Retaking the Middle Passage: glimpses of a modern African diaspora in Brazil

Abstract

Enticed by the various economic, academic and social promises offered by this new ‘metropole’, Africans have begun to form a new diaspora in Brazil, the country with the largest concentration of Afro descendentes outside of Africa. This paper aims to explore, through interviews, the various motivations and experiences of these Africans, as well as to examine the official attitude of the Brazilian authorities and that of the society at large to the new residents of this modern African diaspora.

Keywords:

• Africans in Brazil
• diaspora
• immigrants in Brazil

Notes

1. Slavery in Brazil was officially abolished in 1888, but in reality continued until the early twentieth century. From this time onwards till the late 1950s, the migration to Brazil by those of African descent was deliberately hindered. For more on this theme see Seyferth (2000).

2. Embranquencimento literally means ‘whitening’, and in this context refers to the conscious mixing of the population in order to ‘lighten’ it. In Brazil this was a national policy implemented by the promotion of European immigration to the country.

3. Clandestinos refers to those who clandestinely came to Brazil. In Brazil, this word has been adopted to describe those (typically Africans) who journey to Brazil hidden in cargo ships.

4. PALOP stands for Paises Africanos de Lingua Official Portuguesa – African countries where the official language is Portuguese.

5. Many travellers whom I met in this context, when they discovered that I am Kenyan, told me of other Africans whom they had met on this continent. These Africans were using Latin America as a stepping stone to Europe or North America, and while planning their onward journey, bided their time, working in whatever position they could find.

6. It is important to note that all the names of the interviewees have been changed in order to safeguard their privacy.

7. For additional information about these students see Karasch (2000).

8. These PECs are scholarships for all levels of university education, undergraduate, masters, and doctoral studies, offered to students from ‘developing countries’ which have cultural and/or educational and technological accords with Brazil.

9. The image of a racial democracy propagated by scholars such as Freyre has been disputed many times. For more information see Fernandes (1964).

10. Negão is an informal and more convivial word for Negro. In Salvador da Bahia it has become part of the daily slang since the ‘re-Africanization’ of Brazil. For more on this re-Africanization, see Sansone (2007).

11. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) uses the term pardo instead of mestiço in its statistics. This term has come to define those of mixed origin in Brazil.

12. LEI 10.639/03 is a Brazilian law passed in 2003, that enforces the teaching of Afro–Brazilian history in all Brazilian schools. This law may be the reason for the growing demand for the talks given by Mohamed and Matthews.

13. This is apparently a common occurrence, as the ship captains do not want to be responsible for the clandestinos, either while on their ships or when they are in Brazil, as is stipulated by international maritime law.

14. Authorities are increasingly being surprised by the large number of clandestinos who land on Brazilian soil. In the month of August 2005, in less than 15 days, 11 clandestinos were caught in Santos. See Anon. (2005) Aumento de Clandestinos no Porto de Santos Supreende. Guia Imigrante website: http://www.guiadoimigrante.com/artigo.php?idPublicacao=2354 (accessed 15 March 2008).

15. Malê was the term used to describe Muslim slaves in Brazil, such as the Hausas and Nagôs. In January 1835, a group of roughly 1,500 slaves led by Malês started what was to be the most important slave rebellion that Salvador had ever seen. Although betrayed before they could fully carry out this rebellion, the incident served to show the authorities the risk the state was taking by perpetuating the slave regime.

16. Gilberto Freyre was one of Brazils defining social theorists in the early twentieth century. He sought to describe modern Brazilian race relations after slavery and in this quest propagated that Brazil was a ‘‘racial democracy.’’ According to Cleary (1999) his reputation is largely due to three of his over thirty books. These are Casa Grande e Senzala (1933), Sobrados e Mocambos (1936) and Ordem e Progresso (1959).

17. According to Dona Veronica, aside from accusations of drug-trafficking and other illegal enterprises, in the early 1990s Africans were also blamed for being the source of the AIDS virus in Brazil (Dona Veronica, personal communication 18 February 2008).