Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 134 Resettlement Site for Retired Soldiers
Thanks to classmates Yunhai Shuyou Shitongzhou and Mengshi Xihua for the tips!
The fleet sailed on the Guaiba River for half a day and arrived at its destination, Passofonto, in the afternoon.

A group of Chinese people who had received the news in advance gathered on the river bank. As soon as Li Mingyuan got ashore, a Chinese man in his thirties came up to greet him first.

"Your humble servant Zhao Yan greets the Crown Prince."

"I haven't seen you for two months. Mr. Zhao has become much darker." Li Mingyuan smiled and helped Zhao Yan up.

After Sun Bin was sent to Prussia, most of the specific work of resettling retired soldiers was transferred to Zhao Yan.

"The prince has entrusted me with the important task of settling the retired brothers, and I dare not slack off."

Zhao Yan said respectfully.

"My brothers have been with me through thick and thin, and finally settled down. We must make proper arrangements for them. If there is a shortage of food, medicine, or building materials, please report to me directly and I will dispatch the supplies from Porto Alegre."

“Two days ago, Chief of Staff Liu sent part of the food delivered by the Brazilians to Passofonto, and the food shortage has been temporarily resolved.

In terms of housing construction, the climate in Pasudu is mild, the rainfall is abundant, and various tall trees grow in the nearby areas, so the wood for building houses is easy to obtain. I have been in Pasudu for two months, and I have arranged for the retired soldiers who arrived earlier to cut down trees, level the wasteland, and build fifty wooden houses of different sizes and three hundred simple wooden sheds, which can accommodate two thousand people. "

Passofonto is one of the key construction areas and is planned to be built into the fourth county-level administrative unit of Rio Grande do Sul next year. Therefore, more retired soldiers are transported here than anywhere else.

Zhao Yan first gave a general introduction to the early construction of Passudo, and then changed the subject to raise the difficulties faced in the resettlement work. "The construction of Passudo started in early September. In the middle of the war with the Brazilians, half of the retired soldiers were transferred to the front line to assist in the battle.

Due to the reduction in manpower, there is a shortage of people to cut down trees and build houses. I have no choice but to greatly reduce the number of people reclaiming wasteland and concentrate most of my efforts to ensure that the house construction work is completed before December. As a result, most of the wasteland has not been developed and the time for crop planting has been delayed. It will be next spring before Pasufengdu can achieve self-sufficiency. "

"The Second Brazilian War was an unexpected event, because the reduction in crop acreage caused by the war was not your fault."

Li Mingyuan nodded and continued, "You don't have to worry about the food problem. Liu Pu has already started to purchase food from outside. The food supply in the Pasufengdu area will not be able to continue until next spring."

The two continued to talk for a while, then walked into the Chinese resettlement site.

The Pasufonto resettlement site for retired soldiers is built on a small plain. In front of it is a continuous forest that is planned to be reclaimed into farmland, behind it is a small hill, and on the left and right are small rivers that run through the Guaiba River.

The creek was too small for passage and only small flat-bottomed sand boats could pass through, so the fleet anchored at the entrance of the creek. The supplies on the boats were moved by soldiers to small boats, which were then transported to the river and temporarily stored in a makeshift base built by the river.

In the resettlement site, wooden houses and sheds were lined up on both sides of the newly repaired road. More than one hundred retired soldiers who had lost their ability to work lined up in two rows to welcome Li Mingyuan. Li Mingyuan greeted these disabled soldiers cordially and asked about their living conditions. When he heard that each of them had been allocated more than 300 acres of land, and houses and farm tools had also been allocated, Li Mingyuan was very pleased.

The disabled are properly arranged so that soldiers will not have any worries when fighting, and the disabled veterans distributed in various resettlement sites take up leadership positions at the grassroots level, which can play a role in stabilizing the rule. Therefore, Li Mingyuan has never abandoned the disabled soldiers as a burden on the troops.

After talking with more than a dozen disabled veterans, Li Mingyuan met an acquaintance, Zhao Youde, a Ming Dynasty survivor whom he met in Peru. Zhao Youde was in his forties, and due to long periods of hard work, he looked like a man in his sixties or seventies. His physical fitness gradually deteriorated due to the injuries he suffered in his early years. Therefore, Zhao Youde was arranged by Sun Bin to be together with more than a hundred disabled veterans, so that he did not have to engage in high-intensity labor such as cutting down trees.

"After coming here from Peru, are you getting used to the life here, Mr. Zhao?" Li Mingyuan chatted with Zhao Youde in a casual manner.

"Thank you for your concern, my Lord. I am very satisfied with my life here. Lord Zhao has taken good care of me. When I was in Peru, I never thought that a person who was about to be buried could still live a life with farmland."

"The Chinese Independence Army has just ended the war, and they are busy with many things in the early stage. After a period of time, they can completely calm down. Only then will life be better. Mr. Zhao, please take care of your health, because good days are still to come."

"I'm old and useless." Zhao Youde smiled and waved his hand. "I thought I could still do some small things for the prince like when I was young, but when I was crossing the Bolivian plateau, I encountered a blizzard. More than a hundred people in the migration team died of freezing or disease. I barely survived, but my health is getting worse and worse."

After Zhao Youde finished speaking, he felt that it was unlucky to say such things in front of Li Mingyuan, and added, "Although my health is not as good as it was in the past, it should not be a problem to hold on for a few more years."

During the long migration, the dead Chinese could not be taken away and could only be buried in the jungles and mountains along the way. If the migration was successful, it would be too unfair to the dead soldiers to let them remain unknown.

"Liu Pu, count the brothers who died during the expedition, as well as the soldiers who died in previous battles, record their names and specific circumstances, and after a period of time build a hall to commemorate the sacrificed soldiers."

"I understand." Liu Pu wrote it down carefully. "Also, when we send people to the mainland to recruit immigrants next year, we should find out more about the situation and see if we can find the family members and orphans left behind by our fallen brothers. Our brothers died in battle and were buried in the wilderness. We cannot leave their families unattended."

There are more than 100,000 Chinese in Rio Grande do Sul, of which less than 10,000 are remnants of the Taiping Army. The rest are all ordinary Chinese laborers who were either trafficked or deceived to America. Most of them have relatives in the mainland. Bringing the relatives of the Chinese workers who died in the war to Rio Grande do Sul is a way of being responsible to them, and also to give ordinary Chinese soldiers peace of mind.

Chinese workers in South America mainly come from coastal areas, with Guangdong, Guangxi and southern Fujian being the main distribution areas.

Guangdong and Guangxi are the areas set up to obtain immigrants next year. While obtaining immigrants from there, we can also inquire about the news of the relatives of Chinese workers. Although the family conditions of some of the sacrificed Chinese workers are unclear and it is difficult to contact their families, considering the big picture, Liu Pu still agrees with Li Mingyuan's idea.

"Your Highness is kindhearted. If those Chinese brothers who died knew about this, they would definitely thank you for your kindness!"

Zhao Youde had long since been integrated into the large group of the Chinese Independence Army and had deep feelings for the Chinese workers who had come along with him.

"This is what I should do." Li Mingyuan said softly.

After discussing how to deal with the sacrificed Chinese soldiers, the conversation became relaxed again.

"Thanks to the prince's kindness, my son Erlang got married three months ago. Six days ago, Erlang took his daughter-in-law to the army doctor for treatment. The doctor told him that his daughter-in-law was two and a half months pregnant. By next summer, we can have another baby."

"Congratulations, Mr. Zhao. I met Erlang once. He's a very energetic young man. I didn't expect that he would become a father so soon."

"It's not too early. After the New Year, Erlang will be 19 years old. If our family wasn't poor, we would have thought about finding him a wife a long time ago."

Zhao Youde was all smiles, but he did not notice that Li Mingyuan was only 17 years old during the Chinese New Year. Instead, he habitually treated him as a leader like other Chinese generals, ignoring his real age.

After Zhao Youde was happy, he continued, "I didn't have any land before, and I always dreamed of having a piece of land of my own. When I settled down here, I was given a large piece of land, but I couldn't grow crops on it. I could only use it as a pasture to raise five alpacas and more than ten pheasants I caught."

"How much land did Mr. Zhao's family get?"

"The army granted me 400 mu of land for my work collecting alpacas in Peru. Erlang also received 400 mu of land as a reward for his service in the army. A total of 800 mu of land is managed by me, my son, and my daughter-in-law. Now my daughter-in-law is pregnant and cannot do the heavy work of reclaiming the land. Erlang and I worked hard for more than ten days and reclaimed and leveled 200 mu of land. The remaining 600 mu of land is left uncultivated and we have no time to take care of it."

"The retired soldiers in Rio Grande do Sul are my old brothers who followed me in the uprising. We cannot hide the conquered land. Three hundred acres of land per person may seem like a lot now, but after ten or twenty years, when the soldiers who got the land get married and have five or six children, there won't be much land left for each child."

Having many children means more blessings is a tradition recognized by ordinary Chinese people. Three hundred acres of land may seem like a lot, but according to the Chinese people's reproductive desire in peacetime, after two generations, the three hundred acres of land of a household will be reduced to a few dozen acres.

Zhao Youde obviously didn't think about what would happen decades later. When he heard what Li Mingyuan said, he immediately became worried. "If Erlang's wife gives birth to five sons, and each son gives birth to five sons, the eight hundred acres of land will be divided among the twenty-five great-grandchildren. Each person will have less than forty acres of land."

Zhao Youde finished his calculations and was shocked by the result. "Eight hundred acres of land is not enough to be divided. We need to talk to Erlang and ask him to do more meritorious service in the army so that he can earn more land."

Li Mingyuan said that considering the situation of the Chinese in South America in the first few decades after the founding of the country, as the economy developed and ordinary Chinese got used to a stable life, the biological level would drop to a normal level.

Zhao Youde's own calculations were also wrong. Even if his daughter-in-law gave birth to five children, it was difficult to guarantee that they were all boys, let alone the next generation.

Li Mingyuan explained and told him not to worry so much, and then gave him an idea.

If 800 acres of land cannot be fully cultivated, you can choose more than 30 acres to plant crops, and the rest of the land can be used to plant precious woods such as bitterwood and sandwood, or developed into grassland to raise alpacas, cattle, sheep, etc.

Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina are the livestock bases of Brazil, where dense forests and high-quality pastures are suitable for cattle and sheep to survive.

However, because the three southern states of Brazil are geographically closer to Argentina, their economy has not developed well.

The agricultural and industrial development plans of the two states are huge and complex. Li Mingyuan has ordered Sun Bin to invite relevant experts from Prussia to Rio Grande do Sul. When they return with industrial equipment and experts, large-scale construction in the Rio Grande do Sul will be officially launched.

(End of this chapter)