Antonio Raposo Tavares

António Raposo Tavares - Statue in front of the Museu Paulista

António Raposo Tavares (* 1598 in São Miguel de Beja , Portugal , † 1658 in São Paulo ) was a Brazilian gang leader from São Paulo.

Live and act

Antônio Raposo Tavares came to Brazil in 1622 with his father, who had been appointed administrator of São Vicente , and married Beatrice Furtado de Mendonça. He then acquired a fazenda , on which he used the Indians who had been captured on the occasion of his expeditions into the hinterland, mainly to today's states of Paraná , Santa Catarina and Mato Grosso , for forced labor. On these expeditions he destroyed many Spanish Jesuit reductions .

Raposo Tavares was mentioned for the first time in 1628, when he put together a huge bandeira, consisting of 69 whites, 900 mulattos and over 2000 Indians. This bandeira, to which many prominent Paulistas belonged, was divided into four companies led by Raposo Tavares, Pedro Vaz der Barros, Bras Leme and Andre Fernandes. The exact route this bandeira took is unknown. Possibly they united with another bandeira under Mateus Luis Grou in the area of ​​the Río Paraná . The aim of the Bandeira was to expel the Jesuits from the Guaira missions in the south-west; on the way there she crossed the Rio Tibagi on September 8, 1628 .

During the attack on the Jesuit mission in San Antonio on the banks of the Rio Ivai , the Bandeira captured 4,000 Indians and burned down all the buildings. Another group took up the San Miguel Mission, also on the Rio Ivai. Then the Bandeira, accompanied by the two Jesuits Justa Mancilla and Simon Maceta, moved back to São Paulo in 42 days, where they arrived in March 1629.

António Raposo Tavares therefore already had a great deal of experience in developing the hinterland when he embarked on the riskiest expedition of his life. It is said that he planned this expedition in Portugal together with the highest authorities in the kingdom. The declared goal was to expand the area under Portuguese control in the interior of South America by opening up new territories and possibly discovering precious metal deposits.

Raposo Tavares set up a bandeira, which consisted of two so-called “Colunas”, the first of which consisted of 120 Paulistas and 1200 Indians and was commanded by himself, while the somewhat smaller second Coluna was led by Antônio Pereira de Azevedo. Separately, both Colunas followed the Rio Tietê to the Río Paraná , from where they reached Aquidauana. In December 1648 they united on the banks of the Río Paraguai and occupied the Jesuit reduction Santa Bárbara.

After their unification, the Bandeira pushed forward from April 1649, advanced over the Rio Guapaí in the direction of the Andean chain and remained until 1650 in the middle of Spanish South America in the region between the present-day Bolivian cities of Potosí and Santa Cruz de la Sierra , where they the area explored as far as possible. From July 1650 to February 1651 - at this point already less than half the size of the beginning - she set out on the longest and last stage of the expedition. It followed the Rio Guapaí to the Rio Madeira and reached the Amazon , which it followed to the Gurupá fortress near Belém . The survivors of the expedition reached the fortress completely exhausted, most of them were sick. Raposo Tavares was apparently so badly disfigured that his own family no longer recognized him when he returned to São Paulo.

Thanks to this enormous expedition, the Portuguese gained detailed knowledge of large areas between the Tropic of Capricorn and the equator .

literature

• Sérgio Buarque de Holanda : Historia geral da civilização brasileira . São Paulo 1963.
• John Hemming: Red Gold. The conquest of the Brazilian Indians . London 1978.