Africa's Heritage in Brazil

As the indigenous population of Brazil was soon decimated by enslavement and imported diseases, the Portuguese settlers, from the 1550s on, turned to replace them by Africans. The first strong increase of their importation was caused by the boom of the sugar cultivation in the capitanias (provinces) Bahia and Pernambuco. Their number rose from about 2,000 in 1570 to about 15.000 only 30 years later. During the following centuries African slaves were brought into the country in order to work on sugar, tobacco, cocoa, coffee, rice and cotton plantations, and, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, in the gold and diamond mines of Minas Gerais.

At first, mostly Wolof, Mandinka and Hausa from today's Senegal and Sierra Leone were brought into the country, followed in the 17th century by Bantu peoples from the Congo region, Angola and Mozambique. After that, until the 1770s, slaves originated above all from Ghana and Togo, and from 1775 to 1850 pre-dominantly Yoruba from what today is Benin and Nigeria were shipped to Brazil.

From the West-African coast the passage to Brazil took at least 30 days, from Mozambique about two months. Conditions on the slave ships were so dreadful that at times 50 to 60 per cent of the slaves never arrived at their destination.

As everywhere in the New World in Brazil, too, slaves—men and women—toiled under inhuman conditions and were exposed to the most cruel punishments at the slightest offence or insubordination.

After arriving at the plantation, a slave had a life expectancy of another ten years, after that he was worn out and replaced by another slave.

Infant mortality among slaves was extremely high: In the 1870s still, only 25 per cent of the newborn children survived, only 50 per cent of those who did, reached the age of six. Even among those children who—in towns like Rio de Janeiro—were given to clerical orphanages (called casas de roda), only one third survived.

Johann Moritz Rugendas, Negros no fundo do porão (1835). Litografia (colorida a mão), 51,30 cm x 35,50 cm.

During the about 350 years until 1850, when the importation of slaves was officially forbidden, at least six million, maybe up to ten million, Africans were deported to Brazil, which is thus the country with the largest population of African descent outside Africa.

Quilombos and Mocambos

Unlike those Africans who were brought to the comparatively small Caribbean Islands, runaway slaves in Brazil (and on the Latin American continent in general) were able to hide in the vast countryside. In spite of the draconian punishments awaiting them if they were recaptured, there were always numerous slaves who decided to take the risk.

And it was quite common for them to found large communities, clear the forest and establish fortified settlements. The larger communities were known as Quilombos, the smaller ones as Mocambos. Both names are derived from terms of the Kimbundu, a language spoken in Angola, meaning "assembly or group of huts" and "hideout," respectively. The inhabitants of the Quilombos were called Quilombolas, those of the Mocambos, Mocambeiros.

I am hard (excerpt)

I am hard, I am harddeep within I am hardI have my motivesand therefore I am hard …Blessed is the ground glassin the master's bowelsblessed the spear, the bulletsof Zumbi, of Haitifor a long time I have my reasonsfor being hard, I am hardbut I'll be kind and obedient:blessed are the riotsthe looting, the arson attacksand the sharp lightnings of Xangôstriking those who made me(I am hard, I am hard)have these reasons.

Oliveira Silveira (*1941), Sou duro(transl. K. Sekora)Quoted in Parente Auguel, 1988

Most Quilombos were established in faraway territories, but quite a number of them also existed in the immediate surroundings of towns. One of the first Quilombos, near Bahia, is mentioned in documentary sources as early as 1575, only a few decades after the beginning of the importation of Africans, and until the...