¹ The early references to the black associations used the terms “nación,” “tambo” and “tango.” In the late 1820s the world “candombe” was generalized referring indistinguishably to the associations, the places where the associations meet, and the dance performed in the meetings. In this article I will use the terms candombes, nations, and African Associations interchangeably.

² For a useful, though partisan, synthesis of this debate see Lovejoy, Paul, “The African Diaspora: Revisionist Interpretations of Ethnicity, Culture and Religion under Slavery” SWHSAE 2:1 (1997).Google Scholar

³ Andrews, George Reid, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800–1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), p. 150.Google Scholar

⁴ Bernaldo, Pilar González, “La creation d'une nation: Historie politique de les nouvelles appertenences culturelles dans la ville de Buenos Aires, 1810–1862” (Ph.D. Diss.: University of Paris I, 1992);Google Scholar Bernaldo, Pilar González, Civilité et politique aux origins de la nation argentine (Paris: Publications de la Sorbone, 1999).Google Scholar

⁵ The centrality of these two festivals in the African Diasporic culture is discussed in John Chasteen's forthcoming study on the role of dance in the construction of Latin American nationalities.

⁶ This article relies on the important and growing scholarship on African nations in the diaspora; see Kiddy, Elizabeth, “Ethnic and Racial Identity in the Brotherhoods of the Rosary of Minas Gerais, 1700–1830,” The Americas 56 (1999), pp. 221–252;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Karasch, Mary “Central African Religious Tradition in Rio de Janeiro” Journal of Latin American Studies 5:2 (1979), pp. 233–253, and Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro 1808–1850 (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1987);Google Scholar Howard, Philip A., Changing History: Afro-Cuban Cabildos in the Nineteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1998).Google Scholar

⁷ Scholars agree that ethnicity in Africa was not as sharply delineated in precolonial times as in the present day. In fact, ethnicity as an absolute is a very recent (not to mention dangerous) development. Terence Ranger, for instance, develops the notion that most of the modern African ethnic groups were invented by the European colonial administrations; see Ranger, Terence, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in Hobsbawm, Erick and Ranger, Terence eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 211–26;Google Scholar not all scholars subscribe to this thesis, some agree that colonial and post-Independence politics exacerbated ethnic differences but they existed independently from control, colonial, Mamdani, Mahmood, Citizen, and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 185–217;Google Scholar Greene, Sandra E. Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Salve Coast (Portsmouth, NH. and London, Heine-mann and James Currey, 1996).Google Scholar

⁸ In diasporic studies, it is not unusual to find blanket terms such as West African culture or West Central African religion. Mintz and Price discuss the possibility of this regional cultural complex conceding that across geographical neighboring groups a certain unity of principles, which they call a “grammar of culture,” informs highly differenced cultural artifacts; Mintz, Sidney W. and Price, Richard, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

⁹ Mintz and Price, African-American Culture, pp. 40–45.

¹⁰ Some examples of authors who subscribe to this school are the above-quoted, chapters 8 and 9, pp. 206–270; finally Michael Gomez distinguishes between the Latin American part of the Diaspora, where Africans were able to retain much of their culture, and North America, where the sustained effort of whites managed to erase many of the original African traditions; see Gómez, Michael, Exchanging our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).Google Scholar

¹¹ See Lorand Matory, J., “The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yoruba Nation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (1999), pp. 72–103.Google Scholar

¹² Andrews, , Afro-Argentines, p. 66;Google Scholar Goldberg, Marta. “La población negra y mulata de la ciudad de Buenos Aires,” Desarrollo Económico 16 (1976), pp. 75–99.Google Scholar

¹³ Andrews, , Afro-Argentines, Table 5.1, p. 66.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 69.

¹⁵ According to the study by Elena F. de Studer a total of 306 registered slavers arrived to the Rio de la Plata between 1742 and 1806, 185 (60%) came from Brazil, 43 (14%) directly from West Africa, 15 (4.8%) from West Central Africa, 28 (9%) from East Africa, and 35 ( 11.4%) from unknown origin, de Studer, Elena F., La trata de negros en el Rio de la Plata durante el siglo XVIII (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1958.), Annex 1.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Miller, Joseph C., Kings and Kinsmen: Early Mbundu States in Angola (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 151–75, 267.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Schwartz, Stuart B., “Rethinking Palmares: Salve Resistance in Colonial Brazil,” in Schwartz, Stuart B., Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp. 103–136 Google Scholar and Anderson, Robert N., “The Quilombo of Palmares: A New Overview of a Maroon State in Seventeenth-Century Brazil,” Journal of Latin American Studies 28 (1996), pp. 545–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ The quilombo of Palmares was, however, quite unusual in size and duration. Recent works of Brazilian historians show that, far from being palisaded citadels deep in the forest, most quilombos were integrated to the daily life of towns and cities. Flory, Thomas, “Fugitive Slaves and Free Society: The Case of Brazil,” Journal of Negro History 64:2 (1979), p. 199–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See contributions of Flavio dos Santos and Mario Maestri in Reis, João Jose and Santos, Flavio dos ed., Liberdade por um fio: Historia dos quilombos no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996).Google Scholar

¹⁹ The original version reads “Até porque angola é urna mistura de cambinda, moçambique, munjola, quicongo. Tudo isso é angola. Então virou o que eles mesmos chamavam milonga.… Misturararn, porque eles, na senzala, tinham de todas as nações e, quando era possível, eles faziam qualquer coisa das obrigações deies, então cada um pegava um pedaço, faziam urna colcha-de-retalhos … e não ficou urna nação para fazer aquel tipo de obrigação. Era a mistura, como ja disse, urna milonga.” de Santana, Esmeraldo Emetério “Nação Angola,” in Encontró de Nações de Candomblé: Anais do encontro realizado em Salvador, 1981 (Salvador da Bahia: Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientales, 1984), pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

²⁰ Kiddy, Elizabeth, “Rosary of Minas Gerais, 1700–1830,” The Americas 56:2 (1999), p. 235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ It is highly possible, although difficult to prove, that the communities of blacks that flourished in the outskirts of Buenos Aires during the colonial period were similar to this kind of urban quilombo that existed in Brazil in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Few sources recorded the existence of these communities. In 1795, the Cabildo officer, don Manuel Warnes, and a handful of city guards irrupted by force into a barrack in the Concepción parish to enforce a Cabildo ban on the nations. When Warnes and his subordinates broke into the place, club-and-knife wielding defenders easily put the cabildo party to flight. On that occasion, Warnes reported that slaves and freedmen “gathered there at nights in the number of three hundred to dance indecently.” The alderman also affirmed that slaves used the place as a cloak for runaways and bandits that planned their felonies “in order to alleviate the yoke of slavery.” Manuel Warnes to Cabildo, 1795, AGN, Cabildo, leg. 10.19.7.2.

²² Andrews, , Afro-Argentines, pp. 133–136.Google Scholar

²³ Recent scholarship challenges the vision of nineteenth-century elections as mere shows of force, highlighting popular participation that did not exclude violence and manipulations. See, for the case of Buenos Aires: Ternavasio, Graciela “Las elecciones en el Estado de Buenos Aires y la expansión de la frontera política: 1820–1840” in Historia de las elecciones en Iberoamérica, ed. Antonio Annino (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990)Google Scholar and Sabato, Hilda and Palti, Elias, “Quién votaba en Buenos Aires: Práctica y teoría del sufragio, 1850–1880,” Desarrollo Económico 30:119 (1990), pp. 395–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Minister of government to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 31, 1821, AGN, Policía, leg. 10.12.2.4.

²⁵ Reglamento que deben observar los negros de la Nación Conga, Buenos Aires, November 30, 1821, AGN, Policía, OS, leg. 10.32.10.1.

²⁶ Minister of government to chief of police, Buenos Aires, June 21, 1825, AGN Policía, Ordenes Superiores (hereafter OS), leg. 10.32.10.5

²⁷ Reglamento que deben seguir las sociedades africanas, Buenos Aires, August 11, 1823, AGN, Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

²⁸ Analizing Rivadavia's reform, Pilar González Bernaldo argues that the state intervention inside the candombes created a contradiction between the principles of a typical ancien-regime form of sociabilty and those of the modern civic asociations. Bernaldo, Pilar González, “La Creation d'une Nation,” vol III, p. 844.Google Scholar

²⁹ According to Argentine memoirist López, Vicente Fidel, Buenos Aires blacks “created a cluster of free colonies called nations, organized under kings and customs brought from their African homeland.” López, Vicente Fidel, Manual de Historia Argentina (Buenos Aires: Librería la Facultad, 1920), pp. 378–379.Google Scholar

³⁰ Antonio Arana, member of the Nación Moro to chief of police, Buenos Aires, June 15,1825, AGN, Policía, leg. 10.13.9.1.

³¹ Antonio Romero and Sebastián Aripón, members of the Angola Society to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 20, 1827, AGN Policía, leg. 10.14.5.4.

³² Members of the Nación Huombé to the chief of police, Buenos Aires, May 8, 1828, AGN, Policía, OS, leg. 10.32.11.3.

³³ Chief of police to minister of government, Buenos Aires, May 8, 1830 AGN, Policía, leg. 10.15.6.7.; Manuel Perea, member of the Nación Brasilera to chief of police, Buenos Aires, May 14, 1830, AGN, Policía, leg. 10.15.6.7; members of the Nación Maravi to chief of police, Buenos Aires, July 10, 1830, Manuel Nez, member of the Nación Muñambani to chief of police, Buenos Aires Nov. 8, 1830, AGN, Policía, leg. 10.15.6.7.

³⁴ Fourth section deputy to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 23, 1832, AGN Policía, Ministerio de Gobierno (hereafter MG), leg. 10.33.1.7

³⁵ Deputy of the fourth section to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 30, 1832, AGN, Policía MG, leg. 10.33.1.7.

³⁶ Members of Calumbo Society to minister of government, Buenos Aires, May 30, 1831, AGN, Policía MG, leg. 10.15.9.4.

³⁷ The story of the relationship between the black population and Rosas is mostly based on biased propaganda of the regime's foes. According to those sources, a cynical Rosas abused the political naivete of blacks and used them to threaten the unruly white elite. British historian John Lynch repeats this model first crafted by the Argentine racist author José María Ramos Mejía; see Lynch, John, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas 1829–1852 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 123–24;Google Scholar and Ramos Mejía, José Maria, Rosas y su tiempo, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1903), vol 1, p. 330.Google Scholar

³⁸ Unidentified sender to chief of police, July 5, 1832, AGN, Policía, leg. 10.32.11.8.

³⁹ Judge José Eugenio de Elias to chief of polke, Buenos Aires, Aprii 23, 1831, AGN, Policía OS 10-33-1-5.

⁴⁰ José Solano, chair of Comisión Examinadora de Sociedades Africanas, to chief of police, Buenos Aires, November 26, 1834, AGN, Policía, leg. 10.33.2.2 p.l.

⁴¹ Ibid., 2.

⁴² Martín Larramendi, secretary of the Nación Mozambique to first officer of police department, Buenos Aires, July 22, 1845; Members of Sociedad Loango to first officer of police department, Buenos Aires, September 16, 1846; Juan Mesa, president of Nación Munyolo, to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 27, 1847; Members of the Sociedad Benguela to judge ordinary, Buenos Aires, February 12, 1849; Rafael Ramos, member of the Nación Bayombe to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 12, 1848; AGN, Policía, Sociedades Africanas (hereafter SA), leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁴³ Juana María Ramos member of Nación Bayombe to chief of police, Buenos Aires, August 23, 1848; Juan José de la Brasa y Victoriano Azcuenaga, members of the Sociedad Banguela to judge ordinary, Buenos Aires, February 12, 1849; Juana Sanchez, mother of the Nación Maravi to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 19, 1857; Antonio Pueyrredon, member of the Sociedad Africana Argentina Federal to chief of police, Buenos Aires, November 14, 1847, AGN Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁴⁴ Pedro Pablo Lovera, member of the Sociedad Loango Unido to chief of police, Buenos Aires, February 10, 1854; Members of the Sociedad Bayombe to chief of police, Buenos Aires, August 11, 1852, AGN Policía, AS, leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁴⁵ Members of the Sociedad Benguela to chief of police, Buenos Aires, February 24, 1864, AGN Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁴⁶ Karasch does not assert the exact origin of the Gombés she finds in Rio de Janeiro. She proposes northern Congo as the possible homeland of this group. She clearly identifies the Lubolos’ or Rebolos’ geographic origin, on the other hand, with the area of the mid southern Cuanza River in Angola. See Karasch, , Slave Life in Rio, p. 374.Google Scholar Thornton mentions two kingdoms with the name of Ngombe in the strip that separated the Kongo kingdom from the Portuguese enclave of Angola. Thornton, Africa and Africans, pp. xxx–xxxi.

⁴⁷ Members of the Nación Huombé to chief of police, Buenos Aires, May 8, 1828, Archivo General de la Nación (Hereafter AGN) Policía, OS, leg. 10.32.11.3.

⁴⁸ The society headquarters on Independencia Street were valued at 302 pesos. That was two and half times less than the average value of the nations’ places existing in 1826 (excluding the property of the Cambunda Society, valued at 5,050 pesos). See Molas, Ricardo Rodríguez, La música y la danza, p. 17.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Chief of Police to Minister of Government, Buenos Aires, May 21, 1828, AGN Policía, OS, leg. 10.32.11.3.

⁵⁰ Minister of Government to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, July 21, 1928 AGN Policía, OS, leg. 10.14.9.1.

⁵¹ Chief of Police to Minister of Government, Buenos Aires, October 20, 1827, AGN Policía, leg. 10.14.5.6.

⁵² Miller, , Kings and Kinsmen, pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

⁵³ Antonio Vega to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 21, 1857, AGN, Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5, Nación Congo, p. 1.

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 2.

⁵⁵ The Goyos were presumably members of the Ngoyo kingdom, one of the small buffer polities that separated the Loango from the Kongo kingdom at the estuary of the Zaire River. Thornton, Africa and Africans, p. xxviii. After the fall of Rosas in 1852, the Loango society broke down, and the Loango club-house passed into Goyo's hands. Surprisingly, the so-called Nación Goyo had dislodged the originally dominant Nación Loango from their land. In 1856, Goyos and Loangos negotiated a rapprochement and created a new association with the name of Loango Unido, which, nevertheless, reproduced the internal conflicts of the antecessor. The police officer called to mediate the conflict considered that the best option was to dissolve the Loango Unido for good to avoid further in-fighting. Deputy of 6° Section to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, July 27, 1857, A.G.N. Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁵⁶ José Solano, chair of Comisión Examinadora de Sociedades Africanas, to chief of police, Buenos Aires, November 26, 1834, AGN, Policía, leg. 10.33.2.2, p.l.

⁵⁷ Partes de la Ciudad, 1837, Buenos Aires, AGN, Policía, leg. 10.33.3.4, pp. 101–103.

⁵⁸ Members of the Sociedad Bayombe to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 15, 1852 A.G.N, Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.1.5, Sociedad Bayombe, p. 13.

⁵⁹ Anselmo Freytas, president of the Nación Huombe to Chief of Police, December 1, 1855, Martín Aguero, member of the Nación Huombe to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, December 4, 1855; Deputy of 5th Section to Chief of Police, December 19, 1855, Anselmo Freytas, member of Nación Huombe to Chief of Police, January 5, 1856, AGN Policía, SA, 10.31.1.5, Nación Huombe.

⁶⁰ Deputy of 7° section to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, April 20, 1858 AGN Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5, Sociedad Maravi.

⁶¹ Although the very name of “traditional” African religion has come under question, scholars still have not found a better term to replace it. Nevertheless, authors now assert that these traditional religions were affected by change. One theory proposes that increasing contact with the European and Islamic traders fostered a shift from the cult of ancestors and lower gods or spirits of nature to a more stratified hierarchy of gods ruled by the creator god; see Platvoet, Jan, “The Religions of Africa,” in Platvoet, Jan, ed., The Study of Religions in Africa: Past, Present and Prospects (Cambridge: Cambridge Roots and Branches, 1996), p. 56.Google Scholar

⁶² Dos Santos, Juana Elbein, Os Nagó e a morte: Pàde, asèsè e o culto Egun na Bahia (Petrópolis, RJ.: Editora Vozes, 1975), p. 220.Google Scholar

⁶³ Bockie, Simon, Death and the Invisible Powers, The World of Kongo Belief (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Miller, , Kings and Kinsmen, p. 254.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ According to Wyatt McGaffery, the cult of the ancestors in nineteenth-century Kongo was closely related to the communal organization of Kongo society. MacGaffery also quotes Igor Kopytoff's opinion that the cult of death and ancestor worship among other Bantu speaking groups were nothing less than “cults of the elders or elders worship.” MacGaffery, Wyatt, Religion and Society in Central Africa: The Bakongo of Lower Zaire (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ The best monograph regarding this topic is Reis, João José, A Morte é urna festa: Ritos fúnebres e revolta popular no Brasil do século XIX (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995)Google Scholar -English translation in press. The studies of conceptions of death in the Western World are headed by the insightful works of Aries, Philippe, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974),Google Scholar and The Hour of Our Death (New York: Knopf, 1981); See also Mattoso, José, O reino dos morios na idade media peninsular (Lisboa: Ediçoes João Sá da Costa, 1996).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Chiffoleau, Jacques, “La-religion flamboyante –1320–1520,” in Le Goff, Jacques and Rémond, René eds., Histoire de la France religieuse (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1988), pp. 164–7.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ In his latest book Thornton strongly supports the hypothesis that Bakongo and Catholic conceptions of death overlapped, which explains why the most important religious holiday among the seventeenth-century Bakongo was Halloween-All Saints’ Day, see Thornton, John The Kongolese Sain Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684–1706 (Cambridge, University of Cambridge Press, 1998), pp. 30–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁹ In cities of three continents many African brotherhoods were bestowed to the cult of Our Lady of Rosary (including the black brotherhoods of Lisbon, Lagos, Luanda, São Salvador of Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires); see Tinhorão, José Ramos, Os negros em Portugal: urna presença silenciosa (Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 1988),Google Scholar Gabriel, Manuel Nunes, Padroes da Fé: Igrejas antigas de Angola (Luanda: Edição da Arquidiocese de Luanda, 1981);Google Scholar see also Thornton, John “On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and Americas,” The Americas 44 (1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁰ “La lista que a Vs presento, de este número solo a quedado yo, Antonio Vega. Los demás han fallecido, mas sus descendientes como dueños reclaman sus derechos que les corresponde sostener como derechos de sus finados Padres, conservar esta casa con el nombre Sociedad Congo, para que con sus productos recordar cada año las cenizas de sus Padres.” Antonio Vega, secretary of Nación Congo to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 21, 1857, AGN Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5

⁷¹ Martín Aguero, member of the Nación Huombe to Chief of Police, December 4, 1855, AGN Policía SA 10.31.1.5, Nación Huombe.

⁷² Juan Mesa, president of the Nación Munyola, to chief of police, Buenos Aires, September 27, 1847, AGN Policía, AS, leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁷³ “Cuenta de la vuelta de gastos y entradas que presenta el presidente de la Nación Basundi, Don Manuel Ortiz del año 1857. Buenos Aires, AGN Policía, AS, leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁷⁴ Martín Larramendi, secretary of the Nación Mozambique to chief of police, Buenos Aires, July 22, 1845, AGN Policía, AS, leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁷⁵ “La casa edificada en uh cuarto de tierra y edificado en el cinco cuartos incluso el de ánimas” Ibidem.

⁷⁶ Martín Aguero, member of the Nación Huombe to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, December 4, 1855, AGN Policía SA 10.31.1.5, Nación Huombe.

⁷⁷ Manzo, Juana “Los Hombres de Color” La Tribuna, September 16, 1865, p.l. c.6.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Juana Manzo was an educator, historian and journalist, and aid of Domingo Sarmiento in the educational reforms undertaken in Buenos Aires after 1852. The original quotation reads: “Nada hemos hecho por los blancos pobres desde medio siglo, ni menos por los hombres de color dejando incrustados tranquilamente en nuestro suelo republicano y cristiano esos pedazos del Africa servil e idólatra.”

⁷⁹ “Curioso espectáculo es un velorio de negros en su sitio.… Donde el devoto rosario siguen el canto monótono entonado en coro por los dolidos veladores, las danzas fúnebres, los llantos, y que es más cómico, escenas de beberage, peleas, celos, y otra porción de incidentes; Manzo, Juana “Los Hombres de Color” p. l. c.6.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Chief of police to minister of government, Buenos Aires June 15, 1825, AGN Policía, leg. 10.13.9.1.

⁸¹ Lucas León, president of the Sociedad Muñemba to chief of police, Buenos Aires, March 14, 1861, AGN Policía, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

⁸² The few descriptions of the choreography of this dancing demonstrate its ritual character. The French naturalist Alcides D'Orbigny who visited the Río de la Plata in the early 1820s described a ceremony he witnessed in Montevideo in these terms: “Every nation in its way performed a representative dance of its country. There, I saw a succession of war dances, simulacrums of agriculture work, and the most lascivious movements. More than six hundred Negroes seemed to recover their nationality in the midst of an imaginary country.” D'Orbigny, Alcides, Viaje a la America meridional realizado de 1826 a 1833 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Futuro, 1945), 3:65;Google Scholar Ortiz Oderigo gathered other testimonies, also from Montevideo of a dance called candombe. According to the Ortiz Oderigo, the candombe of Montevideo was a kind of dramatic dance in which several characters played definite roles. First, it was the turn of the escobero to demonstrate his mastery with the baton—much like Elegua in the Afro-Cuban tradition. Then the gramillero, or doctor, entered tottering on his walking stick and carrying a small bag with medicinal herbs. The dance also unfolded in several stages. It started with two parallel lines of people-one of men, the other of women—singing choruses in African languages, advancing to bump each other with their stomachs, then retreating. In a second stage, the dancers broke lines and danced in couples. After this step, the drum rhythm gathered momentum and the scene became confused as all let their bodies move at will. At that point, the candombe reached its peak and dancers stopped, exhausted, at the commanding voice of the master of ceremonies. Oderigo, Nestor Ortiz, Calunga: Croquis del candombe (Buenos Aires, Eeduba, 1969), p. 24;Google Scholar other amateur folklorists provided several descriptions of African dances in the Río de la Plata, unfortunately they rarely revealed their sources; see Rossi, Vicente, Cosas de negros (Buenos Aires: Editorial Río de la Plata, 1926), pp. 33–35;Google Scholar Lanuza, José Luis, Morenada (Buenos Aires: Shapire, 1967), pp. 43–52.Google Scholar

⁸³ Perhaps the best description of a candombe is an 1845 oil of Martin Boneo that shows a performance of candombe in the house of the Congo Nation. A group of dancers and drummers appear standing in a ring while a couple of dancers performs in the center.

⁸⁴ Antonio Arana, member of Nación Moro, to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, May 25, 1825, AGN Policía, 10.13.9.1.

⁸⁵ José Eugenio Elias, General Procurator, to Governor of Province of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, May 13, 1827. AGN OS 10–14–5–4.

⁸⁶ “E quando era possivel, eles faziam qualquer coisa das obragações deles, então cada um pegava um pedaço, faziam urna colcha-de-retalhos, um cozinhava isso, outro cortava aquilo, outro pegava, porque eles tinham tempo limitado para tal e faziam. A mesma coisa fez-se no càntico. Um, “eu sei tal cantiga’” outro, “eu sei tal’” e todos cantavam, e então o santo aceitava, e não ficou somente urna nação para fazer aquele tipo de obrigação, Era a mistura, como ja disse, a milonga.” de Santana, Esmeraldo Emetério “Nação Angola,” in Encontro de Nações de Candomblé: Anais do encontro realizado em Salvador, 1981 (Salvador da Bahia, Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientales, 1984), pp. 35–36.Google Scholar