“People would drop dead on the streets”
“After the 60’s, the Portuguese in Brazil started working in bakeries, butcheries, quintanas (a kind of grocery), many of them knew how to read and write. But before that, it was completely different. Before that, life in Portugal was very difficult, and most emigrants went to Brazil to do what they used to do at home: to work the land.
My grandfather, Joaquim Correia Dias (picture above, born in 1874) emigrated three times, between 1900 and 1930. He worked has a milkman, taking a real cow through the streets of Belém do Pára. He would milk the cow at the costumer’s door, according to how much milk they wanted.
In the beginning of the XX century, in the north of Brazil, the paludic fevers were constant. There was such an acute phase, that people would frequently drop dead on the streets. There was a car to collect the bodies, to avoid the spread of the diseases, they would bury the bodies in a common grave. Once, my grandfather, Joaquim Correia Dias, collapsed on the street unconscious and got collect by the sanitary car. He was lucky to wake up before they took him to the burial site.” — António Madureira
