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ABSTRACT
This article examines the ways in which black carnival clubs in Salvador, Bahia strategically used African themes and representations to negotiate social, political, and cultural space just after abolition in Brazil, which also coincided with the first years of the Republic. Contemporary newspaper accounts reveal a distinctly Bahian perspective on emerging black cosmopolitanism and pan-Africanism that deepens our understanding of this era in African diaspora history. The pioneer clubs Embaixada Africana (African Embassy) and the Pândegos da África (African Merrymakers) referenced high African civilization, royalty, and divinity in their themes at a time when Africans were being stereotyped as backwards and antithetical to national progress. In so doing, their carnival masquerades became a form of political speech and cultural contestation that was formally banned in 1905, but which laid the foundation for Afro-Bahian carnival expressions for the rest of the twentieth century.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Rutgers University and the Fulbright Foundation for research funding, and the members of the UNICAMP Centro de Pesquisaem História Social da Cultura at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, the CULTNA workshop at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, and the journal reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. My particular thanks to Seu Luiz at the Biblioteca Pública in Salvador and to Lisa Earl Castillo for her close reading and valuable insights.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Note that, where possible, I cite English versions of sources originally published in Portuguese.
2 Albuquerque’s article (Citation2002a) on the carnival clubs is included with minor revisions in her 2009 book; I have cited the book version in this article.
3 Bahia’s elites were drawn from the landholding planter class from the lucrative Recôncavo agricultural area, and the political, business, paramilitary, and media interests connected to them. Additionally, an intellectual elite was emerging from Bahia’s celebrated medical school. People of color such as Manoel Querino circulated amongst these elites, but there also was an elite within the Afro-Bahian population where other attributes, such as seniority within the candomblés or brotherhoods, could also confer status.
4 In Portuguese, the word ‘colonia’ referred to an immigrant community, generally with distinct geographical spaces and cultural components. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, sponsored immigration programs targeted at European immigrants had created colonias of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and other nationalities who became integral in both the substitution of enslaved labor and the expansion of a new industrial sector. During this time, immigration from Asia and Africa was fiercely criticized and generally prohibited.
5 Also alternatively written as Pândegos d’África or Pândegos de Africa.
6 Though candomblés (as well as capoeiras) were routinely persecuted throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many were able to negotiate behind the scenes with the authorities. However, a severe period of repression soon followed the restrictions on the African carnival clubs (Reis Citation2008, 21–47).
7 The 1890 census does not indicate national origins for people of African ancestry, noting instead whether they were ‘black’ or ‘mixed’. Those population groups totaled 107,250, or 61.4% of Salvador’s population (Brazil Citation1950). For additional details on Salvador’s nineteenth century population (see Mattoso Citation1988).
8 The 1890 census lists 10,922 foreigners, 6.2% of the city’s population, but does not give their countries of origin. Though that figure does not likely include African-born freedpersons, it may include the small number of Africans who settled in Brazil. The overall population was 35% mestiço, 32% white, 26% preto, and 7% caboclo (figures rounded).
9 Repatriated Africans from Brazil, Sierra Leone, and Cuba had settled in large numbers in Lagos, where the English abolitionist protectorate provided greater security and opportunity than elsewhere in West Africa. However, by the 1880s and 1890s those opportunities were coming under greater constraint with an increasing English business and administrative presence (Lindsay Citation1994, 30).
10 Carurú is an okra-based Afro-Bahian dish flavored with palm oil, one of the key products traded by Africans across the Atlantic.
11 'A cartola enferrujada' in the original; this may mean the water boy dresses up to do chores.
12 Ogun (Ogum) is the Yoruba warrior orixá of iron and determination, widely venerated in Afro-Brazilian candomblé.
13 Afro-Uruguayan candombe carnival groups took a similar strategy (Andrews Citation2007).
14 I am grateful to Lisa Earl Castillo for alerting me to the Gazeta article.
15 I have translated and reprinted the full announcement in Butler (Citation1998, 178–179). It is possible that ‘Lunda’ may have been a typo intended to be ‘Luanda’. I have not been able to locate a Cataranga Waterfall; this may be the club’s invention.
16 Serpa Pinto was a key figure in Portugal’s attempt to unite its territories in east and west southern Africa, which ultimately failed in 1890 under British pressure.
17 Afro-Brazilians have utilized indigenous references in multiple ways in constructing their own identities in Brazil, such that they have become deeply intertwined (French Citation2009; Godi Citation1991).
18 Ethiopia and Menelik figured prominently in the Afro-Brazilian imagination and political thought throughout the early twentieth century (Domingues Citation2012).
19 Petrus (Piet) Joubert, 1834–1900, was a prominent Boer politician and general, who died later that year as a result of an accident sustained during a raid.
20 Mississippi had figured prominently in the contemporary news as a symbol of race violence. In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld Mississippi’s discriminatory voting practices in Williams versus Mississippi; Ida B. Wells Barnett was at that time raising awareness of the practice of lynching in Mississippi, as well as throughout the south (Royster Citation1997). It is not clear the extent to which this was covered in the Brazilian press; the ports were another important source of international news. It is also unclear why they chose Peru and Arabia; neither were formal colonies, though Britain certainly exercised military and economic influence in each.
21 ‘Bife’ (‘beef’) appears multiple times in the press as a deprecatory reference to the British.
22 Bahian immigrants, once important to Lagos’ trade in such products as palm oil, and also as artisans, faced a crisis after the 1880s. The British turned increasingly to Saros (emigrants from English-speaking Sierra Leone) for positions in the colonial administration, and began dealing directly with the nations of the interior who had once used the Brazilians as intermediaries. Britain tried to steer Brazilians away from commerce and into agriculture, hoping also to attract freed persons after Brazilian abolition in 1888 for that sector, a move that proved unsuccessful (Cunha Citation2012, 164–175).
23 My thanks to Marta Abreu for alerting me to the significance of the Francisco character and to the anonymous reviewer at the JABD who helped clarify the translation.
24 On the significance of the SPD (see Braga Citation1987 and Butler Citation1998, 158–166).
25 A similar process occurred in Rio where ‘Zé Pereira’ drum bands, Cucumbys (a folk allegoric dance, re-popularized in Rio with its Bahian name), devils (diabos) and ‘dirties’ (sujos), all of which were associated with Afro-Brazilians, helped make Rio’s street carnival a space for all sectors of society (Chasteen Citation2004, 39–40; Cunha Citation2001, 41).