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Social Mobility of Negroes in Brazil*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Jean-Claude Garcia-Zamor
Jean-Claude Garcia-Zamor*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, The University of Texas at Austin
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Extract

The Brazilian Negroes must be viewed in the context of Brazilian history and civilization and of the forces of social change operating throughout Brazilian society. In this article I intend to point out some of the historical factors that significantly influence the social mobility, or lack of it, of Brazilian Negroes, to analyze the present status of Negroes in Brazilian society, and to suggest some possible ways of dealing with this largely ignored, but very serious, racial situation that contains the seeds of a potential social crisis.

After the discovery of Brazil by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500, the Portuguese exploited its coastal territories for more than fifty years with little help other than that of the enslaved Indians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1970 , pp. 242 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1970

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Footnotes

*

A Spanish version of this article entitled “El Marginalismo del Negro Brasileño” was read by the author during a colloquium on “Marginalización del Afro-Americano en América Latina” held in Rheda/Westfalia, Germany, from 15 to 19 April 1970, under the sponsorship of the University of Bielefeld.

References

1 This same Yoruba-Bantu influence was also observed among the Negroes of Spanish America, especially Cuba. The Negro slaves in the former English and Dutch colonies, especially Jamaica, the Bahamas, the Guianas, and the east coast of the United States, had come principally from the Ivory Coast and had inherited the Fanti-Ashanti culture. The Fen culture was predominant among the slaves who were brought from Dahomey to the French colonies, especially Haiti, and among the Negroes of Louisiana, who had been transferred there from Haiti at the end of the eighteenth century.

2 Freyre, Gilberto, The Masters and the Slaves, trans, by Putnam, Samuel (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), p. 255.Google Scholar

3 Havinghurst, Robert J. and Moreira, J. Roberto, Society and Education in Brazil (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1965), pp. 27–28.Google Scholar

4 For a colorful and dramatic description of favela life see Child of the Dark, by Caroline Maria de Jesus, trans, by David St. Clair (New York: E. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1962).

5 The religions of Brazilian Negroes are discussed at length in Brazil. People and Institutions by T. Lynn Smith (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963), pp. 529-546.

6 The Afro-Brazilian cult known as macumba includes belief in a remote creator with little interest in earthly affairs, in a variable number of mandatory divinities, hierarchically classified, belonging to a mythological family and so involved in the life of the macumbista as to induce “possessions” or to apply sanctions at minimal deviations from prescribed “good” behavior.

7 Historically, the Church has seemed to be antagonistic to the Negroes. During the earlier period of the colony, the Jesuits were so anxious to protect the Indians that they pacified the consciences of many colonists by justifying Negro slavery.

8 Bastide, Roger and Fernandes, Florestan, Relações Raciais entre Negros e Brancos em São Paulo (São Paulo: Editóra Anhembi Limitada, 1955), p. 183.Google Scholar

9 It is rather striking to note that the Portuguese who insist so strongly on their racial liberality will rarely marry their Negro mistresses with whom they sometimes live for 20 or 30 years.

10 de Azevedo, Thales, Les Elites de Couleur dans une Ville Brésilienne (Paris: UNESCO, 1953), p. 40.Google Scholar

11 Havinghurst, and Moreira, , Society and Education in Brazil, p. 27.Google Scholar

12 Jornal do Brasil, May 12, 1968, p. 24.

13 Brazilians popularly say that when a Negro overcomes the barriers and obtains a high position, he ceases to be a Negro. He loses the characteristics of the Negro and becomes “socially white.” Although this cannot be considered a sign of racial democracy, still it contributes to saving the country from the acute racial conflicts that rage in some Anglo-Saxon countries.

14 João Camillo de Oliveira Tõrres, Estratificação Social no Brasil (São Paulo: Difusão Européia de Livro, 1965), p. 221.

15 Bastide, and Fernandes, , Relações Raciais, p. 165.Google Scholar

16 Pereira, João Baptista Borges, Côr, Profissão e Mobilidade. O Negro e o Radio de São Paulo (São Paulo: Editôra da Universidade de São Paulo, 1967), pp. 252–261.Google Scholar

17 Jornal do Brasil, November 3, 1968, p. 15.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., April 16, 1968, p. 15.

20 Under the headline, “Universitarios Negros Iniciam en São Paulo Luta por Direitos,” Jornal do Brasil published on May 19, 1968, a long article describing the formation, orientation, and goals of this movement.

21 This information was included in a report cabled to New York on August 26, 1964, by Newsweek correspondent in Brazil, Milan J. Kubic. Although it was never published, the original Kubic cable is still on file at Newsweek headquarters.

22 Ibid., May 12,1968, p. 24.

23 Ibid.

24 Lambert, Jacques, Os Dois Brasís (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educacão e Cultura, 1959), p. 95.Google Scholar

25 In an address given at Vanderbilt University on November 19, 1968, Thomas E. Skidmore, who is presently preparing a study of ideas in Brazil between 1870 and 1922, traced the “whitening” thesis to the “widespread belief, later popularized by Gilberto Freyre, that the Portuguese enjoyed an uncanny ability to ‘whiten’ the darker peoples with whom they mixed”: in Skidmore, “Brazilian Intellectuals and the Problem of Race, 1870-1930,” Occasional Paper No. 6, Vanderbilt University, The Graduate Center for Latin American Studies, 1969, p. 3.