| Notable Afro-Brazilians:
Ernesto C. Ribeiro • Ronaldinho • Machado de Assis |
| Total population |
|---|
| "pretos" (black): c. 12.908 million 6.9% of Brazil's population |
| Regions with significant populations |
| Brazil |
| Languages |
| Religion |
|
67% Roman Catholic, 21.7% Protestant, 7.6% non-religious, 2.7% Other. |
| Related ethnic groups |
|
Brazilian, African, Angolan, Yoruba, Igbo, Ewe, Afro-Chilean, Afro-Argentine, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Ecuadorian, Afro-Latin American, Afro-Mexican, Afro-Peruvian, Afro-Trinidadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Jamaicans, Afro-Costa Rican, Afro-Uruguayan, African-American |
In Brazil, the term "preto" (black) is one of the five categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with "branco" (White), "pardo" (Multiracial, brown), "amarelo" (yellow, East Asian) and "indígena" (Amerindian). In 2009, 13,252,000, 6.9% of the Brazilian population, self-identified themselves as preto.[1]
In recent years, Brazilian government agencies such as the SEPPIR and the IPEA, in their analysis of socioeconomic indicators, have been considering the categories "preto" and "pardo" together, as a single category called "negro" (Black, capital initial), since the indicators of living conditions of "pardos" and "pretos" are similar and the word "negro" can be used in other contexts, and not only when addressing pretos. However, this decision has caused much controversy, because there isn't consensus about it in Brazilian society.[2][3]
Black Brazilians rarely use the American-style phrase "African Brazilian" to categorise themselves, and never in informal discourse: the IBGE's July 1998 PME shows that, of Black Brazilians, only about 10% consider themselves of "African origin"; most of them identify as having a "Brazilian origin".[4] In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents.[5] In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.[6]
Brazilian geneticist Sérgio Pena has criticised American scholar Edward Telles for lumping "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category. According to him, "the autosomal genetic analysis that we have performed in non-related individuals from Rio de Janeiro shows that it does not make any sense to put "pretos" and "pardos" in the same category".[7] In support of Sérgio Pena, for example, another autosomal genetic study on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro found that the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, even though they (the tested students) thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests. [8][9]
According to Edward Telles,[10] in Brazil there are three different systems related to "racial classification" along the White-Black continuum.[11] The first is the Census System, which distinguishes three categories: "branco" (White), "pardo", and "preto".[12] The second is the popular system that uses many different categories, including the ambiguous term "moreno"[13] (literally, "tanned", "brunette", or "with an olive complexion").[14] The third is the Black movement system that distinguishes only two categories, summing up "pardos" and "pretos" (blacks, lowercase) as "negros" (Blacks, with capital initial).[15] More recently, the term "afrodescendente" has been brought into use,[16] but it is restricted to very formal discourse, such as governmental or academic discussions, being viewed by some as a cultural imposition from the "politically correct speech" common in the United States.
The first system referred by Telles is that of the IBGE. In the Census, respondents choose their race or color in five categories: branca (white), parda (brown), preta (black), amarela (yellow) or indígena (indigenous). The term "parda" needs further explanation; it has been systematically used since Census of 1940. In that Census, people were asked for their "colour or race"; if the answer was not "White", "preta" (black), or "Yellow", interviewers were instructed to fill the "colour or race" box with a slash. These slashes were later summed up in the category "pardo". In practice this means answers such as "pardo", "moreno", "mulato", "caboclo", etc. In the following Censuses, "pardo" became a category on its own, and included Amerindians,[17] which became a separate category only in 1991. So it is a term that describes people who have a skin darker than Whites and lighter than Blacks, but not necessarily implies a White-Black mixture.
Telles' second system is that of popular classification. Two IBGE surveys (the 1976 PNAD and the July 1998 PME) have sought to understand the way Brazilians think of themselves in "racial" terms, with the explicit aim of adjusting the census classification (neither, however, resulted in actual changes in the Census). Besides that, Data Folha has also conducted research on this subject. The results of these surveys are somewhat varied, but seem to coincide in some fundamental aspects. First, there is an enormous variety of "racial" terms in use in Brazil; the 1976 PNAD found 136 different answers to the question about race;[6] the July 1998 PME found 143.[18] However, most of these terms are used by very small minorities. Telles remarks that 95% of the population chose only 6 different terms (branco, moreno, pardo, moreno-claro, preto and negro); Petrucelli shows that the 7 most common responses (the above plus amarela) sum up 97%, and the 10 more common (the previous plus mulata, clara, and morena-escura) make 99%.[19] Petrucelli, analysing the July 98 PME, finds that 77 denominations were mentioned by only one person in the sample. Other 12 are misunderstandings, referring to national or regional origin (francesa, italiana, baiana, cearense). Many of the "racial" terms are (or could be) remarks about the relation between skin colour and exposition to sun (amorenada, bem morena, branca-morena, branca-queimada, corada, bronzeada, meio morena, morena-bronzeada, morena-trigueira, morenada, morenão, moreninha, pouco morena, queimada, queimada de sol, tostada, rosa queimada, tostada). Others are clearly variations of the same idea (preto, negro, escuro, crioulo, retinto, for black, alva, clara, cor-de-leite, galega, rosa, rosada, pálida, for White, parda, mulata, mestiça, mista, for "parda"), or precisions of the same concept (branca morena, branca clara), and can actually grouped together with one of the main racial terms without falsifying the interpretation.[19] Some seem to express an outright refusal of classification: azul-marinho (navy blue), azul (blue), verde (green), cor-de-burro-quando-foge. In the July 1998 PME, the categories "Afro-Brasileiro" (Afro-Brazilian) and "Africano Brasileiro" (African Brazilian) weren't used even once; the category "Africano" (African) was used by 0.004% of the respondents.[5] In the 1976 PNAD, none of these were used even once.[6]
The remarkable difference of the popular system is the use of the term "moreno". This is actually difficult to translate into English, and carries a few different meanings. Derived from Latin maurus, meaning inhabitant of Mauritania,[20] traditionally it is used as a term to distinguish White people with dark hair, as opposed to "ruivo" (redhead) and "loiro" (blonde).[21] It is also commonly used as a term for people with an olive complexion, a characteristic that is often found in connection with dark hair.[22] In connection to this, it is used as a term for suntanned people, and is commonly opposed to "pálido" (pale) and "amarelo" (yellow), which in this case refer to people who aren't frequently exposed to sun. Finally, it is also often used as a euphemism for "pardo" and "preto".[23]
Finally, the Black movement system groups "pardos" and "pretos" in a single category, "negro" (and not "Afro-brasileiro" or any other hyphenated form) [24] This looks more similar to the American racial perception,[25] but there are some subtle differences. First, as other Brazilians, the Black movement understands that not everybody with some African descent is Black,[26] and that many or most White Brazilians indeed have African (or Amerindian, or both) ancestrals – so an "one drop rule" isn't what the Black movement envisages,[27] as it would make affirmative actions impossible; second, the main issue for the Black movement isn't "cultural", but rather economic: it is not a supposed cultural identification with Africa, but rather a situation of disadvantage, common to those who are non-White (with the exception of those of East Asian ancestry) that groups them into a "negro" category.
However, this binary division of Brazilians between "brancos" and "negros" is nevertheless seen as influenced by American one-drop rule, and attracts much criticism. For instance, sociologist Demétrio Magnoli considers the sum of pretos and pardos as Blacks an "assault" on the racial vision of Brazilians. He believes that scholars and activists of the Black movement misinterpret the ample variety of intermediate categories, characteristic of the popular system, as a result of Brazilian racism, that would cause Blacks to refuse their identity, and hide themselves in euphemisms.[28] According to the same author, a survey about race, conducted in the town of Rio de Contas, Bahia (total population about 14,000, 58% of whom White), replaced the word "pardo" by "moreno". Not only "pardos" choose the "moreno" category, but also almost half of the people who previously reported to be wWhite and half of the people who previously reported to be pretos also choose the moreno category.[29]
| Self-reported ancestry of people from Rio de Janeiro, by race or skin color (2000 survey)[10] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancestry | brancos | pardos | pretos |
| European only | 48% | 6% | - |
| African only | – | 12% | 25% |
| Amerindian only | – | 2% | - |
| African and European | 23% | 34% | 31% |
| Amerindian and European | 14% | 6% | - |
| African and Amerindian | – | 4% | 9% |
| African, Amerindian and European | 15% | 36% | 35% |
| Total | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Any African | 38% | 86% | 100% |
According to a 2000 survey held in Rio de Janeiro, the entire self-reported preta population reported to have African ancestry. 86% of the self-reported "pardo" and 38% of the self-reported White population reported to have African ancestors. It is notable that 14% of the Pardos (brown) from Rio de Janeiro said they have no African ancestors. This percentage may be even higher in Northern Brazil, where there was a greater ethnic contribution from Amerindian populations.[10]
Racial classifications in Brazil are based on skin color and on other physical characteristics such as facial features, hair texture, etc.[30] This is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin color: a person who is considered White may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered Black, and vice-versa.[31]
In Brazil, a person's "race" is based primarily on physical appearance, unlike in the United States, where ancestry is more important. In Brazil it is possible for two siblings of different colors to be classified as people of different races. Children who were born to a black mother and a European father would be classified as black if their features read as African, and classified as white if their features appeared more European.[32] With no strict criteria for racial classifications, lighter-skinned mulattoes were easily integrated into the white population, introducing a large proportion of African blood in the white Brazilian population, as well as a large proportion of European blood in the black population. This system is very different from that found in the United States, which had defined concepts of race due to the one drop rule so that people with any known African ancestry were automatically classified as Black, regardless of their skin color. Thus, many Black Americans have some degree of European ancestry, while few white Americans have African ancestry.[32]
The Brazilian approach is criticized by geneticist Sérgio Pena: "Only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin colour, which is a very poor indication of ancestry. A white person could have more African genes than a black one or vice-versa, especially in a country like Brazil".[31]
Some criticise the official figures about the size of the Black population in Brazil because they "would hide the true size of the Black population in Brazil, which if defined in a similar way to what happens in the United States would reach at least 50% of the population; and they would also not measure the true size of the Amerindian population". Sociologist Simon Schwartzman refutes this criticism by pointing out that to "substitute 'negro' for 'preto', suppressing the 'pardo' alternative would mean to impose unto Brazil a vision of the racial issue as a dichotomy, similar to that of the United States, which wouldn't be true."[33]
At the same time, Brazilian approaches to race have had significant implications on individuals' economic conditions. Many black Brazilians live in poor conditions, a situation that caused the popular imagination to associate being black with being poor. Moreover, for many decades, the Brazilian ruling classes blamed Blacks for the underdevelopment of Brazil. In this context, the Black population was deemed poor because of the "inferiority of the Black race", rather than because of slavery and its consequences. The poverty of many Black Brazilians is due to the lack of government assistance after the slaves were freed, so that former slaves remained underemployed and vulnerable to the arbitrariness of land owners. Since Brazilian lands were monopolized by a small rural aristocracy, many Blacks migrated to urban centers that were not prepared to receive so many people because there were few jobs available. A 2007 study found that White workers received an average monthly income almost twice that of blacks and pardos (browns). The blacks and browns earned on average 1.8 minimum wages, while the whites had a yield of 3.4 minimum wages.[34]
| Self-reported race in Brazil in 1872, 1940, 2000 and 2008[35][36] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | brancos | pardos | pretos |
| 1872 | 38.1% | 42.2% | 19.7% |
| 1940 | 64% | 21% | 14% |
| 2000 | 53.7% | 38.5% | 6.2% |
| 2008 | 48.8% | 43.8% | 6.5% |
The stigma of being Black because of the unfavorable social situation of this population prevents the creation of a Black identity in Brazil. Historian Joel Rufino dos Santos has written that because Blacks are disadvantaged in access to education and earn lower wages, it is not a surprise that Blacks self-report to be pardos because the prejudice in Brazil is based on the representation, on what people think about themselves or on what others think about them. Gilberto Freyre has described how few wealthy Brazilians admit to having African ancestry,[37] with people of darker complexion from the dominant classes usually associating their skin color with an Indian rather than African ancestry.
In recent years, however, the consequences of the "whiten ideology" on racial classifications in Brazil seem to be gradually reversing. According to a IBGE resource, from 2007 to 2008 the self-reported parda population increased by 3.2 million people, while 450,000 Whites and 1 million blacks "disappeared". This phenomenon should not be attributed solely to the variation in the birth and death rates. The conception of race is a social construction and these changes may be related to the feeling of belonging to a particular ethnicity, prejudice or even a reaction to the affirmative action policies recently taken by the Brazilian Government. In fact, many of the people who used to classify themselves as Whites in previous Censuses are now reporting to be pardos. Even though the proportion of Brazilians who self-report to be pardos is growing in each Census, the self-reported preta population is not and, in fact, their proportion decreased between 2007 and 2008, from 7.2% to 6.5%. According to scholars, this is because the black Brazilian population, because of the prejudice, is reporting to be parda in the Censuses.[36][38] Yet Ribeiro has argued that the example of wealthy African Americans has inspired many black and mulatto Brazilians to be proud of themselves and to accept their blackness.
In the last years, Brazil has been undergoing a process of redemption of its Black identity. This process was also reflected in national censuses. Each year the percentage of Brazilians who self-report to be non-Whites (pretos or pardos) is growing, while there is a decrease of the population that self-reports to be White. <! --- Quite strange. The "parda" population grows at the expense of the White population because racism is in the low, people are reevaluating their African roots, etc. But it grows at the expense of the "pretos" because of racial prejudice?>According to IBGE this is because of the "revaluation of the identity of historically discriminated ethnic groups".[39] In the social context of Brazil, where Blacks are seen as being in an undesirable situation of pauperism, disease, crime and violence, to be assumed as Black was an unusual attitude.</ref>
In recent years, the Brazilian government has encouraged affirmative action programs for segments of the population considered to be "African-descendant" and also for the Amerindians. This is happening, in part, through the created systems of preferred admissions (quotas) for "racial minorities". Other measures include priority in land reform for areas populated by remnants of quilombos. To support these attitudes, it is argued that these groups have historically been discriminated because of their race, and they often appear in the poorest segments of Brazilian society, while the White population often appears in the upper classes. The affirmative actions have been criticized because of inaccuracy in the racial classification in Brazil. A scandalous case happened in 2007, involving the twin brothers Alex and Alan Teixeira. Both have applied for a place in the University of Brasília through quotas reserved for "Black students". In the university, there was a team of specialists and teachers who, through photos of the candidates, chose who was Black and who was not. The Teixeira brothers were identical twins, however only Alan was considered to be Black, while his identical brother Alex was not. Since that case, the affirmative action has been widely criticized, supported by the idea of the high degree of miscegenation of the Brazilian people, which makes the definition of who is Black and who is not very subjective. According to many scholars, the Brazilian society is not divided between races, but between the poor and the rich, even though it is widely agreed that the people of darker skin complexions suffer an "additional discrimination".[40]
"In a classic article published 30 years ago, the anthropologist Charles Wagley (1965) showed that the conception of 'race' in the Americas admits of several definitions according to the weight granted to descent, physical appearance (itself not confined to skin colour), and to sociocultural status (occupation, income, education, region of origin, etc.), depending on the history of intergroup relations and conflicts in the different geographic zones. Americans in the USA are alone in defining `race' strictly on the basis of descent, and this only in the case of African-Americans: one is `black' in Chicago, Los Angeles or Atlanta, not by skin colour but for having one or more ancestors identified as blacks, that is to say, at the end of the regression, as slaves. The USA is the only modern society to apply the 'one drop rule' and the principle of `hypodescent', according to which the children of a mixed union and themselves automatically assigned to the inferior group - here the blacks, and only them. In Brazil, racial identity is defined by reference to a continuum of `colour', that is, by use of a flexible or fuzzy principle which, taking account of physical traits such as skin colour, the texture of hair, and the shape of lips and nose, and of class position (notably income and education), generates a large number of intermediate and partly overlapping categories (over a hundred of them were recorded by the 1980 Census) and does not entail radical ostracization or a stigmatization without recourse or remedy. Evidence for this is provided by the segregation indices sported by Brazilian cities, strikingly lower than those for US metropolitan areas, and the virtual absence of the two typically US forms of ethnoracial violence: lynching and urban rioting (see Telles, 1995; Reid, 1992). Quite the opposite in the USA where there exists no socially and legally recognized category of 'métis' (people of mixed-race) (Davis, 1991; Williamson, 1980). In this case we are faced with a division that is closer to that between definitively defined and delimited castes (proof is the exceptionally low rate of intermarriage: fewer than 2 percent of African- American women contract `mixed' unions, as against about half of the women of Latino or Asian origin): a caste division that one strives to conceal by submerging it within the universe of differentiating visions `revisioned' through US lenses by means of `globalization'. How are we to account for the fact that 'theories' of 'race relations' which are but thinly conceptualized transfigurations, endlessly refurbished and updated to suit current concerns, of the most commonly used racial stereotypes that are themselves only primary justifications of the domination of whites over blacks in one society, could be tacitly (and sometimes explicitly) raised to the status of universal standard whereby every situation of ethnic domination must be analysed and measured?The fact that this racial (or racist) sociodicy was able to `globalize' itself over the recent period, thereby losing its outer characteristics of legitimating discourse for domestic or local usage, is undoubtedly one of the most striking proofs of the symbolic dominion and influence exercised by the USA over every kind scholarly and, especially, semi-scholarly production, notably through the power of consecration they possess and through the material and symbolic profits that researchers in the dominated countries reap from a more or less assumed or ashamed adherence to the model derived from the USA.
But all these mechanisms which have the effect of facilitating the actual `globalization' of American problems, thereby verifying the Americano-centric belief in `globalization' understood, quite simply, as the Americanization of the Western world and, through outward expansion, of the entire universe, these mechanisms are not enough to explain the tendency of the American worldview, scholarly or semi-scholarly, to impose itself as a universal point of view, especially when it comes to issues, such as that of 'race', where the particularity of the American situation is particularly flagrant and particularly far from being exemplary.
One would obviously need to invoke here also the driving role played by the major American philanthropic and research foundations in the diffusion of the US racial doxa within the Brazilian academic field at the level of both representations and practices. Thus, the Rockefeller Foundation and similar organizations fund a programme on `Race and Ethnicity' at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro as well as the Centre for Afro-Asiatic Studies of the Candido Mendes University (and its journal Estudos Afro-Asiaticos) so as to encourage exchanges of researchers and students. But the intellectual current flows in one direction only. And, as a condition for its aid, the Rockefeller Foundation requires that research teams meet US criteria of `affirmative action', which poses insuperable problems since, as we have seen, the application of the white/black dichotomy in Brazilian society is, to say the least, hazardous. Alongside the role of philanthropic foundations, we must finally include the internationalization of academic publishing among the factors that have contributed to the diffusion of `US thought' in the social sciences. The growing integration of the publishing of English-language academicbooks (nowadays sold, often by the same houses, in the USA, in the different countries of the former British Commonwealth, but also in the smaller, polyglot, nations of the European Union such as Sweden and the Netherlands, and in the societies most directly exposed to American cultural domination) and the erosion of the boundary between academic and trade publishing have helped encourage the putting into circulation of terms, themes and tropes with strong (real or hoped for) market appeal which, in turn, owe their power of attraction simply to the fact of their very wide diffusion. For example, Basil Blackwell, the large, half-commercial and half-academic publishing house (what the Anglo-Saxons call a `crossover press'), does not hesitate to impose titles on its authors which are in accord with this new planetary common sense which it contributes to forging under the guise of echoing it". Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant [41]
Black Brazilians are, for the most part, descendants of Africans taken by force from Africa and sold in Brazil as slaves. As the Portuguese realised the necessity to occupy the Brazil, and given the fact that no mineral riches such as gold or silver were easily found in the new territory, they attempted agricultural exploitation. As the population of Portugal was insufficient for the task, and the Amerindians were either deemed unfitting for agricultural jobs or exterminated by war and disease, by 1550 the Portuguese started to resort to the import of African slaves. This trend was reinforced by the fact that Portugal already had settlements in the African coast – namely São Paulo de Loanda (modern Luanda, founded 1575) and Benguela (founded 1587), in Angola, and Sofala, in Mozambique – and Portuguese merchants quickly started to deal in slave trade between Africa and Brazil.
From the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 19th centuries, millions of slaves were exported from Africa and sold in the Americas. Of these, Brazil probably received the biggest share than any other region taken in separate. According to the IBGE, about 4 million African slaves were brought into Brazil.[42]
| Estimated disembarkment of Africans in Brazil from 1781 to 1855[43] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Period | Place of arrival | |||
| Total in Brazil | South of Bahia |
Bahia | North of Bahia |
|
| Total period | 2.113.900 | 1.314.900 | 409.000 | 390.000 |
| 1781–1785 | 63.100 | 34.800 | ... | 28.300 |
| 1786–1790 | 97.800 | 44.800 | 20.300 | 32.700 |
| 1791–1795 | 125.000 | 47.600 | 34.300 | 43.100 |
| 1796–1800 | 108.700 | 45.100 | 36.200 | 27.400 |
| 1801–1805 | 117.900 | 50.100 | 36.300 | 31.500 |
| 1806–1810 | 123.500 | 58.300 | 39.100 | 26.100 |
| 1811–1815 | 139.400 | 78.700 | 36.400 | 24.300 |
| 1816–1820 | 188.300 | 95.700 | 34.300 | 58.300 |
| 1821–1825 | 181.200 | 120.100 | 23.700 | 37.400 |
| 1826–1830 | 250.200 | 176.100 | 47.900 | 26.200 |
| 1831–1835 | 93.700 | 57.800 | 16.700 | 19.200 |
| 1836–1840 | 240.600 | 202.800 | 15.800 | 22.000 |
| 1841–1845 | 120.900 | 90.800 | 21.100 | 9.000 |
| 1846–1850 | 257.500 | 208.900 | 45.000 | 3.600 |
| 1851–1855 | 6.100 | 3.300 | 1.900 | 900 |
| Note: "South of Bahia" means "from Espírito Santo to Rio Grande do Sul" States; "North of Bahia" means "from Sergipe to Amapá States" | ||||
Slave trade was a huge business that involved hundreds of ships and thousands of people in Brazil and Africa. There were officers on the coast of Africa that sold the slaves to hundreds of small regional dealers in Brazil. In 1812, half of the thirty richest merchants of Rio de Janeiro were slave traders. The profits were huge: in 1810 a slave purchased in Luanda for 70,000 réis was sold in the District of Diamantina, Minas Gerais, for up to 240,000 réis. With taxes, the state collected a year the equivalent of 18 million reais with the slave trade. In Africa, people were kidnapped as prisoners of war or offered as payment of tribute to a tribal chief. The merchants, who were black Africans too, took the slaves to the coast where they would be purchased by agents of the Portuguese slave traders. Until the early 18th century such purchases were made with smuggled gold. In 1703, Portugal banned the use of gold for this purpose. Since then, they started to use products of the colony, such as textiles, tobacco, sugar and cachaça to buy the slaves.[44]
| African disembarkments in Brazil, from 1500 to 1855[45] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Period | 1500–1700 | 1701–1760 | 1761–1829 | 1830–1855 |
| Numbers | 510,000 | 958,000 | 1,720,000 | 618,000 |
In Africa, about 40% of Blacks died in the route between the areas of capture and the African coast. Another 15% died in the ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and Brazil. From the Atlantic coast the journey could take from 33 to 43 days. From Mozambique it could take as many as 76 days. Once in Brazil from 10 to 12% of the slaves also died in the places where they were taken to be bought by their future masters. In consequence, only 45% of the Africans captured in Africa to become slaves in Brazil survived.[44] Darcy Ribeiro estimated that, in this process, some 12 million Africans were captured to be brought to Brazil, even though the majority of them died before becoming slaves in the country.[46]
Slavery can only be maintained through constant supervision, physical and moral violence, and fear of violence, to prevent flight and rebellion of slaves. Although there is a myth that the slavery in Brazil was more lenient, the reports of colonial chroniclers show the opposite. The African slaves in Brazil were known to have suffered various types of physical violence. Lashes on the back was the most common repressive measure. About 40 lashes per day were common and they prevented the mutilation of slaves.[47] After the violence, the wounds were washed with salt, pepper or vinegar to prevent infection. This washing was also painful. "Preventive punishments" were also common, as they served to keep slaves under systematic, permanent fear. Foremen monitored the slaves during all day, forcing them to comply with their tasks and physically repressing them as deemed necessary. In 1741 the Portuguese Crown decreed that all slaves who fled to quilombos should be branded in their backs with the letter F (from fugido, fugitive in Portuguese). Reincidents should have one ear cut off and should be sentenced to death. The colonial chroniclers recorded the extreme violence and sadism of White women against female slaves, usually due to jealousy or to prevent a relationship between their husbands and the slaves.[37]
Slaves resisted against slavery during all the centuries it lasted. The most frequent form of resistance was flight, which often led to death. Fled slaves tried to reunite, forming quilombos, communities composed of fugitive slaves. The biggest quilombo, Palmares had a population of about 30,000 people and resisted for about 100 years, until it was finally destroyed by bandeirantes. Another form of resistance were working slowly or hurting animals or destroying tools in order to hinder the production. The most notorious slave rebellion occurred in 1835, when Muslim slaves tried to kill whites and mulattos considered traitors in Salvador, Bahia and free all slaves in Bahia.[48] As with all other rebellions, the insurgents would have been repressed, killed or sold as slaves to the Caribbean.
The Africans brought to Brazil belonged to two major groups: the West African and the Bantu people.
West African people (previously known as Sudanese, and without connection with Sudan) were sent in large scale to Bahia. They mostly belong to the Yoruba people; Ewe; Fanti-Ashanti; Ga-Adangbe; Igbo People; Fon People; and Mandinka people. Other West African groups native to Ghana, Benin, Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria were also subjected to slavery in Brazil.
Bantu were brought from Angola, Congo region and Mozambique and sent in large scale to Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and Northeastern Brazil.
The Bantus were brought from Angola, Congo region and the Shona kingdoms from Zimbabwe and Mozambique and sent in large scale to Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and the Northeastern Brazil.
Gilberto Freyre noted the major differences between these groups. Some Sudanese peoples, such as Hausa, Fula and others were Islamic, spoke Arabic and many of them could read and write in this language. Freyre noted that many slaves were better educated than their masters, because many Muslim slaves were literate in Arabic, while many Portuguese Brazilian masters could not even read or write in Portuguese. These slaves of greater Arab and Berber influence were largely sent to Bahia. These Muslim slaves, known as Malê in Brazil, produced one of the greatest slave revolts in the Americas, when in 1835 they tried to take the control of Salvador, Bahia. The event was known as the Malê Revolt.[49]
Despite the large influx of Islamic slaves, most of the slaves in Brazil were brought from the Bantu regions of the Atlantic coast of Africa where today Congo and Angola are located, and also from Mozambique. In general, these people lived in either tribes, kingdoms or city-states. The people from Congo had developed agriculture, raised livestock, domesticated animals such as goat, pig, chicken and dog and produced sculpture in wood. Some groups from Angola were nomadic and did not know agriculture.[49]
According to Petrônio Domingues, by 1887 the slave struggles pointed to a real possibility of widespread insurrection. On October 23, in São Paulo, for instance, there were violent confrontations between the police and rioting Blacks, who chanted "long life freedom" and "death to the slaveowners".[50] The president of the province, Rodrigues Alves, reported the situation as following:
Uprisings irrupted in Itu, Campinas, Indaiatuba, Amparo, Piracicaba and Capivari; ten thousand fugitive slaves grouped in Santos. Flights were happening in daylight, guns were spotted among the fugitives, who, instead of hiding from police, seemed ready to engage in confrontation.
It was as a response to such situation that, on May 13, 1888, slavery was abolished, as a means to restore order and the control of the ruling class,[52] in a situation in which the slave system was almost completely disorganised.
As an abolitionist newspaper, O Rebate, put it, ten years later,
| Evolution of the Brazilian population according skin color: 1872–1991 |
|
|---|---|
Before abolition, the growth of the black population was mainly due to the acquisition of new slaves from Africa. In Brazil, the black population had a negative growth. This was due to the low life expectancy of the slaves, which was around 7 years.[47] It was also because of the imbalance between the number of men and women. The vast majority of slaves were men, black women being a minority.[37] Slaves rarely had a family and the unions between the slaves was hampered due to incessant hours of work. Another very important factor was that black women were held by white and mixed-race men. The Portuguese colonization, largely composed of men with very few women resulted in a social context in which white men disputed indigenous or African women.[47] According to Gilberto Freyre in colonial Brazilian society, the few African women who arrived quickly became concubines, and in some cases, officially wives of the Portuguese settlers. In large plantations of sugar cane and in the mining areas, the white master often choose the most beautiful black slaves to work inside the house. These slaves were forced to have sex with their master, producing a very large Mulato population. The English diplomat and ethnologist Richard Francis Burton wrote that "Mulatism became a necessary evil" in the captaincies in the interior of Brazil. He noticed a "strange aversion to marriage" in the 19th century Minas Gerais, arguing that the colonists preferred to have quick relationships with black slaves rather than a marriage.[37]
According to Darcy Ribeiro the process of miscegenation between whites and blacks in Brazil, in contrast to an idealized racial democracy and a peaceful integration, was a process of sexual domination, in which the white man imposed an unequal relationship using violence because of his prime condition in society.[47] As an official wife or as a concubine or subjected to a condition of sexual slave, the black woman was the responsible for the growth of the "parda" population.[55] The non-White population has grown mainly through sexual intercourse between the black female slave and the Portuguese master, which, together with assortative mating, explains the high degree of European ancestry in the black Brazilian population and the high degree of African ancestry in the white population.[56]
Historian Manolo Florentino refutes the idea that a large part of the Brazilian people is a result of the forced relationship between the rich Portuguese colonizer and the Indian or African slaves. According to him, most of the Portuguese settlers in Brazil were poor adventurers from Northern Portugal who immigrated to Brazil alone. Most of them were men (the proportion was eight or nine men for each woman) and then it was natural that they had relationships with the Indian or Black women. According to him the mixture of races in Brazil, more than a sexual domination of the rich Portuguese master over the poor slaves, was a mixture between the poor Portuguese settlers with the Indian and Black women.[57]
The Brazilian population of more evident black physiognomy is more strongly present along the coast, due to the high concentration of slaves working on sugar cane plantations. Another region that had a strong presence of Africans was the mining areas in the center of Brazil. Gilberto Freyre wrote that the states with strongest African presence were Bahia and Minas Gerais. Freyre wrote, however, that there's no region in Brazil where the black people have not penetrated.[37] Many blacks fled to the hinterland of Brazil, including the Northern region, and met Amerindian and Mameluco populations. Many of these acculturated blacks were accepted in these communities and taught them the Portuguese language and the European culture. In these areas the blacks were "agents for transmitting European culture" to those isolated communities in Brazil. Many blacks mixed with the Indian and caboclo women.[37]
As of 2007, the Brazilian Metropolitan Area with the largest percentage of people reported as Black was Salvador, Bahia, with 1,869,550 Pardo people (53.8%) and 990,375 pretos (28.5%). The state of Bahia has also the largest percentage of "pardos" (62.9%) and pretos (15.7%).[58]
| Genetic origin of Brazilian population (Perc.% rounded values) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Line | Origin | Negros (Black)[59] |
Brancos (White)[60] |
| Maternal (mtDNA) |
Sub-Saharan Africa | 85% | 28% |
| Europe | 2.5% | 39% | |
| Native Brazilian | 12.5% | 33% | |
| Paternal (Y chromosome) |
Sub-Saharan Africa | 48% | 2% |
| Europe | 50% | 98% | |
| Native Brazilian | 1.6% | 0% | |
A recent genetic study of Black Brazilians made for BBC Brasil analysed the DNA of self-reported Blacks from São Paulo.[61]
The research analyzed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), that is present in all human beings and passed down with only minor mutations through the maternal line. The other is the Y chromosome, that is present only in males and passed down with only minor mutations through the paternal line. Both can show from what part of the world a matrilineal or patrilineal ancestor of a person came from, but one can have in mind that they are only a fraction of the human genome, and reading ancestry from Y chromosome and mtDNA only tells 1/23rd the story, since humans have 23 chromosome pairs in the cellular DNA.[62]
Analyzing the Y chromosome, which comes from male ancestors through paternal line, it was concluded that half (50%) of Brazilian black population have at least one male ancestor who came from Europe, 48% have at least on male ancestor who came from Africa and 1.6% have at least one male ancestor who was a Native American. Analyzing their mitochondrial DNA, that comes from female ancestors though maternal line, 85% of them have at least a female ancestor who came from Africa, 12.5% have at least a female ancestor who was Native American and 2.5% have at least a female ancestor who came from Europe.[59]
The high level of European ancestry in black Brazilians through paternal line exists because, for much of Brazil's History, there were more Caucasian males than Caucasian females. So inter-racial relationships between Caucasian males and Sub-Saharan African or Native American females were widespread.[63]
Over 75% of Caucasians from North, Northeast and Southeast Brazil would have over 10% Sub-Saharan African genes, according to this particular study. Even Southern Brazil that received a large group of European immigration, 49% of the Caucasian population would have over 10% Sub-Saharan African genes, according to that study. Thus, 86% of Brazilians would have at least 10% of genes that came from Africa. The researchers however were cautious about its conclusions: "Obviously these estimates were made by extrapolation of experimental results with relatively small samples and, therefore, their confidence limits are very ample". A new autosomal study from 2011, also led by Sérgio Pena, but with nearly 1000 samples this time, from all over the country, shows that in most Brazilian regions most Brazilians "whites" are less than 10% African in ancestry, and it also shows that the "pardos" are predominantly European in ancestry, the European ancestry being therefore the main component in the Brazilian population, in spite of a very high degree of African ancestry and significant Native American contribution.[64] Other autosomal studies (see some of them below) show a European predominance in the Brazilian population.
Another study (based on blood polymorphisms, from 1981) carried out in one thousand individuals from Porto Alegre city, Southern Brazil, and 760 from Natal city, Northeastern Brazil, found whites of Porto Alegre had 8% of African alleles and in Natal the ancestry of the samples total was characterized as 58% White, 25% Black, and 17% Amerindian". This study found that persons identified as White or Pardo in Natal have similar ancestries, a dominant European ancestry, while persons identified as White in Porto Alegre have an overwhelming majority of European ancestry.[65]
According to an autosomal DNA genetic study from 2011, both "whites" and "pardos" from Fortaleza have a predominantly degree of European ancestry (>70%), with minor but important African and Native American contributions. "Whites" and "pardos" from Belém and Ilhéus also were found to be pred. European in ancestry, with minor Native American and African contributions. [64]
| Genomic ancestry of individuals in Porto Alegre Sérgio Pena et al 2011 .[64] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| colour | amerindian | african | european | |
| white | 9.3% | 5.3% | 85.5% | |
| pardo | 11.4% | 44.4% | 44.2% | |
| black | 11% | 45.9% | 43.1% | |
| total | 9.6% | 12.7% | 77.7% | |
| Genomic ancestry of individuals in Fortaleza Sérgio Pena et al 2011 .[64] | ||||
| colour | amerindian | african | european | |
| white | 10.9% | 13.3% | 75.8% | |
| pardo | 12.8% | 14.4% | 72.8% | |
| black | N.S. | N.S. | N.S | |
| Genomic ancestry of non-related individuals in Rio de Janeiro Sérgio Pena et al 2009 [7] | ||||
| Cor | Number of individuals | Amerindian | African | European |
| White | 107 | 6.7% | 6.9% | 86.4% |
| "parda" | 119 | 8.3% | 23.6% | 68.1% |
| "preta" | 109 | 7.3% | 50.9% | 41.8% |
According to another study conducted on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro, autosomal DNA study (from 2009), the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, and the "whites" (who thought of themselves as "very mixed") were found out to carry very little Amerindian and/or African admixtures. "The results of the tests of genomic ancestry are quite different from the self made estimates of European ancestry", say the researchers. In general, the test results showed that European ancestry is far more important than the students thought it would be. The "pardos" for example thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests, and yet their ancestry was determined to be at over 80% European. The "blacks" (pretos) of the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, according to this study, thought of themselves as predominantly African before the study and yet they turned out predominantly European (at 52%), the African contribution at 41% and the Native American 7%.[8][9]
According to another autosomal DNA study (see table), those who identified as Whites in Rio de Janeiro turned out to have 86.4% – and self identified pardos 68.1% – European ancestry on average (autosomal). Pretos were found out to have on average 41.8% European ancestry [7]
Another study (autosomal DNA study from 2010) found out that that European ancestry predominates in the Brazilian population as a whole ("whites", "pardos" and "blacks" altogether). European ancestry is dominant throughout Brazil at nearly 80%, except for the Southern part of Brazil, where the European heritage reaches 90%. "A new portrayal of each ethnicity contribution to the DNA of Brazilians, obtained with samples from the five regions of the country, has indicated that, on average, European ancestors are responsible for nearly 80% of the genetic heritage of the population. The variation between the regions is small, with the possible exception of the South, where the European contribution reaches nearly 90%. The results, published by the scientific magazine 'American Journal of Human Biology' by a team of the Catholic University of Brasília, show that, in Brazil, physical indicators such as skin colour, colour of the eyes and colour of the hair have little to do with the genetic ancestry of each person, which has been shown in previous studies"(regardless of census classification)[9][66] "Ancestry informative SNPs can be useful to estimate individual and population biogeographical ancestry. Brazilian population is characterized by a genetic background of three parental populations (European, African, and Brazilian Native Amerindians) with a wide degree and diverse patterns of admixture. In this work we analyzed the information content of 28 ancestry-informative SNPs into multiplexed panels using three parental population sources (African, Amerindian, and European) to infer the genetic admixture in an urban sample of the five Brazilian geopolitical regions. The SNPs assigned apart the parental populations from each other and thus can be applied for ancestry estimation in a three hybrid admixed population. Data was used to infer genetic ancestry in Brazilians with an admixture model. Pairwise estimates of F(st) among the five Brazilian geopolitical regions suggested little genetic differentiation only between the South and the remaining regions. Estimates of ancestry results are consistent with the heterogeneous genetic profile of Brazilian population, with a major contribution of European ancestry (0.771) followed by African (0.143) and Amerindian contributions (0.085). The described multiplexed SNP panels can be useful tool for bioanthropological studies but it can be mainly valuable to control for spurious results in genetic association studies in admixed populations." [67] It is important to note that "the samples came from free of charge paternity test takers, thus as the researchers made it explicit: "the paternity tests were free of charge, the population samples involved people of variable socioeconomic strata, although likely to be leaning slightly towards the ‘‘pardo’’ group". [68] According to it the total European, African and Native American contributions to the Brazilian population are:
| Region[68] | European | African | Native American |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Region | 71,10% | 18,20% | 10,70% |
| Northeast Region | 77,40% | 13,60% | 8,90% |
| Central-West Region | 65,90% | 18,70% | 11,80% |
| Southeast Region | 79,90% | 14,10% | 6,10% |
| South Region | 87,70% | 7,70% | 5,20% |
In support of the dominant European heritage of Brazil, according to another autosomal DNA study (from 2009) conducted on a school in the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro the "pardos" there were found to be on average over 80% European, and the "whites" (who thought of themselves as "very mixed") were found out to carry very little Amerindian and/or African admixtures. "The results of the tests of genomic ancestry are quite different from the self made estimates of European ancestry", say the researchers. In general, the test results showed that European ancestry is far more important than the students thought it would be. The "pardos" for example thought of themselves as 1/3 European, 1/3 African and 1/3 Amerindian before the tests, and yet their ancestry was determined to be at over 80% European. The "blacks" (pretos) of the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, according to this study, thought of themselves as predominantly African before the study and yet they turned out predominantly European (at 52%), the African contribution at 41% and the Native American 7%.[8][9]
According to another autosomal DNA study from 2009, the Brazilian population, in all regions of the country, was also found out to be predominantly European: "all the Brazilian samples (regions) lie more closely to the European group than to the African populations or to the Mestizos from Mexico".[69] According to it European ancestry was the main component in all regions of Brazil: Northeast of Brazil (66.7% European 23.3% African 10.0% Amerindian) Northern Brazil (60.6% European 21.3% African 18.1% Amerindian) Central West (66,3% European 21.7% African 12.0% Amerindian) Southeast Brazil (60.7% European 32.0% African 7.3% Amerindian) Southern Brazil (81.5% European 9.3% African 9.2% Amerindian). According to it the total European, African and Native American contributions to the Brazilian population are:
| Region[70] | European | African | Native American |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Region | 60,6% | 21,3% | 18,1% |
| Northeast Region | 66,7% | 23,3% | 10,0% |
| Central-West Region | 66,3% | 21,7% | 12,0% |
| Southeast Region | 60,7% | 32,0% | 7,3% |
| South Region | 81,5% | 9,3% | 9,2% |
An autosomal study from 2011 (with nearly almost 1000 samples from all over the country, "whites", "pardos" and "blacks" included) has also concluded that European ancestry is the predominant ancestry in Brazil, accounting for nearly 70% of the ancestry of the population: "In all regions studied, the European ancestry was predominant, with proportions ranging from 60.6% in the Northeast to 77.7% in the South".[64] The 2011 autosomal study samples came from blood donors (the lowest classes constitute the great majority of blood donors in Brazil [71]), and also public health institutions personnel and health students. In all Brazilian regions European, African and Amerindian genetic markers are found in the local populations, even though the proportion of each varies from region to region and from individual to individual.[72][73] However most regions showed basically the same structure, a greater European contribution to the population, followed by African and Native American contributions: “Some people had the vision Brazil was a heterogeneous mosaic [...] Our study proves Brazil is a lot more integrated than some expected".[74] Brazilian homogeneity is, therefore, greater within regions than between them:
| Region[9] | European | African | Native American |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northern Brazil | 68,80% | 10,50% | 18,50% |
| Northeast of Brazil | 60,10% | 29,30% | 8,90% |
| Southeast Brazil | 74,20% | 17,30% | 7,30% |
| Southern Brazil | 79,50% | 10,30% | 9,40% |
According to another study from 2008, by the University of Brasília (UnB), European ancestry dominates in the whole of Brazil (in all regions), accounting for 65,90% of the heritage of the population, followed by the African contribution (24,80%) and the Native American (9,3%).[75]
According to an autosomal DNA study (from 2003) focused on the composition of the Brazilian population as a whole, "European contribution [...] is highest in the South (81% to 82%), and lowest in the North (68% to 71%). The African component is lowest in the South (11%), while the highest values are found in the Southeast (18%-20%). Extreme values for the Amerindian fraction were found in the South and Southeast (7%-8%) and North (17%-18%)". The researchers were cautious with the results as their samples came from paternity test takers which may have skewed the results partly.[76][77]
Several other older studies have suggested that European ancestry is the main component in all Brazilian regions. Several other older studies have suggested that European ancestry is the main component in all Brazilian regions. A study from 1965, Methods of Analysis of a Hybrid Population (Human Biology, vol 37, number 1), led by the geneticists D. F. Roberts e R. W. Hiorns, found out the average the Northeastern Brazilian to be predominantly European in ancestry (65%), with minor but important African and Native American contributions (25% and 9%).[78] A study from 2002 quoted previous and older studies (28. Salzano F M. Interciêência. 1997;22:221––227. 29. Santos S E B, Guerreiro J F. Braz J Genet. 1995;18:311––315. 30. Dornelles C L, Callegari-Jacques S M, Robinson W M, Weimer T A, Franco M H L P, Hickmann A C, Geiger C J, Salzamo F M. Genet Mol Biol. 1999;22:151––161. 31. Krieger H, Morton N E, Mi M P, Azevedo E, Freire-Maia A, Yasuda N. Ann Hum Genet. 1965;29:113––125. [PubMed]), saying that: "Salzano (28, a study from 1997) calculated for the Northeastern population as a whole, 51% European, 36% African, and 13% Amerindian ancestries whereas in the north, Santos and Guerreiro (29, a study from 1995) obtained 47% European, 12% African, and 41% Amerindian descent, and in the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, Dornelles et al. (30, a study from 1999) calculated 82% European, 7% African, and 11% Amerindian ancestries. Krieger et al. (31, a study from 1965) studied a population of Brazilian northeastern origin living in São Paulo with blood groups and electrophoretic markers and showed that whites presented 18% of African and 12% of Amerindian genetic contribution and that blacks presented 28% of European and 5% of Amerindian genetic contribution (31). Of course, all of these Amerindian admixture estimates are subject to the caveat mentioned in the previous paragraph. At any rate, compared with these previous studies, our estimates showed higher levels of bidirectional admixture between Africans and non-Africans."[79]
In 2007 BBC Brasil launched the project Raízes Afro-Brasileiras (Afro-Brazilian Roots), in which they analyzed the genetic ancestry of nine famous Brazilian blacks and "pardos". Three tests were based on analysis of different parts of their DNA: an examination of paternal ancestry, maternal ancestry and the genomic ancestry, allowing to estimate the percentage of African, European and Amerindian genes in the composition of an individual.[80]
Of the 9 people analyzed, 3 of them had more European ancestry than African one, while the other 6 people had more African ancestry, with varying degrees of European and Amerindian admixture. The African admixture varied from 19.5% in actress Ildi Silva to 99.3% in singer Milton Nascimento. The European admixture varied from 0.4% in Nascimento to 70% in Silva. The Amerindian admixture from 0.3% in Nascimento to 25.4% in soccer player Obina.
[81] Pretos and "pardos" have a low representation in the Brazilian media. Blacks are under-represented in telenovelas, which have the largest audience of Brazilian television. The Brazilian soap operas, as well as throughout Latin America, are accused of hiding the Black and Indian population and to make almost entirely white casts, usually as upper middle-class people.[82][83][84] Brazil produces soap operas since the 1960s, but it was only in 1996 that a black actress, Taís Araújo, was the protagonist of a telenovela, the role of the famous slave Chica da Silva. In 2002, Araujo was protagonist of another soap, being the only Black actress to have a more prominent role in a TV production of Brazil. The black actors in Brazil are usually required to follow stereotypes usually as subordinate and submissive roles, as maids, drivers, servants, bodyguards, and poor favelados. Joel Zito Araújo wrote the book A Negação do Brasil (The Denial of Brazil) which talks about how Brazilian TV hides the Black population. Araújo analyzed Brazilian soap operas from 1964 to 1997 and only 4 black families were represented as being of middle-class. Black women usually appear under strong sexual connotation and sensuality. Black men usually appear as rascals or criminals. Another common stereotype is of the "old mammies". In 1970, in the soap A Cabana do Pai Tomás (based on American novel Uncle Tom's Cabin) a white actor, Sérgio Cardoso, played Thomas, who was a black man in the book. The actor had to paint his body in black to look black. The choice of a White actor to play a black character caused major protests in Brazil. In 1975 the telenovela Gabriela was produced, based on a book by Jorge Amado, who described Gabriela, the main character, as a mulata. But to play Gabriela on television Rede Globo choose a White actress, Sônia Braga. The producer claimed he "did not find any talented Black actress" for the role of Gabriela. In 2001 Rede Globo produced Porto dos Milagres, also based on a book by Jorge Amado. In the book Amado described a Bahia full of blacks. In the Rede Globo's soap opera, on the other hand, almost all the cast was white.[85]
In the fashion world blacks and "pardos" are also poorly represented. In Brazil there is a clear predominance of models from the South of Brazil, mostly of European descent. Many black models complained of the difficulty of finding work in the fashion world in Brazil.[86] This reflects a Caucasian standard of beauty demanded by the media. To change this trend, the Black Movement of Brazil entered in court against the fashion show, where almost all the models were whites. In a fashion show during São Paulo Fashion Week in January 2008, of the 344 models only eight (2.3% of total) were blacks. A public attorney reuquired the fashion show to contract Black models and demanded that during São Paulo Fashion Week 2009, at least 10% of the models should be "Blacks, Afro-descendants or Indians", under penalty of fine of 250,000 reais.[87]
Most blacks are Christians, mainly Catholics.[88] Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomblé and Umbanda have many followers, but they are open to people of any race, and, indeed, while the proportions of blacks (in the strict sense, i.e., "pretos") are higher among practitioners of these religions than among the population in general, Whites are a majority in Umbanda, and a significant minority (bigger than blacks in the strict sense) in Candomblé.[89] They are concentrated mainly in large urban centers such as Salvador de Bahia, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Brasília, São Luís. In addition to Candomblé which is closer to the original West African religions, there is also Umbanda which blends Catholic and Kardecist Spiritism beliefs with African beliefs. Candomblé, Batuque, Xango and Tambor de Mina were originally brought by black slaves shipped from Africa to Brazil[90].
These black slaves would summon their gods, called Orixas, Voduns or Inkices with chants and dances they had brought from Africa. These religions have been persecuted in the past, mainly due to Catholic influence. However, Brazilian government has legalized them. In current practice, Umbanda followers leave offerings of food, candles and flowers in public places for the spirits. The Candomblé terreiros are more hidden from general view, except in famous festivals such as Iemanjá Festival and the Waters of Oxalá in the Northeast. From Bahia northwards there is also different practices such as Catimbo, Jurema with heavy, though not necessarily authentic, indigenous elements.
Since the late 20th Century, a large number of negros became followers of Protestant denominations, mainly Neopentecostal churches. Among Brazil's predominant ethnicities, Blacks make up the largest proportion of Pentecostal Protestants, while Whites make up the largest group of non-Pentecostal Protestants.[88]
The influence of African cuisine in Brazil is expressed in a wide variety of dishes. In the state of Bahia, an exquisite cuisine evolved when cooks improvised on African and traditional Portuguese dishes using locally available ingredients. Typical dishes include Vatapá and Moqueca, both with seafood and dendê palm oil (Portuguese: Azeite de Dendê). This heavy oil extracted from the fruits of an African palm tree is one of the basic ingredients in Bahian or Afro-Brazilian cuisine, adding flavor and bright orange color to foods. There is no equivalent substitute, but it is available in markets specializing in Brazilian or African imports.
Feijoada is the national dish of Brazil (for over 300 years). It is basically a mixture of black beans, pork and farofa (lightly roasted coarse cassava manioc flour). It started as a Portuguese dish that the African slaves built upon, made out of cheap ingredients: pork ears, feet and tail, beans and manioc flour. It has been adopted by all the other cultural regions, and there are hundreds of ways to make it.
Capoeira is a martial art developed initially by African slaves that came predominantly from Angola or Mozambique to Brazil, starting in the colonial period. It is marked by deft, tricky movements often played on the ground or completely inverted. It also has a strong acrobatic component in some versions and is always played with music. Recently, the sport has been popularized by the addition of Capoeira performed in various computer games and movies, and Capoeira music has been featured in modern pop music (see Capoeira in popular culture).
Football is the most important national sport in Brazil, until recently the only to be practiced in truly professional way, and even nowadays the one that has most professional practitioners, infrastructure, and public. Although it has been, in its early development, an elite amateur sport, whose clubs discriminated against Blacks, it soon became a popular sport, with a huge following. The need to win competitions eventually forced football clubs to adopt professionalism, and, consequently, to hire the best players, regardless of race.[91]
Soccer was quickly dominated by blacks and "pardos", and it became – and still remains – a mainstream way of social ascension for poor boys, especially blacks and "pardos" who had fewer opportunities in education or conventional labour.
The International Federation of Football History & Statistics Player of the Century[92] list of the 20 best Brazilian players of the 20th Century includes 6 black (Pelé (#1), Arthur Friedenreich (#5), Leônidas da Silva (#8), Luís Pereira (#15), Domingos da Guia (#17), and Jairzinho (#19)) and 9 "pardo" (Garrincha (#2), Zizinho (#4), Didi (#7), Nilton Santos (#9), Ronaldo (#9), Romário (#11), Ademir da Guia (#14), Carlos Alberto Torres (#16) and Ademir (#18)) players, compared to only 5 Whites (Zico, Tostão, Falcão, Rivelino and Bebeto).
The music of Brazil is a mixture of Portuguese, Amerindian, and African music, making a wide variety of styles. Brazil is well known for the rhythmic liveliness of its music as in its Samba dance music. This is largely because Brazilian slave owners allowed their slaves to continue their heritage of playing drums (unlike U.S. slave owners who feared use of the drum for communications). Other popular music styles include pagode and hip hop.
Many important names of Brazilian literature are or have been blacks or "pardos". Machado de Assis, generally considered the most important Brazilian fictional writer, was himself "pardo". Other remarkable writers include: João da Cruz e Souza, symbolist poet of refined inspiration; Lima Barreto, novelist, master of satyre and sarcasm, and pioneer of social criticism; João Ubaldo Ribeiro, novelist and short story writer; João do Rio, fine chronicler, José do Patrocínio, journalist; Paulo Leminski, poet.
In spite of strong prejudice, many black Brazilians and "pardos" have been prominent in Brazilian society. This is particularly true of fields where neither academic achievement nor material investment is decisive: the arts, particularly music and sports. From the colonial times, "pardos" as Father José Maurício Nunes Garcia[93] (baroque conductor and composer) or Aleijadinho[94] (outstanding sculptor and architect) attained high prestige as artists.
Other remarkable artists include Machado de Assis,[95] arguably Brazil's most important writer, whose novels are the kernel of the Brazilian canon, João da Cruz e Souza,[96] symbolist poet of refined inspiration, Lima Barreto,[97] novelist, master of satire and sarcasm, pioneer of social criticism. It is in popular music, however, that the talents of black Brazilians and "pardos" found the most fertile ground for their development. Masters of samba, Pixinguinha,[98] Cartola,[99] Lupicínio Rodrigues,[100] Geraldo Pereira,[101] Wilson Moreira,[102] and of MPB, Milton Nascimento,[103] Jorge Ben Jor,[104] Gilberto Gil,[105] have built the Brazilian musical identity.
Another field where black Brazilians and "pardos" have excelled is soccer: Pelé,[106] arguably the most complete soccer player ever, Garrincha,[107] right-forward, exceptional dribbler, Leônidas da Silva,[107] nicknamed "Black Diamond", Arthur Friedenreich,[107] Ademir da Guia,[108] are well known historic names of Brazilian soccer; Ronaldo,[109] Ronaldinho,[110] Romário,[110] Robinho and many others continue this tradition. Important athletes in other sports include Daiane dos Santos[111] (gymnastics), known for the invention of original movements, João Carlos de Oliveira[112] Jadel Gregório, Nelson Prudêncio,[113] Ademar Ferreira da Silva.[114]
Particularly important among sports is capoeira, itself a creation of Black Brazilians; important "Mestres" (masters) include Mestre Amen Santo, Mestre Barba Branca, Mestre Bimba,[115] Mestre Cobra Mansa, Mestre João Grande, Mestre João Pequeno, Mestre Jogo de Dentro, Mestre Moraes, Mestre Pastinha,[116] Mestre Pé de Chumbo.
Since the end of the military dictatorship, the political participation of black Brazilians and "pardos" has increased. The first female senator, Benedita da Silva,[117] is Black; other important politicians include Senator Paulo Paim,[118] former mayor of São Paulo Celso Pitta,[117] former Senator Marina Silva,[117] former governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Alceu Collares,[119] former governor of Espírito Santo, Albuíno Azeredo.[120] One of the justices of the Supremo Tribunal Federal, Joaquim Barbosa,[117] is Black.
Despite many obstacles, black Brazilians and "pardos" have also excelled as actors, such as Lázaro Ramos,[121] Ruth de Souza,[122] Milton Gonçalves,[123] Mussum, Taís Araújo,[124] Zezé Motta.[125]
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