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Literature and Racial Integration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

José Mauricio Gomes de Almeida
José Mauricio Gomes de Almeida*
Affiliation:
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
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Extract

The historical formation of Brazil is distinguished from the majority of ex-colonial nations by one factor that is especially characteristic: an intense process of ethnic and cultural mixing. The Portuguese colonisers, who, unlike the English Puritans in North America, left their families and arrived in Brazil in small groups mainly composed of men, naturally tended to pair off with the women they found available - first of all indigenous women and later African women. There was nothing in Brazil to prevent this spontaneous behaviour similar to the role played in the English colonies of North America by the strength of the family group or the strict religious observance of the community. Thus from the outset Brazil tended to accept racial mixing as a de facto reality. As Gilberto Freyre correctly noted in his book Casa Grande e Senzala:

They mixed happily with women of colour from the very first contacts and many mixed-race children resulted, so much so that only a few thousand men were enough to colonize vast areas and compete with the greatest and most numerous peoples as regards the extent of the colonial territory and the effectiveness of colonizing activity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 48 , Issue 191 , September 2000 , pp. 72 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2000

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References

Notes

1. Gilberto Freyre, Casa Grande & Senzala, vol. 1, p. 12 of the Brazilian edition.

2. Gregório de Matos (1976), Poemas escolhidos, ed. José Miguel Wisnik (São Paulo: Cultrix).

3. The Brazilian outback. (Translator's note.)

4. Before the discovery of Brazil by Pedro Alvares Cabral. (Translator's note.)

5. After a series of palliative and more or less ineffective measures, the complete abolition of slavery did not come about in Brazil until 1888. In the following year the Republic was proclaimed, ending the Empire that had begun with Independence in 1822.

6. Bernardo Guimarães (1976), A escrava Isaura (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar), p. 28.

7. Ibid., p. 31.

8. Euclides da Cunha (1985), Os sertões, critical edition by Walnice Nogueira Galvão (São Paulo: Brasiliense), p. 177.

9. Like Gonçalves Dias he was of mixed-race origin (through his paternal grandmother) and had the very marked physical features of the caboclo sertanejo. Oddly enough, it was not unusual at this period, domi nated as it was by a form of racially based anthropology, to find mixed-race intellectuals who were won over by ‘scientific' theories and disapproved of racial mixing.

10. Euclides da Cunha, Os sertões, p. 580.

11. Ibid., p. 559.

12. Ibid., p. 544.

13. Letter to Ademar Vidal, in Mário de Andrade (1988), Macunaíma: o herói sem nenhum caráter, critical edition Telê Porto Ancona Lopes (Florianopolis: Editora da UFSC), Coll. Arquivos no. 6, p. 408.

14. Letter to Souza da Silveira, ibid., p. 416.

15. Jorge Amado (1969), Tenda dos milagres (São Paulo: Martins), p. 165.

16. Jorge Amado (1990), Conversations avec Alice Raillard (Paris: Gallimard), p. 203.

17. A dramatic folk dance. (Translator's note.)

18. The religion of the Yoruba Africans in Bahia. A 'terreiro' is a site where these religious ceremonies are performed. (Translator's note.)

19. As for the composition of some characters and also the plot of Tenda dos milagres, the author makes use of historical events: repressive police measures against Afro-Brazilian expression did indeed occur in Bahia at this period.

20. Jorge Amado (1969), op. cit., p. 141.