most characteristic of Brazil’s Northeastern coast. It is a symbol of a people whose courage are legendary. Since first described in the accounts of the earliest travelers to the New World, jangadas have been the source of literary curiosity.

The grace of this simple craft sailing into the wind on a tropical sea, or drying on a sunny beach lined with coconut palms, has been immortalized in both song and poetry. In fact, one of the best known narrative poems of the western world, The Odyssey, tells us that Ulysses escaped from the Island of Oligia in a jangada.