O Rosário de D. Antônio: Irmandades negras, alianças e conflitos na história social do Recife, 1848–1872 by Marcelo MacCord (review)

In this important study, Marcelo MacCord examines social relationships in the city of Recife during the twenty-four year reign of Antônio de Oliveira Guimarães, the black King of Congo and “universal sovereign” of the African nations of Pernambuco. The position of King of Congo was intimately linked to brotherhoods dedicated to the devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary, and this example takes the reader into the history of the Brotherhood of the Rosary in the neighborhood of Santo Antônio in Recife, and more generally into organizations of Africans and their descendents in Recife and its surrounding areas, and their relationships and negotiations with the white authorities in the region.

The book is divided into three long chapters, each of which is subdivided into several sections. The first chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by examining what daily life in Recife would have been like in the middle of the nineteenth century. The author examines both the historical context both in terms of the changing demographics that occurred as the result of the end of the slave trade and the shift of slavery to the south of Brazil, and changes in society, especially the Romanization of the Catholic Church during this period. He also examines the history of the rosary brotherhood and its structure. The second chapter turns to the study of the relationship between the rosary brotherhood and the provincial authorities, and the administrative structures and bureaucracies that developed in the colonial period and continued into the nineteenth century. One thing that made the Santo Antonio rosary brotherhood unique was the control that the King of Congo had over black professional groups, which were sometimes divided by ethnicity, in the city. The leaders of these professional groups were legitimized by government commissions, which exorted the leaders to be loyal to the King of Congo. The final chapter of the book examines the relationship between the Congo Kings and the political and daily life of Recife. Here, MacCord examines more closely the reign of Antônio de Oliveira Guimarães, its challengers, and the relationship of those challenges to political upheaval in mid-nineteenth century Recife. He also looks at the relationship between this reign and the emergence of maracatus. The conclusion of the book looks more deeply at the historiography of the maracatu, and opens doors to further historical research on the topic.

The author makes several important points in the study. He emphasizes the fact that rosary brotherhoods certainly should not be seen as a place of accommodation, and demonstrates the ways that the worn out resistance-accommodation model does not serve to help scholars understand the complex and nuanced relationships that obtained between different populations in colonial and imperial Brazil. In pursuing this end, MacCord does an excellent job of demonstrating how black brotherhoods were places of contestation—not only (and not always) between the white authorities and black brotherhood members, but also between blacks within the brotherhoods. The author also demonstrates that the nineteenth century, far from being a time when the significance of the brotherhoods and their Kings slowly lost their meaning, was a time when these traditions continued to be important to the blacks of Recife—even when they were not being recorded in the official books of the brotherhoods. Finally, he shows that the easy claim that coronations of the Kings of Congo transormed seamlessly into maracatus in the nineteenth century falls apart when the evidence is examined. The author urges other scholars to continue the work of unpacking the many maracatu origin myths.

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature on blacks in Brazil, and especially the important role of the black confraternities, by examining the complexities of interaction, contestation, and negotiations within the confraternities and between...