A history of Black resistance in Brazil
International Viewpoint # 237 • October 26, 1992
500 YEARS red as Saint George, Saint Anthony or
Saint Michael while Shango, with his thunder and lightning became Jesus Christ and
Oshun, divinity of calm waters was the virgin of the candles.
These Gods were forbidden in the colonies of all the imperial powers. In the
SOME 45% of the population of Brazil is Black; this makes
English Caribbean, after the abolition of
Brazil the country with the second biggest Black slavery, it was still forbidden to play the population in the world (65 million people), after Nigeria tambour or African wind instruments and
(with 100 million). This community's importance, however, the mere fact of owning an image of any
African god meant prison.
is not only a matter of numbers; it has also played an
Dark skin was the cloak of incorrigible essential social and political role in Brazil's history.
faults. Thus social inequality, which is also
African slaves provided the first stable core of productive racial, is provided with an alibi by human labour and were the first group to organize independently imperfections.
against the regime of the time, mounting
200 years ago Humboldt noted that the resistance which included armed whole of America works like this: the pyramid of the social classes is dark at the base and light at the top. In Brazil for example racial democracy means that the whites are on the top and the Blacks on the bottom.
James Baldwin wrote about the Blacks in the United States: "When we left Mississipi and went north we did not find freedom.
We found the worst jobs on the labour market and we are still there"
An Indian from northern Argentina,
Asuncion Ontiveros Yulquila has recounted the trauma of his youth: "Good and beautiful people were those that looked like
Jesus and the Virgin. But my father and mother did not in any way look like the images of Jesus and the Virgin that I saw in the church at Abra Pampa."
Fundamental values miraculously preserved
Biological fatalism, which stigmatizes the "inferior races", congenitally condemned to idleness, violence and poverty, does more than simply prevent us from seeing the real roots of our troubles. It also prevents us from recognizing fundamental values miraculously preserved by these despised cultures and still more or less embodied by them despite centuries of persecution, humiliation and degradation.
These fundamental values are not museum exhibits. They are historical factors, indispensable if we are to invent an America not divided into masters and slaves.
A short while ago, the Spanish priest
Ignacio Ellacuria [a Jesuit assassinated by the army in 1989] told me that he thought the story of the discovery of America was absurd. The oppressor is incapable of discovery "it is the oppressed who discovers the oppressor".
He believed that the oppressor cannot even discover himself. That reality also is only visible to the oppressed.
Ignacio Elacruria was shot. * struggle. ISAAC AKCELRUD*
HESE facts are rarely to be found in scholarly studies, even by people working in the Marxist tradition. This is because the ideology of the Black movement did not and could not have any connection with European traditions. The independent organization of Black workers had an African cultural basis. And if we are not to diminish the Brazilian experience to a shadow of that of Europe, we have to understand this cultural input.
The study, self-analysis and self-understanding of the Brazilian working class, the identification of its distant, premonitory struggles and forms of struggle and the recuperation of the repressed aspects of its heritage require an open-minded approach. In particular the history of 500 years of Black resistance must be sympathetically studied. This is a fascinating task and a necessary one if class consciousness is to be historically rooted in the living realities of our people. And, among other things, it shows us how the struggle against racism is an essential part of the class struggle.
### Civilizations suffocated
Africans have paid a high price for the role they played in the formation of Brazil. Firstly because they arrived in chains and were held by terrible violence; then, because African slaves were a cheap commodity, replacable at far less than the cost of keeping a person alive. This meant labour and living conditions that cut useful life to less than ten years. Finally because slavery suffocated the civilizations and cultures of the African countries, depriving them of their younger and most capable elements and repelling the rest into the most isolated areas in a final attempt at defence against colonialist aggression.
It is naive to imagine that capitalism is synonymous with use solely of "free" wage labour. In fact, capitalism could not prosper without slaves. In Britain children were used as slave labour. the cotton industry served to convert the more of less patriarted States into a commercial system of exploitation. In general the "wage slavery" of Europe's wage workers rested on the foundation of the unadorned slavery in the New World.
Modern slavery, that is, slavery in the service of capital, began not in America but in Europe, in the English textile industry. The first slaves were not Blacks carried off to the Americas but English orphans, the sons and daughters of the poor or street children Then it was white adults - prisoners seized for one reason or another including peasants dispossessed of their lands. But there were too few of them for the needs of capital.
Throughout America efforts were made to use Indians as slaves. Whole tribes were rapidly destroyed. These communities lacked the physical resistance and the capacity for continuous work necessary for work on plantations and in mines. They died like flies from a simple cold * Isaac Akcelrud was a member of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB). He left the party along with others in 1956 after the Khrushchev report and the party's refusal to discuss it. In 1982 he joined the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), and is a contributor to the newspaper of the Socialist Democracy Tendency in the PT, Em Tempo.
October 26, 1992
Some idea of the difference in capacities of an Indian and a Black slave is given by their relative prices; an Indian cost only 20% of the price of a Black. Even in these conditions, natives suffered slavery for 200 years, from 1534 to 1755, when it was abo-
From the start there are instances of mutual support by Blacks and Indians. This is a largely unexplored field of research. Few know that 200 Indians were executed for having refused to fight against the quilombol of Palmares, the main centre of Black resistance at the time. We know today that the decision to abolish Indian slavery was a marketing decision by the "triple alliance" — the state, the Vatican and the slavers — to gain a monopoly on the slave trade - henceforth only involving Blacks. On the profits of this trade the Portuguese crown took 10% commission, the Vatican 5% and slavers the rest.
### Exemplary self-denial
The Africans put up a desperate resistance but they lacked the minimum of material resources to win real emancipation. The abolition of slavery changed but did not end the power of the ruling classes. The slaves in revolt possessed neither the means nor the perspectives that would enable them to imagine any change in social structures. Nonetheless, they fought courageously and with exemplary self-denial, with skill and with admirable initiative.
Throughout America we meet with rare but significant cases of Blacks who succeeded in escaping at the moment of landing, tricking or overcoming the overseers, then triumphing over the hunger and fatigue of their infernal crossing on board the disease ridden slave ships.
They ran away as soon as ships landed to advance into totally unknown and hostile territory. Without clothing and without knowing a single word of the local languages, with no idea of the terrain and without knowing what awaited them.
Astonishingly some survived; however in most cases flight meant death. Such defections were discounted in the commercial calculations of the slave traders at the start of the voyage. Slaves were considered as perishable goods rounded up in herds in Africa; losses of 20% or more were expected. During the crossing, foul water and food were rationed to cut down weight and make space in which to bury alive as many Blacks as possible.
Blacks were measured out in metres and tons. Crammed together in darkness throughout the long voyage they were fodder for the sharks that accompanied the ships. One on top of the other, and each in their own excrement, they arrived at their destination in a state of total despair.
Many authors have drawn the unwarranted conclusion from these facts that the Black slaves were totally demoralized and have overlooked the admittedly rare escape attempts.
Preventing slave rebellion
However, such an assumption cannot explain the organization of resistance that followed and the unending struggle waged by authorities responsible for repression to ensure that, if the slaves could not be totally subjugated, they could at least be prevented from rebelling all at the same time.
Of course, we must recognize the immense vitality of the Black African, from a people living in an ecologically pure state still distant from the poisoning and industrialization of Europe. At the same time we can also see here the incredible reserves of energy that the fight for freedom can release in a human being, even under the worst imaginable conditions.
Already at the moment of sale preventive measures drawing on the experience of the slave traders were taken. Families were broken up, and members of the same nation, tribe or village were separated as were those speaking the same language or sharing the same religious rites.
The defenceless slaves could only offer a pretence of submission and hide resistance behind apparent passivity. Slowly, they reorganized to restore the practice of their cultural and religious traditions under the forms of the religion of the oppressors.
The Church did not waste time in addressing the problem of religious organization, creating fraternities that kept the African nations apart, preventing union between Nagos and Bantus, dividing up the mulattos, the creoles (Blacks born in Brazil) and the Blacks of African origin.2
Seen in retrospect the fraternities served a double purpose for the masters. First they segregated the Blacks into special Churches so that they could not enter those of the whites, second, they aimed to divide the oppressed among themselves so that they would not wage joint struggles. The statutes of one of these fraternities forbade access to "Jews, mulattos and heretics".
Julio José Chiavenato has discovered that Benedictines and Carmelites had "breeding grounds" for slaves. 3 It was lucrative to cross White men and Black women to produce "rare specimens". However crossing Black men with White women was less useful since the child would not legally be a slave. In this process it was felt important to preserve a certain level of "Blackness"; a lighter type might become dangerous.
Not all these slaves were destined for sale. There was an important market in slaves for hire. Sick and disabled slaves were used as beggars by their middle class masters.
The massacre of slaves reached even into
500 YEARS the wombs of Black women destined to serve as wetnurses. Newborn children were killed and abortions carried out so that the womens' milk could feed the offspring of the owning classes.
This formidable vitality and survival capacity was tested once more in the war of aggression against Paraguay unleashed at the behest of British imperialism.
At that time, Paraguay was the only country in this part of the world which did not have a foreign debt. It was thus out of line with the model prescribed by British imperialism. It had to brought under the discipline of dependent capitalism. Another important objective of the war from the point of view of the ruling classes in Pedro Il's Brazil was to create the conditions for a perceptible whitening of the country.
Military, diplomatic and economic pressure for the ending of slavery was being exerted by Britain, which sought markets for its industrial products. Thus the Brazilian ruling classes faced a new challenge; almost half the country's population was Black or very dark. The Creoles spoke Portuguese fluently, and knew the country and its customs well, and many of them had been infected by notions of freedom. In the middle of the last century, "free Black" rhymed with "subversion". these days our ears are assailed with stories of the subversive and irresponsible character of the independent organization of the worMassive slaughter in Paraguay
The danger had to be reduced and the Paraguay war was a golden opportunity. The Blacks were designated "volunteers" and encouraged to accomplish high deeds of heroism. Patriotic slogans paved the road to a massive slaughter. In the above mentioned work, Chiavenato speaks of "a brutal process of aryanization of the [Brazilian] Empire, reducing the share of Blacks in the population from 45% in 1860 to 15% after the war. While the White population grew by 1.7 times the Black population shrank by 60% in the 15 years following the outbreak of the war (1860-1875).
"This was the first time in the history of Brazil that the number of Blacks had fallen not only proportionally but absolutely....in 1800 there were one million Blacks in the country, in 1860 two million, in 1872 hardly 1. This is the name given to the Black forts in the Brazilian forest, which were places of refuge, entrenched camps and rearguard bases for anti-slavery activity in the plantations and in the areas where slaves were concentrated. 2. Nago is the name of an African nation, a member of the Sudanese group of nations in the area of present-day Benin. Bantu refers to the groups of nations living in the area of present-day Angola, Congo and Mozambique primarily. These are the regions from 3. ich moose cave ra, negro em Brasil, Ed. 9 which most Blacks in Brazil were deported. Brasiliense.
International Viewpoint # 237 • October 26, 1992
500 YEARS 1.5 million".
In such conditions survival itself was an achievement. To multiply and increase its numbers and percentage within a hostile population was already an important victory. The Black population was absolutely without the political weight of allies. It was the country's only significant labour force and had no alternative. It had no reference points outside the existing society with which to replace slavery. There were even a few cases where freed slaves bought slaves themselves.
There were two bold and advanced solutions: to capture a ship and return to Africa - several such attempts were made, notably during the Reconcavo Baiano uprising — or build fortifications in the quilombos in the forests of the interior and undertake a permanent defensive guerilla war. It was the latter that became the dominant
This undertaking required that the Blacks organize themselves. This they did within and without the places, in the plantations, in religion] grounds conspiring, inventing a coded language using sounds and survive in the present day batucadas (percussion instruments). Muslim Blacks, known in Brazil as the Malais were usually literate — unlike many whites.
A leadership developed which even organized armed struggle. The rebellion of the Malais in 1835 in Bahia state came within a whisker of military victory. An aspect of the plan was to capture ships to make the cros-
Until recently the practice of Black religions was subjected to ferocious police repression, despite the Brazilian constitution's provisions concerning religious freedom. Given the enormous weight of the Black population - on average a half and in many places a majority of the total — in vast regions candomblé was the majority religion, even compared to Catholicism.
Repression, of course, served the interests of rival white cults. But its main motivation was candomble's political function as a banner and meeting place for Black resistance.
Using the same clandestine organizations and under the guise of Christian religious symbols ("Saint George killing the dragon" instilled confidence and fed the hope of a happy outcome in an unequal struggle) 10 serving their cultural identity. The success Blacks developed an entire system for preof this enterprise could only be patchy. However the literate Muslim masses managed to form a secret government to which they owed absolute obedience. What whites saw as simply folklore - the apparently theatrical representation of kings and sovereigns entering villages — was in fact the language of royal power. There were even cases of contacts with African leaders.
The various forms of organization and mutual aid, with general assemblies and collections under cover of religious meetings, sacred dances, samba schools and so on developed to become associations that pursued demands, mutual credit associations and financial pools for paying for the freeing of Black leaders.
Armed resistance to slavery
Armed struggle was a permanent feature of Black resistance to slavery. The Blacks covered the country with their quilombos, some of whom did not last long but all formed by Blacks fleeing captivity with the help of other slaves and using their freedom to get arms and fight. Secret societies of runaway slaves organized terror against slaveowners, attacking plantations, freeing slaves, taking weapons and killing the plan-
They penetrated into the tropical forest and organized new quilombos which reproduced the structures of the African communities from which they had come.
The most important of them, which stayed as a symbol in this country's revolutionary history was that of Palmares. It lasted for 67 years and had up to 20,000 inhabitants, including slaves on the run, free persons, and deserters from the colonial wars against Holland in north eastern Brazil.
Palmares survived thanks to guerilla war and movements against the Portuguese and Dutch colonialists. Members of the quilombos taken prisoner made first class political agitators. They stirred up the plantation slaves, recruited for the quilombos and organized escaped to Palmares. Artillery was required to overcome the Black fortress. Legend has it that the Zumbi (the title of the commander of Palmares) threw himself off a high rock, preferring death to slavery.
This quilombo survived so long because it achieved a certain level of technical independence but above all because it had support on the surrounding plantations. However, the quilombos were doomed to stay on the defensive and suffer eventual together Black rebels and popular rebellions domination.4 In fact, whites, even in revolt themselves remained in the grip of slave-owning prejudices. From 1812 we see the appearance of the first traitors to the Black resistance, under the banner of the Black Company of Pernambouc. We lack reliable information on groups of this type in other parts of the country. At the opposite pole, abolition of slavery and the proclamation of the republic, the first Workers' League was formed by free Blacks.
Less than 20 years later, the farce of abolition turned the masses of Black slaves on the coffee and sugar plantations into landless agricultural workers. The change in British policy — from being the biggest organizers of and beneficiaries from the slave trade to policing the seas to prevent it — led to the moving of the slave labour force from the north east to the centre south of Brazil, initiating the north east's career as a specially depressed area.
The abolition of slavery without land reform and the massive importation of white European workers was a new catastrophe for the Blacks. But the new working class that was being formed also brought its own ideological baggage. It formed unions and political parties. With this, the heroic Black resistance would find a solid basis and a socialist perspective. * 4. From the end of the 18th century revolts broke out against the rule of the Portuguese monarchy - its interests had come into conflict with those of the rich Brazilian colonists, and even more so with those of the colony's popular segments. The last revolt by these popular layers of the colony - alone and in their own interests — took place in 1798 in Salvador (in the state of Bahia).
Collaboration
Italian unions: