Whaling in Brazil and its historical iconography

Abstract

The objective of this study is to analyze iconographies that show the whaling in the Brazilian Colony, dates back to the sixteenth century and had socioeconomic importance in the formation and implementation of people in the cost. This extractivist activity that involved the settlement of large cetaceans was a common scene in coastal areas, such as the Guanabara and Todos os Santos Bays, and Santa Catarina Inlets. In these visual documents we identified the main characteristics of whaling in Brazil: proximity to the coast, slave labor, specialization of work at sea, techniques of capture and processing, and the boats launched in the calm waters of the bays. The whaling iconography produced in Brazil have common elements, recognizable in the redundancy of certain visual arrangements: the chase, the harpooning, the towing, the shredding, the melting, and the storage. The most representative image of fishing is the dramatic moment in which man and animal meet since, in the Basque tradition, being close was paramount.