Paper presented to the first symposium

Paper presented to the first symposium

on the Islamic roots of Afrobrazilian

Paper No . (2 (

KING  ZUMBI AND THE MALE MOVEMENT IN BRAZIL

By

Dr.T.B.Irving

Elm Drive N.E .

Rapids ,  Iowa 52402

(319) 393-2161

November, 1988

Three great regions of America deserve a Muslim’s attention because of their Islamic past: Brazil in South America; and Caribbean area which has scarcely been explored in this respect; and the country that is now the United States. Over 12% of the population of the United States, and even more in the Caribbean, are of African origin. Brazil has a similar or greater proportion of African descent .

 In all these regions, African slavery existed for three of four centuries, after the native Indians had been either killed off or driven into the plains and woods. Yet while knowledge of the original Black Muslims in North America is vaguely acknowledged, research is still required on the West Indies. Brazil however is clearer with its proud history of the Palmares republic that almost achieved its freedom in the XVIIth century, and the Male movement in the last century which was clearly Islamic. As a postscript, the Canudos movement in 1897 has some Islamic features .

In the Spanish colonies, the decline of the American Indian began quickly. The importation of captives from Africa was then suggested by the Bishop of Chiapas in Mexico, Bartolome de Las Casas, to enslave Africans and transport them to America for their conversion to Christianity. Few persons have exercised such a baneful effect on society as Bartolome de Las Casas (1474-1566), who is offen called the "Apostle of the Indies", but who was also the Enslaver of Africans, especially the Muslims or "Moors" as he called them. These facts of Black slavery apply to almost all of Atlantic America from the states of Maryland and Virginia to Argentine, as well as some countries along the Pacific coast like Ecuador and Peru; we need to study this matter more carefully so that this Black and all too frequently Islamic heritage can be recovered for human history .

The tragedy began in the XVIth century, more than four hundred years ago, and its effects are still apparent. If their ancestry were educated, as many of these exiles were, they were generally Muslims and used Arabic for their normal method of writing. As a result, many educated and literate slaves kept books on the plantations for illiterate masters who often could not read or make mathematical calculations, let alone handle formal book keeping .

 In 1549 the first permanent European settlement took place in Brazil, a country that has never been wholly cut off from West Africa; even today trade is carried on with the Guinea coast. Yoruba influence from Nigeria and Benin has been almost as pervasive in some regions of Brazil as has Portuguese. Nago means 'Yoruba' in Brazil; Gago refers to the Ewe from Dahomey or modern Benin and Togoland. The use of these native African languages however has disappeared, and expressions generally remain only as vocabulary items .

Forced Hausa immigrants (or Ussa, as they are known in Brazil) were generally Muslims who retained their faith as long as they could, and sometimes were able to convert other captives to it. Alufa is the name for a Black Imam in Rio de Janeiro. Lessano is another Brazilian term for an Imam or leader in prayer; Musulmi is the name for Muslims in the state of Bahia who are also called  Mali--or possibly from a Yoruba word for "Muslim". Fazer sala (or Sara in a variant of the Arabic Salah) means 'praying' in Bahia .

The Yoruba from the coastal areas of the Bight of Benin in the Gulf  of Guinea were known in Brazil as "Nagos" who are found chiefly in the state of Bahia were their influence is still felt. Sudani groups from the northland were the Fulani, "Ussas" or Hausa people. The Nagos and Ussas in Brazil were thus Yoruban and Hausa slaves. The "Minas" slaves came from the Gold coast; King Zumbi of Palmares was most likely one of their descendants. The "Male" meant Mandingos from the ancient empire of Mali whom we have already mentioned; although Imali is also a Yoruba word for "Muslim". Those that came from Angola were Bantus – The "Calabars" (or Ibos) came from the Niger Delta area. These different African "nations" were kept apart in Brazil, and their tribal rivalries fostered, in order to keep them in discussion, the Portuguese segregated their slaves along ethnic lines or into "guilds" in order to promote divisions among  them .

Since many Africans were known to be Muslims, this policy carried on the Iberian reconquista of Spain and Portugal by projecting it overseas. The slave owners became afraid of some types of Muslim slaves like the Jelofos or Wollofs and the mandingos; these captives had faith, and as believers , they possessed moral strength and character. Thousands of West African villagers, or more likely millions when the total is added up, who ranged from common farmers to artisans and merchants, were seized in brutal slave raids and deported overseas in this fashion. Frequently the prisoners taken in these raids were Muslims from the inland kingdoms of Songhai, Hausaland and Mali .

The Jaquncos or Sertanejos then began to develop as a new breed of men who were truly American, even though they were a disorderly lot at first, outlaws in the backwoods where they went digging for gold and diamonds, and grubbing for food. They became true proletarians as they built their red-clay towns in the Brazilian wilds. Ouilombos or resistance camps sprang up in the backwoods or sertoes where African tribal customs were continued. Religious ceremonies similar to voodoo ones in Haiti or Cuba called Candombles arise in the state of Bahia which created a lost world where ritual dances were performed before their palm-thatched huts. These ceremonies were compounded out of many cults, mostly of animist origin; the Candomble represented a vigorous popular movement whose rituals were conducted in a serious and dignified manner. The Candomble itself is said to be of Yoruban origin from what is now Southern Nigeria, and thus is pagan or animist .

 Life in the Senzalas or Brazilian slave quarters debased the Africans who were forced to live in them, as it does in the contemporary slums or favelas in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (or those of Havana or Harlem); but these camps provided the captives with some dignity. Cooking and cuisine, if the two can be differentiated, were influenced by these forced migrants who had to labor in plantation kitchens, adapting typically West African vegetables like okra, yams and root crops and condiments for their stews and other dishes. Their leaders and priestesses still display economic competence and courteous manners as they direct their various saitas or 'sects'; it is a fetish cult, with orishas or pagan deities or priests, like the Black witoh doctor who practice popular medicine in Bahia (Orishas originally meant their pagan gods, and now applies to their priests). The "daughters" in the Candombles still are active in Brazilian life; the batucada is a dance performed by these "daughters" or junior members in these ritual assemblies .

These quilombos or resistance camps sprang up constantly in the Brazilian backwoods or sertoes where tribal customs were perpetuated. The malungos were the “comrades” or ‘buddies’ who lived together in these camps, which represent a vigorous popular movement whose rituals as we have said, were serious and dignified .

 A few forest kingdoms or republics emerged on the American continent which lived by their own laws and displayed a remarkable spirit of independence in the depths of the Brazilian coastal forests. The ideal mucambo sat on a mountain top, like the Pavelas or shanty in Rio today, which may be their lineal descendants; while the first quilombo or forest redoubt that has been recorded was established in 1579 in the captaincy general or state of Bahia, directly West Africa, a half century following the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese; it comprised several hundred fugitive slaves, a large number for those early days of initial settlement, if we can trust these “statistics .”

 In 1602 the first expedition was planned against these “bush Negros”, as they were called. Many subsequent forays were dispatched against them, because the Portuguese felt that the presence of such free African settlements in the backwoods formed a menace to slave-holding in their colony. If the escaped slave were Fulani, Hausa or Mandingo, then the chances were great that in West Africa, they or their ancestors had been Muslims with a long tradition in the emancipating culture of Islam. The spirit of rebelliousness manifested by the Brazilian slaves spread a fear of Muslims as a united body, much a sit has in the United States with the rise of the Black Muslims in the 1960s and 1970s; this has led to police action in both countries, and the suppression of Muslims even in this present century .

The strongest recorded movement to escape slavery forms the palmares epic. This refers to the so-called “Palm-Tree Republic” or Kingdom that symbolized African resistance to slavery and social injustice; Palmares was established in the Serra de Barriga that lies between the present states of Pernambuco and Alagoes. This African-style community lasted for over half a century, from approximately 1630 until 1697, or even later if its survivors may be counted. Since the movement left no records of its own, or these were destroyed or lost, all of the figures given here are estimates .

 Spontaneous flights towards the bush in the highlands of Palmares increased as the word gradually spread through the Senzalas or slave quarters on the sugar plantations of Alagoas and Pernambuco, and even Bahia. The character of the inspiring in the Palmarine uploads was marginal; it is a region of heavy rains at time, and then of prolonged drought, which has afflicted the tragic Northeast of Brazil for centuries, just as drought often cripples the Sahil region of West Africa. The social organization Palmares was a loose confederation of fortified villages: in these quilombos or redoubts in the Sera da Barriga, up to 30,000 inhabitant are said to have lived. Its political organization was that of a republic patterned much like the inland Kingdom of West Africa. It lasted for sixty years at least, and presented a real hijra or ‘retreat’ to the backlands where it enforced its own laws and help popular assemblies; a federation of outposts was strung through the hilly country found in this part of Brazil. The present town of Orobo, now called Rui Barbossa, in the state of Bahia, was one of these runaway hideouts that had been able to survive until this present century .

In many of their quilombos the salves spoke a dialect of their own. Communal landholding seems to have been based on West Africa models. They had many children, the first offspring of freedom in brazil. The republic carried on a barter trade with neighboring coastal settlements, especially in agricultural commodities which they exchanged for manufactured goods brought in from overseas. Barter prevailed in their economy because they possessed no coinage nor formal money; everybody lived from the fruit of his or her own work, and communal trading was the norm. Millet, beans, maniac, sugarcane, potatoes and other vegetables were grown for food; they also raised chickens but apparently had few cattle, which makes us wonder how many of them were Fulani or Fulbe. Palmares was a properly policed state with laws of its own based mainly upon West African tradition and customs. Adultery, theft and desertion were punished with death. The community levied taxes for public services, and had both civil and criminal laws. The Palmarines managed to raise an army for their own defense, one of the true tests of statehood in international law, and they relied on flying columns for the purpose of attack. Their political and social institutions were better than those that governed the Canudos movement two hundred years later, by which time much tradition had been lost .

The principal leader's name was Ganga Zumbi. This may be an Angolan name, although Ganga Zumbi himself was more probably an Ewe, which means that his parents had come from what is now modern Togoland or Ghana. A nephew also named Zumbi, whom the Portuguese called a "hobqoblin", played a role in the final resistance to the Portuguese .

 Palmares attracted Brazilian Indians and poor  Whites as well as Blacks, just as Canudos did two centuries later. The Palmarine republic managed to hold out in the hinterland for over fifty years, from the middle to the late XVIth century, against both the Portuguese and the Dutch, who were then fighting over the possession of Brazil itself .

The captaincy general and latter state, of Pernambuco to the north was wealthy because of its sugar estates. It had been settled in the year 1534, while Palmares itself was formed about one century later, about the year 1630 during the Dutch occupation of Recife then the capital of colonial Brazil (the name "recife" is ar-rasif meaning a 'pier' or 'dock' in Arabic ).

The Palmarine revolt broke out in full force between 1630 and 1640 during this Dutch occupation of northeastern Brazil, and increased during the occupation; the Dutch launched over twenty major attack on Palmares. When the Hollanders were forced out, the Portuguese sent many fruitless expeditions into the bush country, one in 1670, and another in 1677; in 1682 till another expedition was planned against them. Fifteen of these campaigns were counted against this Black African republic or Kingdom .

When Ganga Zumbi or Zamba, the leader or "king" of the Palmarines, first enters the picture, he was a young Ewe (or Arda, in another account) of Gold Coast stock. He has become a great historical figure, especially for the contemporary Brazilian movie industry. He is described as "a brave Black with great presence of mind and an interesting faith, "although what faith this was, is not clear. The Portuguese considered Zumbi a rebel and an upstart; they called their own movement to contain him a "crusade" thus giving their counter-attack a semi-religious character .

The Catholic church in fact pronounced in favor of slavery in Brazil, while the celebrated Jesuit orator Antonio Viera advised the Portuguese King that the institution should be maintained. Vieira spoke out against this Black insurrection and in favor of slavery which he justified philosophically, and tried to legitimize, just as Bishop Las Cases had favored African slavery in the Spanish colonies a century and half earlier. Vieira fashioned the Portuguese church's doctrine on slavery into a complex and baroque "harmony ".

Ganga Zumbi is said to have been born in 1735 in Porto Calvo on the northern coast of Alagoas. His slave name was Francisco. He had grandchildren before this campaign was finished, and is said to have had a white wife as well, and a "palace" of his own, called Ganga Songo or Zona, but we are not told whether this was a name, a title, or a mere nickname. Zumbi's capital was called Macacos, which means 'Monkeys' in Portuguese. This town was located in the Serra da Barriga, and possessed 500 houses and 8000 inhabitants, according to one estimate. The frivolous name for the capital makes one suspect that this was merely a derisive nickname; we must always remember in this account that whatever we know about the Palmares republic is what the Portuguese, its enemies, have transmitted to us. Palmarine records are nonexistent. Some writers place the total figures as high as 30,000; the number varies because of our lack of reliable statistics, especially from the Palmarine point of view .

 The town of Macacos was fortified by a mud wall like those used in West Africa, or a stockade or palisade that make it into a real fortress in the Brazilian cuatinga or 'scrublend'. Its packed-clay houses were built from red earth, and had palm-thatched roofs; in some settlements, the houses were made of wood. Macacos must have been a somewhat ramshackle place at its height, a labyrinth of streets and lanes with little urban planning. The city lay 350 kilometers or 200 long miles, through the wooded mountains that rise behind the Atlantic sea-board, from the coastal towns of Serinhaem, Porto Calve and Alagoas .

 Ipojuca may have been the first town that these African freedom fighters founded; Amaro was another settlement with 5000 people that lay 35 miles or 60 kilometers northwest of Serinhaem; Sucupira was still another, the second largest, it is said. Arctirene may have been their largest town, numbering some 6000 inhabitants; it lay about 20 "leagues" (of 60 miles) from the coast of Alagoas, the seat of the Brazilian captaincy that lay directly south of Pernambuco. These constituted four major settlements; each had several streets lined with wooden or adobe houses having thatched roofs--as many as 800 each were counted on the first scouting expedition that was sent inland by the Portuguese. Every town was surrounded by tilled fields to guarantee their food supply. The names of some other places were: Tabocas, Damgruganga, Cerca Real do Macaco, Osenga, Amaro and Antalquituse. It is calculated that there were at least 20,000 Palmarines in all, while some writers place the total figure as high as 30,000; the number varies because of our lack of reliable statistics and documentation for this important social movement in colonial America .

 Bush Captains to combat the Palmarines were named by the Portuguese. In the year 1674, dom pedro  de Almeido, an army captain, initiated a policy that led to a peace treaty being signed between the Portuguese and the Palmarines. Four years later, in 1678, three of Zumbi's sons came to Recife to treat with the Portuguese authorities in that colonial capital. Four months later, the "king himself appeared with a train of forty persons, and in that year, 1678, a treaty of peace was drawn up between the Portuguese authorities and Ganga Zumbi .

Sixteen years later, in 1694, the republic or kingdom of Palmares almost achieved its independence from the Portuguese. The following year however, King Zumbi as he was now called, was stabbed in the stomach in an attempted assassination, but he managed to survive this attack. Half breed soldiers who had been trained as Indian hunters were then brought north from Sio Paulo in the south, to assist the Portuguese army. These were called mamelucos, that is mamluks in Arabic, meaning 'owned' or 'possessed' by someone else, as a chattel), but here the Brazilian word is meant for the direct cross between a European and an African. The name recalls the military slaves whom the Turks recruited for use in Egypt .

Since the Palmarine capital of Macacos was fortified, the colonial authorities decided to make a general assault upon the place, using cannon; a carriage road was therefore laid from Porto Calvo, 200 miles or 350 kilometers away, to bring in heavy guns through the bush. In Pernambuco a rumor circulated that a "Moor" had undertaken the fortification of Macacos; this would be just as salman the Persian strengthened Madina for the Prophet with a trench or moat before the battle of Uhud .

 This 1694-97 campaign became a prolonged war in the backlands, in which the heroic African republic was finally wiped out; by 1697 the Palmarines were defeated, starved and stamped out in "one of the most unremunerative bits of pillaging that history has to record" according to the Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha. This African-style republic or kingdom had lasted for over half a century, since the Dutch occupation of Brazil. Da Cunha in his book called Os Sertoss or 'Revolt in the Back-lands' gives 1630-97 as its inclusive dates .

 The Portuguese treated Zumbi's body in a barbarous fashion, when they finally seized it: they cut off his head and private parts, and mutilated his corpse before displaying it publicly in Recife. The captives who were taken prisoner in the final onslaught were sold in the far northern parts of Brazil mostly in the captaincy or province of Maranhao on that coast, so they could not find their way back easily to their former comrades in arms. The remnants or survivors who fled from Palmares were finally wiped out in 1713, almost a generation later; they held out for two more decades in this case, and until almost a century from the times of the initial outbreak of their uprising .

 At times the gift of freedom seemed to be almost a punishment in Brazil, for the emancipados or 'freedom' were simply set free to starve (as they were too in England, Nova Scotia or the United States). In Alagoas, the airport at the present state capital of Maceio is called "Palmares" today, as if in memory of these early freedom fighters; it is also the name of a town southwest of Recife in Pernambuco .

Following the defeat of the Palmarines, continuous revolts occurred in the hinterland or sertoes of Brazil. In 1704, already in to the following century, another insurrection broke out on the Palmares mdel, in Campoanga in the Serra Negra to the north of Recife in the state of Paraiba. Unrest also occurred at Cumbe in Paraiba during the early XVIIIth century. In 1719 still another insurrection took place in the new inland state of Minas Geraes (or 'General Mines' as this Portuguese) in the mining district that the Portuguese had opened up in that new province in the Brazilian interior (the first gold strike in Minas Geraes took place in 1695 , towards the end of the Palmares episode). In 1763 another slave insurrection broke out around Bahia .

After 1803 at the turn of the following century, the rumble of the Male revolt came close again as Black Muslim unrest began to spread around Bahia. A Hausa or revolt had taken place in Brazil from 1807-09; an uprising occurred in the state of Espiritu Santo during the early XIXth century as well. During 1823-24, Rio de Janeiro was plagued with lawlessness, and again in 1876; while Maranhao to the north suffered similar unrest in 1853. In 1828 and 1830 still other insurrections broke out in Bahia, at llheus on the coast to the south of its chief port and capital of Salvador. The determination and despair of the Afro-Brazilian to better his lot was evident in these widespread rebellions .

Urban revolts took place from 1803 until 1835 in Salvador, the capital of that state, where that movement came to a head; but it lacked real leadership. In the years 1828 and 1830, some fore-runners of the Male revolt were heard around Bahia, in its port and capital of Salvador, as well as in other ports along that coast, where the Muslims wanted freedom to practice their own religion, and not to have bow down before the tamathil or graven 'images' of Catholic saints, nor to bear their litters during religious processions .

The male movement bears the focal date of 1835 in history books and newspapers. On the night between January 24th and 25th, this revolt broke out on the streets of the port and capital of Salvador in Bahia state between Africans and their descendants, and Brazilian soldiers and police. The unrest had been brewing for weeks in the coastal cities .

     The Male movement in Brazil thus dates from 1831 till 1837, approximately: it was a sullen rebellion that spread along the coast through central Brazil, a South American Thawrat-az-Zunuj (     )  or 'Revolt of the Blacks' that instilled a fear of the Muslims in that South American country .

• { The original Thawrat-az-Zunuj had taken place in the date groves around the port of Basra in southern Iraq in the IXth century, this time staged by East African slaves. The Oaramita or "Carmatians" who live in the Persian  Gulf province of eastern Saudi Arabia are their restless descendants today}

In a way, the Male movement in Brazil reflected concern by Africans who resented being cut off from their cultural roots and being forced to subscribe to a faith in graven images rather than God Alone. From 1831 till 1837, as we have indicated above, this great Black revolt spread through the coastal ports of Brazil, causing a fear of the Muslims to spread among the Brazilian upper classes and army; it is generally called the Great Male Revolt of 1835 because the Mandingos from Mali had kept their Islam alive for the centuries during their long exile across the Atlantic. The Males opposed the grosser forms of Christo-pagan image worship, and the fact that they were not permitted to practice their Islamic faith freely, and to worship God Alone. The Ussas or Hausa slaves often knew the Qur'an by heart, but the Brazilian establishment and police did not allow them to read it, nor to practice their own religion; in a generation or two such knowledge lingered merely as folklore in the descendants’ memories, as it does in the United States as well. Such expression induced resentment and a tendency to rebellion .

 Religion played a clear, central role in this uprising. Its suppression led to the deportation of hundreds of Africans from Brazil, besides those who were massacred in stifling the movement. The Afro-Brazilians were tired of bowing down before saints and images, and being forced to subscribe to blasphemous cults or irmandades that were dedicated to semi-deities that did not represent God Along. The Pagan ‘fraternities’ or ‘brotherhood’ that the slaves were encouraged to join, repelled the Muslims among them, who felt it was blasphemous to talk about a “mother of God”, for instance .

This issue, like the XVIIth century uprising in Palmares, formed a proletarian movement which compensated for the Africans’ feeling of unrest and suppression; these XIXth century freedom fighters fought tenaciously against the whole Brazilian army, just as their ancestors had fought the Dutch and Portuguese armies a century and a half before. Palmares, Male and Canudos all require sympathetic study in order to explain the deep rooted religious dissent of these oppressed Muslims and their descendants. A Balaiada or ‘Sweep’ through the northern coastal state of Maranhao occurred a few years later, during 1839-41 and following on the heels of the Male movement. Brazil has been plagued by such revolts more than the United State or the West Indies have been .

The leaders in these XIX century rebellions were shipped back to West Africa by the hundreds, when they were not massacred. The Brazilian emancipates were frequently Muslim; the Salvador mosque in Lagos with its unique Portuguese style of architecture and craftsmanship was built by them and is maintained by their descendants. These freed men arrived in Nigeria and other ports along the gulf of Guinea coast as tradesman who knew many useful crafts-they were carpenters, masons, cobblers and bakers; many a talent had been learned during their harsh and lonely exile overseas, as was some literacy, often in both Portuguese and English .

This religious dissidence pervades Brazilian society; the paganism and licence that we observe in  the Rio carnival, for instance, or that of any Caribbean carnival for that matter, is obvious. The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel called The War at the End of the World has its setting in the isolated settlement of Canudos in the western part of Bahia state in 1897. This story follows Euclides da Cunha’s work called Os Sertoes (with the title of ‘Revolt in the Backland’ in its English translation) which describes life on the Brazilian frontier that resembled pioneering in North America. Its heroic resistance lasting nine long years packed with the memories of three centuries of civil and religious oppression. The movement’s leader was called Antonio Conselheiro; his rallying call of “Only God is Great!” brings us an echo from Brazil’s Islamic past: “Allahu Akbar!” ”Black Orpheus” from which a successful French film was made, reflects a similar but pagan movement in Rio de Janeiro .

Gilberto Freyre, the distinguished Brazilian sociologist who lived and died last year in Recife, studied this Afro-Brazilian culture all his life. In 1934 an Afro-Brazilian Congress was held under his patronage in his native city; while another took place in Salvador, the capital and chief port of Bahia, three years later, in 1937. Freyre’s perceptive studies observe the racial interaction that has taken place within Brazilian society. Casa Grande e Senzala translated as The Master and the Slaves ( the Portuguese title means literally ‘Big House and Shacks’) record similar research by this talented Brazilian historian and sociologist. Nina Rodrigues is another Brazilian anthropolist who wrote Os Africans no Brazil (‘Africans in Brazil’) that was published in Sao Paulo in 1933. The following year Pedro Calman wrote Os Males, a Insurreicao das Senzalas (Men of Mali, the uprising in the Slave Quarters’) in Rio in that same year. In these studies Brazilian culture is shown as a fusion of African, European and native Ameindian sources .

Police action interfered continuously with the candomble recalling the rigors of the Spanish Inquisition as well as the recent Western police state. French anthropologists and Brazilian police seek the same negative results in their research whose model was developed under the French occupation of Algeria: they rarely find any Muslims in the society they are studying! The sociologist Roger Bastide showed a grave lack of Perception during his field work in Brazil, where he was colorblind to Islam and the presence of local Muslims; such research becomes a form of science fiction at the of cultural Muslims; such research becomes a form of science fiction at the service of cultural imperialists, who in Islam are called “Orientalists. In Chapter Viii, pp. 143 ff., of Bastide’s book on The African Religions of Brazil * { Baltimore 1978, Johns Hopkins University Press} the author talks loosely of both “Mussulmans” and ‘Mohammedans”, and slights or ignores any Islamic traces in the culture of that country. When his nomenclature is not respectful, what can one expect from his conclusions, or even his total research? Claude Ahmad Winters, an Afro-American anthropologist who worked in Rio de Janeiro and now lives in Chicago, has reported more broadly on this field .

Brazilian conditions run in deep patterns: that turbulent wandering in the backlands influenced the minds of the lower classes in that country, just as the so-called “frontier” did in North America; the Brazilian backwoodsman was similar to the “pioneers” of North America or the  French Canadian voyagers. Canudos in the far western interior of Bahia state in 1897, dame fully two hundred years later than Palmares, and less than a century ago .

  In the two decades following the abolition of the slave traffic in Brazil, and around 1850 in the middle of the century, plantation culture began to crumble, especially after 1870. Decline in the sugar industry led to eventual emancipation of the slaves, while mechanization along with increased skill in the general labor force that was constituted by the new immigrants who came from Europe and invaded the rising coffee plantations of southern Brazil, made slave-holding difficult to maintain, if not an economic and social liability. Technical stagnation thus set in Brazil, the West Indies and the southern United States with their outmoded methods of production .

On May 13th, 1888, the great emperor Pedro II’s daughter Princess Isabel, who served as regent of Brazil during one of her father’s absences in Europe, signed the document that abolished the institution of slavery itself. [Independence for Brazil had come in 1822 under Emperor Pedro I when he proclaimed: “Eu fico!” or ‘I remain!’ in Brazil, rather than return to Portugal as his father wanted him to do]. This period, we have noticed, marks the return of many Brazilian exiles to the Gulf of Guinea coast: between 1850 and 1878 several thousand emancipados or slaves who had bought their own freedom, settled down in the ports of Lagos in Nigeria, and Porto Novo and Whydah in contemporary Benin; many families in those cities are proud of their Brazilian antecedents, and bear Portuguese surnames like da Silva, Santos or Fernandes. Their fondest wish had been to escape back to Africa. The complete history of these brave souls still needs to be recorded .

 In Brazil freedmen were called emancipados as we have mentioned; the Brazilians and the British encouraged many of them to sail for Africa, just as North American freedmen had been, especially following the great Male uprising of 1835 in the coastal towns of Bahia state. Relations were strong between the ports of Salvador and Whyddah (or Sao Joao de Ajuda, to give it its Portuguese name) on the Dahomey or modern Benin coast .

 Many educated freedmen settled down in Lagos when that port began to flourish after the 1860s, where they became prominent citizens, especially Brazilians who brought many useful trades to Nigeria such as tailoring, shoe-making, carpentry and bricklaying. These Portuguese-speaking emancipados have left their names along the Gulf of Guinea coast, especially in the Bight of Benin: Lagos itself means ‘Lakes’ or ‘Lagoons’, to describe its physical location; Porto Novo or 'New Port' is the present capital of the republic of Benin itself; while Porto Seguro mean 'safe Port', and Escravos is 'Slaves' in Portuguese .

Only the final emancipation of the Brazilian slaves in 1888 would bring a partial respite from this mood of unrest and discontent; but even then, Canudos was to remain as a sullen post-script. This revolt consisted of a real war in the bush; it was a popular movement that confounds historian and political scientists who grapple with its manifestations despite their meager understanding of its West African and possibly Islamic background. The religious content evades those scholars, as happens with most sociologists who study African movements today. As a result, these true heroes who struggled so bitterly and keenly for their freedom are remembered only at Carnival times: this episode from history has become a romantic legend in Brazil, drawn out of the folklore that surrounds the Carnival  period. Some recent films of the movement have been made by the cinema director Carlos Diegues .

The Brazilian ruling classes became wary of any Islamic-based movement of this sort. Brazil in fact was one of the last countries in the world to abolish slavery, exactly one hundred years ago, in 1888. Brazilian landowners were incensed at this imperial action of granting slaves their freedom, and they turned to the army, which proclaimed the Brazilian Republic the following year, in 1889. The republic proved to be more reactionary in many ways than the imperial Bragance family had been; republican government does not necessarily ensure progress nor liberty, while monarchy can act as a stabilizing influence between different sectors in society, protecting human freedom as we see in countries like those in Scandinavia, Britain, Canada and Japan .

The Brazilian ruling classes nonetheless became wary of Islamic based movements like the Male uprising; even as late as 1896, 25,000 people were slaughtered by the Brazilian army at the dissidents' new center of Canudos deep in the western part of the state of Bahia as they shouted their way cry of "God is Great!" ("Deus e Grander!" or "Allah Akbar!" as this phrase would be in Arabic), a memory of the slogan their ancestors had known on the high savannas of West Africa .

Thus two hundred years exactly after Palmaris was crushed in 1697, the entire Brazilian army was called up for service, in order to make a clean-up at Canudos, an abandoned cattle ranch that suddenly had become the center of a religious movement. Out of the thousands of people who participated in this uprising, only four ragged men were left alive, a real genocide in the Brazilian backlands .

The distribution of occupations and trades in both Brazil and Carribean area was broad. These Africans were the actual builders of Brazil, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, just as Blacks also formed the basic labor force in the West Indies and the North American "South". Small farmers and artisans could move up more easily in Brazilian society, however than they could in the southern (and northern) United States; they became stock breeders and small farmers in the interior sertoes or 'backland', showing their Fulani talent here in handling cattle. Masons, carpenters, house painters, cabinetmakers, cobblers, mechanics, printers, tinsmith, iron workers and stevedores, offered their services in the cities and ports, while as soldiers and actors they strutted their way through the towns in the hinterland. Hausa slaves had introduced iron smelting to Brazil, as we know, so these skill were projected into incipient industry as well .

 Mixed blood improved their prospects greatly: the rising mulatto found more chance of education in Brazil, while his mental alertness often permitted him to secure training as a physician, lawyer, or singer who found more scope in Brazil than his brother did in the United States ;   many physicians, lawyers and engineers were trained for the new society that developed in independent Brazil, although in some ways many remained as marginal characters. Like the North American Black who fled north from the southern countryside towards the northern industrial cities, the inhabitants of north-eastern Brazil conversely spread south and west, losing more cultural patterns through slum living in the favelas and with dull manual or factory jobs, which can be as degrading and monotonous-as life had been on the old plantations. Brazil has witnessed much social leveling and this has resulted in a relatively stable society for the moment .

By 1905 in the old days at the beginning of this century before all the African-born persons had passed away, one-third of the individuals of African descent who lived in the state of Bahia were aid to be Muslim; by 1910 it is calculated that 20 to 30 thousand Muslims at least still lived in Brazil. Small groups of Muslims are to be found today in Rio de Janeiro. Bahia and Sao Paulo, besides the new immigrant Muslims in the southern cities of Brazil and generally throughout South America, generally fostered by the Palestinian diaspora of this century .

Dr.T.B.Irving

November, 1988.       
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402