natureofleft's Blog 2010-02-15 11:23:02

So recently we discussed the African element in Latin America.  For some countries this influence would prove to be powerful in shaping their countries culture.  For Brazil, the African element would be enormous.  As we know the portuguese, due to the control of the gold coast by settlements at Cabo Verde, controlled the African Slave Trade.  Due to this a higher percentage of slaves went to Brazil, Portugal’s only Latin American colony.

We all know of the horrors that came along with slavery.  The article “The Children of God’s Fire” does a good job portraying some of these atrocities.  It was written in the prospective of a portuguese doctor in 1793.  He describes the scare tactics used to keep the slaves aboard the middle passage in-order.  He explains that at no time are the Africans safe from the portuguese, while beatings and whippings are used to keep the Africans subordinate.

These slaves were sent to Brazil for economic purposes, such as farming sugar cane, mining, etc.  Women who could not due labor were used as nannies and house servants.  These women slaves would be important for the creation of the Brazilian Portuguese.  These slave nannies would care for and feed for the masters’ children.  These nannies would be the first contact with language that these next generation colonial brazilians would have.  So along with portuguese words and broken grammar, naturally, African words would be passed along as well.

MAny scholars argue as to the levels of inhumanity associated with Latin American slavery.  Some argue that slaves did not have it as hard in Latin America as in the North.  Well still one can not deny the horrors of the trade as well as the ownership of humans.  In Brazil folklure tells us of a buitiful black slave women named Chica da Silva, who uses her body to win over the heart of João Fernandes de Oliveira, a portuguese sent by the crown to regulate diamonds in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais.

This was a segment of Cacá Diegues film Xica da Silva(1976).  Keep in mind the african elements shown here.  Most notably the music and the dress.