Barão De Suassuna (Baron Of Suassuna) Sugarcane Factory

Located in the municipality of Escada, it was founded in 1877 under the name of Mameluco sugarcane factory, by Lieutenant-Colonel Antônio Marques de Holanda Cavalcanti. It was previously a plantation, also called Mameluco.

Near the factory was the Limoeiro plantation, owned by Belmiro da Silveira Lins, the Baron of Escada, who was murdered in 1880 in Vitória de Santo Antão.

The Limoeirinho factory was founded on the Limoeiro plantation in 1881 by Henrique Marques de Holanda Cavalcanti, the Baron of Suassuna, who in the same year married Maria Lins Cavalcanti, daughter of his uncle Belmiro da Silveira Lins. Because of this, the Baron of Suassuna became the owner of two factories: Mameluco and Limoeirinho. The former was inherited from his father and the latter built and reformed by him in 1910.

The Mameluco factory, in 1929, counted ten fields and 34 sugarcane suppliers, the most important of which was the Cachoeirinha plantation, where for the first time in Brazil the method of planting seeds with arrows was employed.

Its railway was 70 kilometres long, had seven locomotives and 200 cars. It had a capacity of processing 500 tonnes of sugarcane and producing 5,000 litres of ethanol in 22 hours. During the milling season around 50 workers were employed at the factory.

It had a charitable association and three schools, with an average annual attendance of 115 students.

When he died in 1941, at the age of 87, the Baron of Suassuna left his factories to his nephew, doctor Fonseca Lima, who passed it on to Jayme Loyo and his children later in the 1940s.

Due to financial difficulties, intervention by the Institute of Sugar and Ethanol – IAA – took place, but its owners overcame the problem and returned to running it.

The Limoeiro factory was closed down and taken over by Mameluco, then being renamed to Barão de Suassuna sugarcane factory, in honour of its former owner.

Recife, 6 August 2003.
(Updated on 9 September 2009).
Translated by Peter Leamy, January 2012.

sources consulted

ANDRADE, Manuel Correia de. História das usinas de açúcar de Pernambuco. Recife: FJN. Ed. Massangana, 1989. 114 p. (República, v.1)

GONÇALVES & SILVA, O assucar e o algodão em Pernambuco. Recife: [s.n.], 1929. 90 p.

MOURA, Severino. Senhores de engenho e usineiros, a nobreza de Pernambuco. Recife: Fiam, CEHM, Sindaçúcar, 1998. 320 p. (Tempo municipal, 17).

how to quote this text

Source: GASPAR, Lúcia. Barão De Suassuna (Baron Of Suassuna) Sugarcane Factory. Pesquisa Escolar Online, Joaquim Nabuco Foudation, Recife. Available at:  <https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/en/>. Accessed: day month year. Exemple: 6 Aug. 2009