the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
February 2, 2026
The author (1912–2001) was the son of a cocoa plantation owner in Brazil and lived through the unbridled greed and violence he portrayed in his over 30 novels. This book vividly describes these early days, where you saw violent wars to control, profit from, and monopolize the production of cocoa.
In addition, he completes the picture by providing intimate details of life in this time period: the brutal slavery, the people the plantation owners used as assassins, the doctors, the mercenary priests, the corrupt politicians, the witchdoctor, the women, both wives and prostitutes. Each character is fully developed.
You see the town in its exploding growth, the destroyed old growth forests, the new shops, the streets, the ports, the burros, the railroad. And you see the devastation that the march of capitalist “progress” brings, fed by the blood running into the soil.