Atlantic Bridge, Atlantic Divide: Africans and Afro-Brazilians in Portuguese America
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Date
2007
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Publisher
Center for Africana Studies
Abstract
This essay focuses on an aspect of persons of African birth and descent in colonial Brazil
to which not sufficient attention has been paid by scholars. To the many factors--
ethnicity, language, belief systems slavery, manumission and the circumstance of having
been born free,slave or manumitted, and belief systems, and behaviors, which led to
differentiations among persons of African birth or descent in the colony—place of birth
played a crucial role in distinguishing Africans from Afro-Brazilians. This essay will
briefly review relations between African- born and Brazilian- born of African descent and
then focus exclusively on the presence in Brazil of persons born in Africa. I posit the
hypothesis that some continued to live in accordance with African principles and
practices and consciously and intentionally resisted assimilation into Luso-African-
Brazilian or even Afro-Brazilian communities.
Description
Keywords
Atlantic Bridge, Atlantic Divide, Africans, Afro-Brazilians, Portuguese America