Maria Lata D’Água appeared in the carnivals of the 1950s. Always accompanied by an iron box on her head, the passista ended up inspiring one of the best-known songs in our songbook: “Lata d’água in the head, climb the hill and don’t get tired, take the child by the hand, there you go, Maria”, say her verses. He became an example of resilience, strength and, of course, samba in the foot. Minas Gerais de Diamantina, Maria Mercedes Chaves Roy lived on the streets and dedicated the last years of her life to religion. She was a missionary. He died recently, in 2024. At his funeral, there were fewer tributes than he deserved. It is sung everywhere, but it is on the great shelf of invisible and forgotten characters.
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While walking through the Vassouras Museum, which has just opened its doors in the town of Vale do Café, who exactly do I meet? With Maria’s can. With the story of Mary. An explanatory text takes the visitor to discover this remarkable woman. It didn’t take long for me to find myself humming. It didn’t take long to see another person repeating the famous verses. A symbol of samba and faith, Maria and her can are in the spotlight as part of the “Chegança” exhibition, which leads us to reflect on the sacred that sails along the Paraíba River.
Vassouras was one of the great epicenters of slavery in Brazil. And the reason is simple: men and women from Africa supported, through forced labor, the engine of the 19th century economy, coffee. For decades, the whole world drank the coffee produced in the Paraíba Valley, enriching local families and fueling a brutal system that scarred our country. This shameful past still resonates in different spaces of “Chegança”, rituals and demonstrations which maintain the memory of the African presence in the region.
The building itself, the former Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Vassouras, built in the 19th century, bears witness to these contrasts. The building received slaves for medical treatment, rare it is true, but it recorded this presence. And the separation between whites and blacks on the different floors reveals, in a stark way, the extent to which even health care was riddled with racial inequalities.
Today, every corridor of this place screams stories: the pain of captivity, the creativity of those who reinvented life under oppression, the spiritual force that spanned the centuries, and the resistance that shaped Brazilian culture. It’s an environment that not only preserves memory, but invites you to be a part of it. It is impossible to leave without feeling the weight and power of a city and a region that also seemed forgotten. “There you go, Maria.”
Speaking of resistance
Unfortunately little known, the black anti-slavery leaders Manoel Congo and Mariana Crioula were represented by the painter Dalton Paula. Rarities, the works of Masp can be seen up close. In 1838, Manoel Congo and Mariana Crioula led the largest slave revolt in the Paraíba Valley, gathering around 300 captives from Vassouras and Paty do Alferes.
The history of coffee in Brazil combines alleged romantic betrayal, excessive luxury and political conflicts that affected the Republic. Francisco de Melo Palheta became legendary as the man who brought the first seedlings from Guyana, and some swear he only did so because he seduced the wife of a local politician. Nothing proven, of course, but the gossip has persisted for centuries. What is certain is that after its arrival in Pará, coffee strengthened itself in the Paraíba Valley and then dominated the west of São Paulo. In France in the 1830s, drinking coffee became a status symbol, and Brazil took advantage of this trend to grow rich through the slave labor that supported the luxury of the barons of the time. The farms were rural palaces and there were even people drinking water imported from Europe. In the Republic, the grain even became a metaphor for power: it was the policy of coffee with milk, the alternation of presidents linked to São Paulo and Minas Gerais. But as everything that goes up goes up, the coffee economy has faced crises that have taken away much, if not all, of its fortunes.
The Fazenda Viegas, in Senador Camará, continues without the attention of public initiative. Municipal park, looks like it was abandoned. It will collapse soon. The group trying to create this space, which is public, it should be noted, will hold a photographic exhibition on the 14th at the Museum of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, in Gamboa. It will be shown how the master’s house, the slaves’ quarters and even the chapel of Nossa Senhora da Lapa can receive a new meaning. That’s a lot of shit in your head.
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