of the 100th Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery in
Brazil.
Ntongela
Masilela
Undoubtedly
the Brazilian proclamation of May 13th, 1888 ending official slavery in that
country has had tremendous historical resonances that still reverberate within
the present political context. Perhaps that act represented the first official
political independence of black people anywhere in the world. That event of a
hundred years ago was to be followed eighty years later, by the events of1960,
when practically half of the African countries gained their political
independence from the yoke of European imperial domination. When a hundred
years later today, we examine the importance of this proclamation, we have to
seriously ask ourselves what political and cultural lessons can be drawn from
it. In other words, can what happened to black Brazilians tell us as to what is
happening to us Africans on the continent today. We only have to look at a
particular institution in Brazil in order to see what a great tragedy has
befallen our black brothers in that country. The West Berlin newspaper, Taz,
of March 13th has reported that of approximately 596 members of the present
Parliament in Brazil only 9 are African-Brazilians in a country that nearly
half of its population consists of black Brazilians. This by any stretch of the
imagination is an outrageous statistic, that definitely situates Brazil among
the most racially minded countries in the world, however much Brazilian
official pronouncements tell us the lie that Brazil is a racially harmonious
society characterized by the absence of any kind of racial prejudice or racial
discrimination.
Unfortnately
this political dishonesty on the part of the Brazilian government has been
supported by the intellectual evasiveness of certain Brazilian intellectuals
and scholars, including the late great Brazilian scholar, Gilberto Freyre, who
died in March 1987 at the age of 86. There can be no doubt that our
understanding of Brazilian culture today and the particular patterns of its
historical formation have been determined by the great scholarly works of
Freyre, who was very reactionary politically. For instance, he never seriously
opposed the military dictatorship that overthrew the democratically elected
government of Goulert in 1964 and that misruled and misgoverned the country for
approximately twenty years. It is impossible to evade the cultural,
sociological and anthropological works of Gilberto Freyre, for they represent
the most powerful and extraordinary attempt to forge a historical synthesis of
Brazilian culture, giving profound importance of the African-Brazilian culture
within it.
The
political and colour configuration of Brazilian Parliament clearly indicates
that the approximately 76 million African-Brazilians are being subjected to
political and economic oppression so evident on the African continent today,
namely, neo-colonialism. If in Africa neo-colonialism is largely imposed by
external forces in the form of European late capitalist countries with the
acquiescence of our bankrupt ruling classes, in the instance of Brazil, it is
internally imposed with the assistance of American capitalism. Clearly then,
the refusal of black Brazilians to celebrate today, this May 13th, 1988, the
hundreth anniversary of the official proclamation, is clearly determined by
their profound political and cultural consciousness that the proclamation was
the opening of the door to their neo-colonial subjection and oppression.
This
political awareness has informed the historical consciousness and cultural
imagination of African-Brazilians that the official Proclamation of 1888 was
merely a shifting of their misery from plantation slavery to the destitution of
the favelas. In other words, the economic exploitation of our black brothers
and sisters in Brazil continues as before, although the political
superstructure might have altered slightly, the determining economic
substructure has not changed in any fundamental way at all. The historical
lesson taught us Africans in Africa, in the African Diaspora, and also to the
African-Europeans, by the refusal of the African-Brazilians to celebrate the
hundredth anniversary of1888, is that both the Proclamation Act of 1888 and the
political independence of many African countries in 1960 were actually
camaflouged proclamations of neo-colonialism. In America, the destruction of
the Reconstruction achievements of the 1870s and 1880s, could be interpreted as
having resulted in the internal neo-colonization of black Americans. It is
partly because of the triangular structure of these acts of oppression that
necessitates the historical unity of black struggles all over the world. These
three events (the incomplete project of emancipating African-Brazilians in
1888, the roll back of the historical project of emancipating African-Americans
in the Reconstruction era of the 1870s, and the neo-colonization of African
people on the continent in the 1960s) were interconnected official histories
imposed on African peoples in order to sujugate them even further; they were
not historical acts determined by the will of the people.
Strangely
enough and naturally so, it is the presence of a peoples' history among the
black Brazilians which long predates the Proclamation of 1888, that made it
possible for the African-Brazilians to expose the sham of the emancipation act.
One fact about the Proclamation of 1888, among several others, is that its
proclamation is long predated by the emancipation of the slaves through their
collective actions and struggles. The action of 1888 in its consequences, did
not profoundly affect the life and history of African-Brazilians, but had pronounced
consequences on the economic history of Brazil, for it opened the official
industrialization of the country. It is for this reason that the history of
Brazil from 1888 to 1922 is known as the emergence of a New Brazil. The
cultural importance of 1922 lies in the fact that it announces the arrival of
Modernism in Brazilian cultural history, that was to have incontestable
consequences on African-Brazilian history, as will be apparent in a moment.
The
peoples' history of the African-Brazilians to which we are referring is that
founded by the independent black Republics of the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-centuries in the forest areas of Brazil. THey were established by
former black slaves who had successfully revolted against their former masters.
These independent black Republics established viable economic, political,
cultural and social structures. They were known as the Republics of the
Palmares. The Palmares were undoubtedly among the first freedom fighters in
modern black history. Enormous scholarly research, on the historical and
cultural plane, is presently being undertaken by African-Brazilian and
African-American scholars to reconstruct and reconstitute the historical nature
of these black Republics. Among the many fascinating questions confronting
black scholars is the nature of the cultural patterns and political systems
established by these Brazilian 'Black Jacobins', before the emergence of the
Haitian Black Jacobins rediscovered by the brilliant historical work of C.L.R.
James, the great black historian from Trinidad. Were the political systems
founded by Brazilian Palmares comparable or even a replication of the systems
they had known in Africa! Were they a replication of the political forms
present in the Songhay civilization or other African civilizations preceding
them! What were their intellectual and cultural achievements! And the ultimate
question, why did these black Republics eventually collapse under the pressure
of colonial Brazil! Related to this, what historical lessons do they secretly
hold, across archaeological ages, for our contemporary political struggles.
These are some of the questions bein unveiled by a collection of black scholars
opening this domain of African history.
Unquestinably,
it is the historical survival in the memories of present-day African-Brazilians
of these black independent Republics of the Palmares that renews their cultural
memory to proclaim today, May 13th, 1988 as the remembrance day of the last of
the Palmares kings, Mumbi, rather than a celebration of the vacuous
proclamation which did not immeasurably end the misery of black Brazilians. The
cultural lesson for us black people in Europe, Africa, America and Austrelasia
is that we should rediscover our heroes and heroines who characterize the essential
moments of our peoples' history in order to place them against the hegemony of
official historiography. THis Brazilian lesson for my country, South Africa, is
of inestimable importance. Whole wide sections of black South African
historiography (of blacks, Indians, and the so-called Coloureds) have been
falsified by official historiography.
Gilberto
Freyre has given a historical synthesis of Brazilian culture, especially of
black Brazilians, within the patterns of Brazilian official historiography. It
is not accidental that Freyre's synthesis has recently been subjected to sever
criticism over its historical accuracy and social logic, however much its
fertile brilliance has been accepted. For our limited purposes Freyre is
valuable in so far as indicating the complex structure of Brazilian culture.
For Freyre, as is formulated in his magisterial work, The Masters and the Slaves,
Brazilian culture has developed from a feudal structure of the sugar-plantation
economy, symbolised by the interrelationship between the Big House of the white
slave owners (Portuguese) and the Slave Quarters (Africans). It is the
progression of this relationship, in different forms, mutations and modes, that
has given rise to the synthetic structure of Brazilian culture. Under what
Gilberto Freyre calls a 'synthetic principle', the form of Brazilian culture is
a product of the 'miscegenation and the interpenetration' of three cultures,
African culture, Amerindian culture and European culture. From this process of
synthesis, Freyre argues that Brazilian culture has been undergoing a
'democratization' process, especially in relation to 'interhuman relationships,
of interpersonal relationships, of relations between groups and between
regions." (See the violently dissenting view on the interpretation this
historical and cultural process in Abdias do Nascimento's Brazil Mixture or Massacre?: Essays in the Genocide of a Black People). Freyre even argues
that social opportunities have been opening to former black slaves, colored
races races and he mentions also heretics in the same context. This postulation
formulated by Freyre is totally contradicted by the present day historical
experience of African Brazilians, who are relegated to the lowest positions in
the social structure of Brazil.
In
a real sense, the vitality of African-Brazilian culture in our century is partly
due to the inspiration it draws from the historical memory of the independent
black Republics of the Palmares and from the synthetic systems of African
philosophical processes and cultural networks.
Probably
one of the most important figures in the cultural history of African-Brazilians
is the nineteenth-century poet, Castro Alves. (The matter of the very great
black poetic genius of the late nineteenth-century, Joao de Cruz e Sousa, is a
complicated historical and cultural problem which is beyond the scope of this
short presentation). Alves died at a very young age of twenty-four. He wrote
poetry of extraordinary power against the enslavement of his black compatriots.
The years 1860-71 in Brazilian cultural history are characterized by the
activities of Alves. He is the one who was to establish the tradition, which
was to continue in the twentieth-century, of interfusing poetic lyricism and
social consciencism. Alves established a tradition that was to continue with
Jorge de Lima. Alves other importance lies also in the fact that he established
the tradition where in literary matters, African-Brazilians found themselves
represented in the literary works of their compatriots rather than their
representing themselves. This again indicates the absence of a serious attempt
to integrate the black Brazilians into the collective historical imagination of
the Brazilian people. It is one thing to be represented because one is
marginalized, politically, culturally, socially and economically, and it is
another matter if one is acceptable as the central component of that collective
experience. Unfortunately, within the Brazilian context in relation to the
black Brazilians, it is the former process which is in effect rather than the
latter. The African-Brazilians are marginalized to the point od excelling well
in music and sport, and problematically in literature and in the sciences.
Despite this complicated historical problem, the African-Brazilians have found
memorable representation in literature and in film. The Brazilian Cinema Novo
of Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos and others has given us brilliant
images of black Brazilians. From Glauber Rocha's Black God, White Devil to Nelson Pereira dos Santos's A Tent of Miracles (the latter an adaptation of Jorge Amado's novel of the
same name), the potrayal of African-Brazilians in the cinema has been very
impressive in its cultural richness and political complexity. But, this sketch
will confine itself to literary matters.
The
arrival of Modernism in Brazil in 1922 through the literary works of Mario de
Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Manuel Baindera, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and
others, and the discovery of literary Regionalism in Recife in 1925 by Jorge
Amado, Gilberto Freyre, Jose Lins do Rego and others, have effected a literary
transformation in the portrayal of black Brazilians. The former movement was
dominated by poets, whereas the latter literary school was given direction by
novelists. Both movements sought to find and locate the central point of
Brazilian culture. In their search, they encountered the prodigiousness of
black Brazilian culture. Hence, their searing portrayal of it in some of their
literary works. Probably one of the most fascinating features about Modernism
in Latin America, especially in Cuba and Brazil, was the attempt, which in many
instances succeeded, by the white writers in these two countries to give black
voicings and black symbolization a dominant place and position in their
literary works. In other words, these Latin American white writers wrote some
of their literary as if they had been written by African-Brazilians or
African-Cubans representing themselves, rather than merely giving black
representation to some of their characters.
Whether
these writers in actual fact succeeded in doing this is one of the presently
raging disputes in the critical debates about Latin American literary culture
of the 1920s and the 1930s. The Cuban writer, Alejo Carpentier, wrote his first
novel in 1933, Ecue-Yamba-O, in this
literaty mode. This novel is about a young black man, who after killing another
man, moves to Havana to join a particular religious cult. This novel, in many
ways, is a documentation of the horrible conditions under which the
African-Cubans lived, particularly in the country side. But perhaps its
singular aim was to present the African cultural customs present then in Cuba,
the customs which determine the structure of the novel. The novel also consists
of several photographs of the customs of the several African cults. Carpentier
was to abandon this mode of writing, but not his deep concern for black people
in Latin America, for later on in his life he wrote two great literary
masterpieces in the realist mode, a novel and a novella about the Haitian
Revolution of 179101804 against Napoleon's France: An Explosion in the Cathedral
and The Kingdom of this World. With
his first novel, Carpentier participated with Nicolas Guillen, today Cuba's
National Poet, in Cuba's Negroismo movement of the 1930s.
In
Brazil the same pattern repeats itself, for Mario de Andrade, the literary pope
of Brazilian Modernism, wrote in 1928 a novel called, Macunaima, which attempted to give black voicings within its
literary structures. The novel is a satire on a humorous black King who rules
in the Amazon jungle. It is a very funny literary work. A film of the same
name, adopted from the novel in 1969 by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade is being shown
here in West Berlin this week, at the Xenon cinema house in Charlottenburg, as
part of the so-called one hundredth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in
Brazil. For sure, the film is being shown this week with the intent of showing
how funny African-Brazilians are and how contented they are with their
political situation, rather than as a distanced social critique of the horrible
situation in which black Brazilians have been pushed.
Also
within the context of Brazilian literary Regionalism, novels have been written
in which black voicings or their blues have found literary representation. The
instance of Jorge Amado is well known all over the world for it to need a
rehearsing in this short sketch. But it needs emphasizing that Amado was not an
isolated example; there were other Brazilian writers who wrote within the
historical experience of this cultural logic. One prominent example, which
should suffice for our purposes here, is Jose Lins de Rego. His novel of 1935,
O Moleque Ricardo, is about a young black Brazilian man from a plantation who
is caught up in the urban whirlstorm of the strike movement. The very structural
movement of the novel indicates very clearly that Lins de Rego attempted a
fusion or synthesis of proletarian culture and African-Brazilian culture.
This essay was presented at a Solidarity Meeting organized by Umoja Center (an African Students' Cultural Organization of West Berlin, of which this author was a member) on May 13th, 1988 at the Technical University of West Berlin.