Stories of Paraná - the English Colonization

Stories of Paraná - the English Colonization

Colonization of English
Marcelo Oikawa

It was with the map of Parana on a pool table that Gaston de Mesquita Filho convinced Lord Lovat to buy land upstate. The scene, film, happened in the games room of the imposing headquarters of the farm of Major Barbosa Ferraz in Cambard. The Englishman was amazed when the illustrious family member Mosque, the journal "O Estado de S. Paulo", showed that he could make a profit of up to one thousand percent if you bought the land before crossing railroad.
It all started around 1922. Pressed by creditors Londoners of our foreign debt, the government agreed with Arthur Bernardes coming Montagu Mission to examine the economic and financial situation of Brazil.
Lord Lovat comes as an observer, but particularly interested in finding land suitable for planting cotton.
Informed that interest, the São Paulo Railway Company-Paraná published an announcement of a page in the "Estado" to catch the attention of the English to the great possibilities of Northern Paraná. Lovat solves know the area and Mesquita Filho, engineer of the railway company, is tasked to accompany him. The entourage reached Cambard in January 1924. The farm of Major Barbosa Ferraz is shown to English: five thousand bushels formed by coffee plantations. Already on the first night in the farmhouse, Mosque interrupted game of pool after dinner on the table to extend
the map with the route of the railway, which would be the backbone of an ambitious plan of colonization. The idea was to convince Lovat that, instead of a cotton plantation, would be much more profitable to colonize the region, buying a bargain price from the State Government and then financing the construction of the railroad.
That night, Lovat found that the area had offered half the size of Wales and that the proposal was more than good, because in England yielded good business on the basis of five per cent per annum.
Returning to England, Lord Lovat immediately organized the Paraná Plantations Company and created the Brazilian subsidiary Companhia de Terras Norte do Paraná. And through it bought 1 million 316 thousand and 480 acres of dense forest. The payment term was 12 years, without correction for the debt to be paid from the sale of lots. The price paid by the British was 8000 reis hectare which corresponded to the day of a carpenter or the price of five pounds of beans.

Marcelo Oikawa, londrinese a journalist.


Source: Stories of Paraná, Brasil.