Brazil at the Dawn of the Eighteenth Century

Chapter XII: The Penalties for Trafficking in Tobacco Not Cleared through Customs and Methods Used to Avoid Taxation

140 chapter xii y The Penalties for Trafficking in Tobacco Not Cleared through Customs and Methods Used to Avoid Taxation Any illegal diversion of tobacco from any part of Brazil to avoid the ledgers or registers by which all legal tobacco is taxed carries as a fine the confiscation of the tobacco and the ship where it is found, and five years’ banishment to Angola for the guilty party. However, the penalties for gangs of thieves who break these laws in Portugal are much harsher. In other kingdoms there are so many such serious penalties that each year they are the ruination of many families. The harsher these penalties, the stronger the evidence regarding how important this commerce has become and how highly profitable it is for all the rulers. An even better proof of the value and profit that tobacco provides is how many, driven by greed, lose their fear of these punishments, exposing themselves to these risks with no thoughts of the danger. They will be pulled into the same despair as were others knocked down by their great confidence. For this it would appear there is no lack of means that are not used to load and unload the hidden goods, in sight of the same officials who, like Argos with one hundred eyes patrolled, when they were not also Briareos12 with one hundred hands to receive. There are more lips to keep sealed than fish in the sea. To note some of the methods, I will tell of the efforts in which not just a few were caught. Some sent tobacco inside artillery pieces, others inside small and large crates of sugar. Still others made false tops of sugar loaves and covered these very well with leather to hide tobacco; others used barrels of local manioc flour, or pitch, or sugar syrup, covering the top with a deceptive layer of tinplate to hide the tobacco underneath.13 Others found crates of clothes useful, made with false bottoms, in order to create spaces to hide the tobacco. Others put tobacco in cases of wine in plain sight, 141 The Penalties for Trafficking in Tobacco next to the flasks of wine. How much tobacco left and continues to go each year in the bottoms of the hulls of ships and in the ceilings of the cabins and galleys? How much lined nooks and crannies of a ship’s dark recesses? Someone did not forget to use the hollow spaces inside figures of saints! Nor should we forget ships carpenters who hide tobacco in hollow pieces of lumber, piled with the other wood they normally use. Then there is the tobacco that enters and leaves in the large pouches of leather of those coming and going. They go back and forth from the ships in ports many times carrying tobacco under jackets and tunics. In addition, there is tobacco dragged beneath the little boats and the casks of water and wine made wet by the waves of the sea. We would never finish if we attempted to list all the deceitful smuggling methods inspired by ambition. However risky these may be, and however frequently they are discovered, they lead to unhappy endings. This clearly shows the high regard, the demand, and the lure of profit, even that with risk, that accompany tobacco. ...