Why did plantation owners rely on enslaved labor in colonial Brazil?

In colonial Brazil, plantation owners relied on enslaved labor primarily due to a compounding labor shortage and the specific demands of the sugar industry.12

Initially, Portuguese settlers attempted to extract labor from Indigenous people through trade and raiding. However, this proved insufficient because many Indigenous men from semisedentary societies were not accustomed to the intensive agricultural labor required for large-scale production. Furthermore, the Jesuit order frequently intervened to protect Indigenous populations by settling them in missions (aldeias), which restricted the colonists' access to this labor supply and sparked significant conflict.21

As the sugar industry expanded in the late 16th century to meet growing European demand, it became an industrial-scale enterprise requiring significant capital for mills (engenhos) and a reliable, large-scale workforce. Facing these pressures, colonists increasingly turned to the transatlantic slave trade to import enslaved Africans. By the 17th century, enslaved Africans had replaced Indigenous people as the primary labor force, becoming the foundation of the Brazilian economy.3214