Tiradentes & Bichinho

This will be my last video for this trip.  Thanks to everyone who has read and/or watched along.  Until next time...

As I wrote earlier, in the 1700s, to expedite the looting from Brazil of gold, diamonds, gems, sugar, coffee, etc., the Portuguese Crown had a road built from the mountains of Diamantina [Gia mon cheena] in the north to the port of Paraty [Para chee], near Rio, in the south.  Along the Estrada Real, the Royal Road, a lot of tiny towns sprung up, places where the armed convoys of the Crown could rest their horses and mules and re-supply themselves for the next leg of their journey.  When ties between Brazil and mainland Portugal were eventually severed, the Estrada Real, essentially, stopped being used.  Many of the towns continued to exist, but given how remote they were, did so almost entirely without contact with the outside world.  Today, life in many of these little hamlets remains largely unchanged from the way people there lived hundreds of years ago. 

Two such towns Lu and I visited were Tiradentes [Cheer ah den chess] and its neighbor Bichinho [Be sheen u].  Tucked away in the mountains about midway between Rio and Belo Horizonte, these towns have a very unique and inspiring story.   As recently as thirty years ago, these towns, like many along the Estrada Real, were severely impoverished.  The people were largely uneducated and they had little or no work.  Then an industrious young man from Sao Paulo who knew a bit about woodwork and craft making, moved to Bichinho and offered to teach his skills to anyone interested.  Naturally, people lined up.  In time, as the art got better and better, it started to sell, and the guy began to pay his interns for the work they did.  When students completed their internship, instead of binding their hands with copyrights to his designs or non-competition agreements, the guy encouraged and even helped them go into business for themselves.   

Today, thirty years later, the internship program is still going strong and a second generation of town’s people is going through it.  Tiradentes, with its beautiful historic buildings that now house craft shops, a couple of gourmet restaurants and charming pousadas, has become an increasingly popular weekend-getaway destination for people from Rio and Belo.  Next door, in the lesser-known and less commercialized (if you can even use that word) Bichinho, is where most of the artisans who sell their work in the shops of Tiradentes live and work.  Lu and I both fell in love with Bichinho.  The buildings are humbler and the restaurants and pousadas aren’t as fancy, but the place absolutely abounds with creativity.  Thamar, a retired lawyer friend of the Barbosa’s who recently moved to Bichinho with her son and ailing husband, laughed and said, “I can’t get anyone to help clear my yard because everyone’s in their studio making art!” 

Imagine that.