Diogo Álvares Correia, better known as Caramuru, is a central figure in the secret history of Salvador, Bahia.
There are hidden historical fragments in the heart of the city. They are hidden stories that sleep before our eyes, on street corners, in streets, in squares and in urban monuments.
The city is always calling us with its secret stories in the concrete jungle that we will discover today.
Beautiful and safe, the route was frequently used by fleets of caravels in transit (Salvador’s tourist appeal was already evident). However, no settlements were founded immediately after the discovery.
Video about the hidden history of Salvador, Bahia
História Secreta de Salvador da Bahia
See also History of All Saints Bay
The Secret History of Salvador, Bahia
Our story begins in 1501, when Amerigo Vespucci discovered the Bay of All Saints. His possession was made official with the placement of the Mark of the Portuguese Crown, where the Fort and the Barra Lighthouse now stand.
In 1510, Diogo Álvares Correia, on his way to the Indies, was shipwrecked in the Bay of All Saints.
The Tupinambás Indians “fish” the crew and devour them. Only one survived, spared by the tribe because he was extremely thin and tall and therefore not a good “meal”, which explains the nickname he was given and how he became better known: Caramuru.
He won the trust of the Indians and married the daughter of the chief Taparica, Paraguaçu, who was later baptised in France and given the name Catarina. This marks the beginning of the first settlement in the Bay of All Saints.
It was located between the neighbourhoods of Graça and Vitória, and some historians believe it was named Salvador in reference to the shipwreck. Considered a patriarch, his descendants were so numerous that Gregório de Matos called him “Adam of Massapê”.
The miscegenation, now a striking feature of the city, began here. Portugal, however, was not very interested in what happened here.
Having found no precious metals in its colonies, unlike Spain, it was concerned with the still lucrative trade in spices from India. Only when threatened by the newly formed national states of France, England and Holland, which, as latecomers, had been left out of the treaty that divided 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 colonisation measure more suited to the situation – it reduced direct investment by the Crown, as it was up to the donee to ensure the defence and generation of exploitable wealth in the colony, and of course to pay taxes.
The Capitania (colony) of Bahia was donated to Francisco Pereira Coutinho, who arrived here in 1536 and founded the Village of Bahia on the site of the Fort of São Diogo and the Church of Santo Antônio da Barra.
It is said that the crew accompanying him were frightened by the presence of a white man among the natives; it was Caramuru, now his closest neighbour.
Pereira planted cotton and sugar cane in Bahia, but his efforts to colonise the region ended a year later with a shipwreck, also in All Saints Bay.
On that day, the Tupinambá tribe had a big feast, and the main dish was Francisco Pereira Coutinho.
Caramuru merged the two villages, which became known as Vila Velha, unlike the town that was founded later. 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 seal its failure.
D. João, also concerned about the absolute power of the donatários in their captaincies and suspicious of tax evasion, set up a general government that could centralise the crown’s interests.
The family of Pereira Coutinho, not wishing to continue the venture, sold the captaincy to Portugal, where the seat of the general government would be established. The idea of D. João was to “build a fortress and a large and strong settlement in a favourable location”.
The man in charge of the mission was Tomé de Souza, the first governor-general of Brazil, who arrived here in 1549, on March 29, the official date of the capital’s birth (in the Catholic calendar, the day of São Salvador, to which another group of historians attribute the city’s name).
In the early days, his crew occupied Vila Velha (led by Caramuru), a small, impoverished settlement whose location did not seem to please Tomé de Souza, who went on to found Brazil’s first city on the site of today’s Municipal Square.
The designs and construction plans came from the kingdom. Its boundaries were as follows:
- To the south: by the Gate of Santa Luzia, where 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, next to the corner with the slope of Praça.
- On the east side: a small rock formation called Barroquinha.
Salvador was born, the gateway to Brazil and the capital of the South Atlantic until 1763. This was the beginning of the effective occupation of Brazil by the Portuguese administration.
Secret History of Salvador, Bahia.
Tourist guide to Salvador, Bahia and the Northeast
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