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Generations
searching for their Afro-Brazilian
history
ES PT DE
In Brazil, more than half of the citizens have some form of African roots, and a whole generation of young Afro-descendants is searching for their identity and accepting racism at best. In other countries where the slave trade was once practised on a large scale, today's descendants are even using DNA tests to search for their original ethnicity, even move to Africa.
"traditional African nation"
In Brazil centuries ago, the slave trade nurtured a kind of
"traditional African nation"
Centuries ago, the slave trade promoted a kind of "traditional African nation" in Brazil. The belief in "Mama África" heavily influences the descendants of many former enslaved African tribes today. The Bantu, Nagô, or Yoruba people were particularly affected, as they were forcibly separated from each other and brought to Brazil. Despite their different languages, they shared a similar culture. Many were enslaved as agricultural workers on sugarcane plantations in Bahia and Mato Grosso, while others were used as household slaves in the cities.
In the 16th century, some of them managed to escape to the malaria-infested hinterlands, which their white slaveholders avoided. There, they founded their own state called Palmeiras, also known as the first "Quilombo." This independent state survived undisturbed for about 100 years and was home to approximately 20 million inhabitants who maintained and developed their own culture. These people were referred to as "Quilombolas."
You can read about their history, origins, and current interpretations in various forms on the internet. It is a mixture of different cultural facets.
Women and LGBT individuals
2008
can participate on an equal footing in the hierarchy, just like men.
Quote: “Deported and turned into slaves in the Empire, Africans were forced to obey Catholic rules, but they never quite abandoned their traditions. Within their brotherhoods, they ‘Africanised’ Catholicism by celebrating patron saints with masks and introducing drumming and percussion, dances full of physical energy, songs sung in their mother tongue, and the symbolic election of black kings and queens. On the other hand, Baroque Catholicism, with its profusion of rites, symbols and colours, and its culture of street processions, was not entirely alien to them."
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