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Destinations of a Letter, Predestinations of a Country

The quincentenary of the discovery of Brazil prompts a rereading of the process of possession of the land and of its inhabitants. By tracking the destinations of the renowned Letter to the Portuguese Crown by Pero Vaz de Caminha, the scribe of Pedro álvares Cabral's maritime expedition of 1500, this process can be traced. As earlier defined by Pope Calisto III in 1456 and later depicted by Luis de Camões' epic The Lusiads (1572), possession of the new land, effected by its donation to the King of Portugal and its inscription in the system of Ecclesiastical Patronage ( Padroado ), subtly combines Faith and Empire. Of all the protagonists involved, the sailors are the ones who fail to benefit from the enterprise. All they receive is a prefiguration avant la lettre of the 'Ilha dos Amores/Isle of Love' ( The Lusiads , Canto IX), a libidinal gift-realm that was indeed suppressed in the letter by Father Aires de Casal, among other censorship cuts, mostly of sexual matters, before it was first published in book form. The sailors, the women - homeless, without possessions and without an economy - and the natives together make up a triangle of the dispossessed. The natives, living outside European feudalism and mercantilism, are only granted a name, and any individuality in the future, through Christian baptism. In partial contrast, the land, though brought into existence for the western world by the acts of possession and naming, remains, for many a year, no less forsaken.