AFRICAN AFFINITIES - The Blacks of Latin AmericaAuthor(s): PATRICK BRYANSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3/4 (September - December 1971), pp. 45-52Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40653486 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 02:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

University of the West Indies and Caribbean Quarterly are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to Caribbean Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

45

AFRICAN AFFINITIES -

The Blacks of Latin America (Synopsis of lecture presented to African Studies Association of the West Indies, March 15, 1971.)

In only two Latin American countries today do Blacks make up a signifi- cant minority of the population - Brazil and Cuba. In these two countries they served the plantation of sugar cane as diligently as they served it in the British Caribbean. Nevertheless, Blacks were imported into Latin America in large numbers throughout the colonial period, during which time there was a thriving slave-trade between the West Coast of Africa and Latin America.

The slave-trade was essential to the sugar-economy of North-east Brazil, from the sixteenth century, and was vital to Cuba's development as a major plantation area in the nineteenth. Nor were imports of slaves confined to Bra- zil and Cuba. Rather European ships of all flags conveyed Blacks to all parts of Latin America - modern-day Venezuela, Colombia, white Argentina, Uru- guay, Peru, Central America. Nor were their efforts confined to plodding on large sugar plantations. An essential task of Blacks was extracting reluctant ore from the mines, whether of Peru, Mexico, or Bolivia. In the plantation aspects of slavery work was related to the establishment of a cacao industry and to cattle ranching. Thus, throughout the colonial period, Blacks solidified the basis of the Latin American colonial economy; the planters and reapers of sugar cane - Brazil and Cuba - the planters and reapers of cacao - Gran Colombia - the miners of Minas Gerais in Brazil and Peru. That the numbers of Blacks in Latin America today do not make up a significant part of the population except in Brazil and Cuba is an indication both of the accelera- tion of the miscegenation process, aod of the fact that the numbers imported were never enough to swamp the white and Indian population.

Most commentators on Black history in Latin America - and in Brazil in particular - emphasise the process of social integration in their various works, and tend to see the Black becoming a part of the total Latin American histori- cal and social experience. This interpretation does not deny the fact that there are areas of Latin America - pockets of resistance if you like - where there are still strong African features in terms of community organization, social customs and manners, including traditional ceremonial celebrations of

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

46

birth, marriage and death, and folklore. But it would be fatal to assume from the existence of these communities a general modern African consciousness which is subject to political exploitation in terms of messianic of "Back to Africa" movements. In the United States, Blacks as a group are a sufficient- ly strong minority to perform the 'slave labour' still required in the United States. The difference in Latin America is that, in general terms, the Blacks if exploited are exploited primarily because of a low social status based more or less upon a low economic status.

The explanation of the low economic and social status of Blacks in say Brazil and Cuba where their numbers are significant, and in some parts of Colombia and Venezuela lies in the Latin American historical experience going back to the colonial period. The attitudes of contemporary writers on Blacks are also related to the Africans' historical role in Latin America generally. Consequently, the remainder of this talk will be divided into three broad sections - firstly, the attitude of the colonial and the independent re- gime to the African mass, secondly, the African reaction to his enslavement, and thirdly, a brief examination of one or two communities where African- isms survive.

Firstly, the African slave was regarded as a third class citizen. Inevitably, slave status imposes such a social position. It is as if all institutions of society conspired to ensure the lowly position of the Blacks. Even the Roman Catholic Church which had been so diligent in protecting the rights of Indians tended to shelve such a responsibility in regard to the African. The reasons are manyt Firstly, the number of priests was never large enough to enable the Church to undertake the defence of the African from exploiting encomenderos and hacendados. Secondly, the power of the hacendados or en- comendero to control his estate and the property on his estate was too great for any moral influence of the Church to dilute or to qualify in the interest of gentler treatment for the enslaved Africans. Thirdly, Churchmen did not necessarily have viewpoints which opposed the institution of slavery. In fact, individual Churchmen certainly upheld the system, regarding slavery as a civilizing influence upon the Africans, upholding the concept that the planter should be regarded by the slave in all seriousness as a sort of God's representa- tive upon earth. "Confession" was to be "the antidote of slave insurrections." Through the confessor, claimed one priest, "the slave learned that his life is as nothing compared with eternity." The hacienda and the plantation, generally speaking, sought to circumscribe the slave's relationship with the world by emphasising the direct connection between the slave and the master. Evident- ly, the physical and spiritual comfort or discomfort of the slave was directly related to the slave master's humanity or lack of it.

With regard to the slave-master's humanity it should be pointed out that in Latin America there was a large mass of manumitted slaves, and that manu-

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

47

mission was often if not always the reward for faithful service to a grateful master. But the freedom thus granted served principally to enforce the freed slave's confrontation with the harsh realities of life for a black man in a society which made no provision for the welfare of a free Black man. Freed from the plantation, and desirous of taking the oppoitunity to better his social position, the ex-slave often donned highly decorative dress, sought status jobs, but encountered serious opposition. In Spanish America, no African or descendant of an African was to be a beadle, ( a positon reserved for Spaniards born in the colonies), no Black could wear arms, (thus read the law) there was to be no "scandalous excess in the clothes worn by Negroes, Indians, Mulattoes and Mestizos." Negroes and mulattoes could not become public notaries (an office, reserved for "suitably clean people"). Negroes and mulattoes were to have no access to higher education. Examples of discrimin- ation can be thus multiplied. At the same time, however, it is at least useful to note that certain individuals, notably mulattoes, were granted limited concessions from time to time to practice prestigious professions such as medicine and law, with the Crown agreeing to overlook slight taints of blcod. But the mass of Blacks and people of African ancestry were not so generously treated. Thus there is a clear distinction between a general body of laws which discriminated against Blacks and some occasional decrees which made exceptions to the general body of laws to further the interests of an isolated few. Generally, the Black was regarded as lazy and idle, perverse and ugly, inferior (to the white) and rebellious. The law to keep Blacks out of Indian villages was to be enforced rigorously, so that evil Black habits did not slain the tabula rasa of Indian innocence. Finally, it should be noted, at least in passing, that discriminatory laws against the Black were in part the conse- quence of slave insurrection and resistance.

Before examining the reaction of the slave and the freedman to Latin American colonial society, a brief look will be taken at the attitudes of the independent Republics of Latin America towards their black popula- tion. Firstly, the liberal strains of thought in Latin America looked upon slavery as a denial of a basic 'human right' to freedom. Such a view was entirely in consonance with a society which sought to release itself from the clutches of metropolitan Spain or Portugal. Secondly, it was agreed, at least among the more enlightened, that the African had been making more than his fair contribution to Latin American society. In a society, too, in which physi- cal valour has always been admired, the African and his descendants proved outstanding. Indeed, his military talents were used to the full in the Spanish- American wars of independence, and against Paraguay in the Brazilian war against that country between 1865 and 1870. The Black had been a Con- quistador along with Hernan Cortes and with Bilbao in the sixteenth century. One Black conquistador had ended his days as a feudal lord in Chile. The Argentine army of Jose de San Martin was nearly 40% Black. In Venezuela and Colombia, he was equally crucial, and as the wars meandered along

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

48

their bloody course, Blacks and Mulattoes started to occupy the top ranks of the military. One notable figure in this respect is Jose Padilla of Gran Colombia who had served as a seaman in the Spanish navy and rose to be Colombian Admiral. It was conveived that in the interests of conceived justice, humanity and economics that the Black deserved his freedom. Furthermore, was not wage labour superior to slave labour? Finally, in a country such as Brazil the cynics argued that the continuation of the slave trade would contri- bute to the growing Africanization of Brazil, and surely for Brazil to progress that country's 'cultural' landscape should no longer be permitted to bear the heavy black and primitive footprint of the African.

Indeed, attitudes towards the Blacks in the independent Republics of La- tin America were inseparable from concepts of identity. It was generally agreed (except by the Blacks themselves) that identity should be with Europe. Spanish America, according to some positivist thinkers, notably Bunge of Argentina, had been cursed with a 'fatalistic' Indian population, a 'lazy' African mass, an arrogant Spanish population, thereby making the hallmark of the Hispanic American population one of laziness, arrogance and fatalism.2 The population must be 'improved,' and one way of rectifying the situation was to import a 'superior' population from Europe. As far as the Brazilian

positivist, Luis Pereira Barreto was concerned, "it was a scientific fact that the Aryans were superior to the Negroes as evidenced by greater intelligence and progress in human evolution toward civilization. The Negroes were a horde of semi-barbarous men without direction, without a social goal, without savings."

The heavy inflow of immigrants, particularly from Italy, served to accel- erate the physical disappearance of the African element. However, the number of Blacks in Latin America is large numerically, (if compared with the Commonwealth Caribbean) though generally Blacks do not count for a heavy population percentage. Independent Latin America, did not have a body of laws restricting the social mobility of Negroes. If the Negro failed to progress, it was because he was born with the handicap of a lowly socio-economic position; and lowly socio-economic positions can become self-perpetuating in the absence of specific efforts, welfare or educational on the part of the state, or in the absence of spectacular individual performances. And it is

precisely when we recognize that the state abjured its responsibility in this

regard that it becomes understood that where people of African descent have made a major contribution - whether in literature, the arts, or in the mili- tary - that the achievement has been made against all odds, and that such achievement is based on individual merit and not on a system which favours the advancement of the lower echelons of Latin American society. Indeed, it can be argued that freedom for the African meant that he had to compete on an "equal" footing with the rest of the population, even though he was not born with the social tools to hack his way through a dense

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

49 jungle of prejudice and tradition which tended to see him as properly belong- ing to the bottom of society; and even though he was born without the financial resources to compete in a system which especially during the nine- teenth century was dominated by laissez-faire concepts. The designation of Robert Toplin "from slavery to fettered freedom" is certainly not in- accurate.

We find then that firstly, under the colonial regime, the mass of Africans were treated as third class citizens (peninsular born Spaniards first, criollos second, the castes including Negroes, Indians, zambos, meztizos third), though some individuals were granted personal privileges. Secondly, inde- pendence in the nineteenth century did not bring about any serious altera- tion in the status of the Blacks, but the number of Blacks decreased under the demographic pressure of European migration. Thirdly, independence in Latin America stimulated the search for an identity which was to be primarily European.

We now turn to the African reaction to his enslavement. The African had two basic choices-to resist or to accomodate. Some followed one path, the others the second. But resistance no more meant the survival of pure Afri- can tribal customs any more than accomodation meant their disappearance. Resistance involved flight, rebellion, murder, suicide, deliberate wastefulness, and destruction of property. There is no need here to catalogue the various slave rebellions, though it should be pointed out that slave rebellions helped to impress upon Latin American criollos the urgency of emancipation. Apart from rebellion, the most spectacular form of slave resistance was flight. Re- bellion and flight, in whatever area of Latin America that they took place were related to cultural contact with the Indians and between various African tribes. Whether the centre of flight were referred to as a Quilombo, a Cumbe or a Mambise, the principal was the same. Blacks fleeing from the planta- tions established themselves in relatively inaccessible places, but in areas where they could grow their own livestock, cultivate their beans or food- crops, living in isolation, as far as possible from the regular centres of econo- mic activity. Sometimes, too, Blacks from the Quilombos raided plantations especially to obtain more recruits.

Runaway settlements could last for several years before being discovered and destroyed. The most well-known quilombo - that of Palmares in North- eastern Brazil - resisted conquest by both Dutch and Portuguese for over fifty years. In Venezuela it was not unknown for runaway settlements to bar- gain and come to some agreement with the King of Spain through his Vice- roy. One principal runaway centre was at Nirgua which was variously de- scribed as the Republic of Zambos, and an African monarchy. The Spanish king, accepting the failure of military conquest, granted the "Republic-Mon- archy" freedom from taxation in perpetuity. It is significant to note that

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

50 freed slaves, mulattoes and Indians joined runaway slaves in Cumbes, and that Cumbes were often the direct result of the king's determination to impose taxes. That is, states Acosta Saignes, "they (the Cumbes) constituted genuine combat groups for the liberty of Africans and their descendants, whom they liberated, carrying them away to the Cumbes." In 1686, in Colombia, it was noted that some Negroes had for over sixty years fled the plantations, and that their total number was about 3,000. At the end of this time they actual- ly sued for peace on condition that they be granted their freedom. 4

But the runaway settlement was important not only from the point of view that it served as a hope for the unliberated mass of black slaves or for others - non-blacks - who wished to resist the system for whatever motive. The runaway settlement was also important as a seat of syncretismn, and im- portant from the point of view that it served to perpetuate or postpone the disappearance of African tribal features. The Quilombo of Palmares, for ex- ample, was, in effect, a small state organized on a military basis and inspired in African traditions. Palmares had its first "maximum-chief in Ganga-Zumba who, because he came to an agreement with the Portuguese authorities in 1678, was assassinated by his rival, Zumbi. Such was the reputation of the new leader that he was regarded as immortal by his followers and by the slaves. Zumbi had donned the mantle of Messiah for his people. When Zumbi was finally captured in 1695, the Portuguese Government in Brazil, in proof of Zumbi's mortality, ordered his head to be displayed in public. In Palmares religion was part Catholic and part 'magical' and African collective dances were a regular feature of Palmares life. Obeisance was paid to the King in the respectful African tradition. Before Ganga-Zumba, the warriors knelt, their heads bowed. Polygamy was practised, and witchcraft banned.

Finally it should be noted that runaway settlements were not always com- pletely isolated from the rest of the community, for certainly in Venezuela, some settlements were important distribution centres in the contraband busi- ness, thereby making it necessary for the king to proclaim penalties for all those who sheltered the cimarrones. The quilombo was both expressive and symbolic of the tendency for cultures to meet, fuse and be shared.

Resistance of Blacks to the system did not end with the achievement of Latin American independence. In mid-nineteenth century Argentina, for example, there was some Black militancy when Negro freedmen put up a fight against 'racial inequality' through their mouthpieces La Raza Africana o sea el Democrata Negro and El Proletário. Protests of this nature were di- rected against the restriction of mobility in Buenos Aires society on the grounds of race. In nineteenth century Colombia Colonel Remigio Marquez (himself of Negro descent) was accused of seeking to provoke race warfare by appealing to the pardo or mulatto class of the Magdalena Valley. Race tension also had a lot to do with several outbreaks of violence in the Venezuelan

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

51 llanos. It was even feared that Spanish and Haitain agents would create a

general state of race warfare "if some measures were not promptly taken. . . The Administration proposed strengthening the white minority by giving still more encouragement to immigration. . .(The) other solution was to draft slaves to the battlefronts."5 The Santander regime, however, fought against such practices on the grounds that discriminatory practices were incompatible with Republican principles. African-type settlements also survived well into the nineteenth century in a country such as Argentina - where there were tambos - which is now a 'white' South American nation today and even to-

day in mestizo Mexico there are one or two isolated black communities.

Brazil is the country which is probably richest in the African 'cultural' tradition. Apart from enriching Brazilian folk-lore and music, the Brazilian Blacks through their refusal to accept Christian-Roman Catholic practices in their entirety have created dynamic cults which are technically neither African or Catholic. The mixture of African and Catholic features must be

partly explained by the formation of Brotherhoods (Irmandades) which were

nominally related to the Church as a means of communicating the Christian doctrine to the African. But since the Brotherhoods were organized along tri- bal lines they served to perpetuate certain tribal religious customs which be- came diluted with Catholic practice. Black saints - or such as were con- sidered Black saints - Ifigenia, Elesbao, Antonio de Catalagirona, etc. had altars in the Churches and Chapels. Furthermore, towards the end of the co- lonial period, the brotherhoods becoming less exclusive opened their doors to influences from other tribes, and by proceeding to allow into their temples mulattoes and freed Negroes (even whites for the sake of prestige) popu- larized their syncretic religion. The fact that African culture tended to base its survival around religious cults and that these cults are still in existence - for example, Candomblé in Brazil - suggests that a considerable part of the African tradition has survived. It is true that Catholic influences in these cults are increasing rather than decreasing but this does not mean that the "cultural baggage" (as Edmundo Carneiro calls it) has been exhausted, in Brazil.6

The existence of fetishistic cults in Cuba - lucumi - is a fact well-attested to. In other areas of Latin America - even where there are African communi- ties - there has been a growing secularization; and - to take an example from the West Coast of Colombia and Ecuador - music and dance while main- taining a community significance has tended to become more and more hispanicised. On the other hand, customs relating to burial, nine-night-wakes continue in this region, and in the remote community of Cuijla in Mexico The use of the drum continues to be very important in these areas, as is the use of music at funerals. As one dying member of the Cuijlan community put it, "prayer without music is scarcely a prayer."^

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

52 The general views of most writers on the subject of Blacks in Latin

America is that the customs of Africa are being steadily diluted - even in Brazil, and it is difficult indeed to say that the facts indicate otherwise. The

presence of Africa will continue for a long time in Brazil and without a

doubt, but what with the Brazilian Government since the nineteenth century discouraging the entry of more Negroes, whether from Africa or the United States, and the flood of immigrants from Italy, Germany and

Japan, and what with the increasing influence which Roman Catholicism exercises upon fetishistic cults, it would appear that the process of history has been irrevocably set upon a course of integration rather than separation. In areas from Brazil the Black has dwindled in absolute numbers, and his "culture" even more diluted. Nevertheless, the work of individuals such as the mulatto Antonio Francisco Lisboa (O Aleijadinho - the Cripple), sculptor and architect, the greatest artist of colonial Brazil; the black slave Sebastae, who did excellent painting on the ceilings of several churches in Rio; the free black Mestre Valentin (1750-1813) well-known for his sculpture and architecture, will remain phsyical monuments to Blacks in a slave society, even if sometime in the future Black history in Latin America as Black history will have run its course.

PATRICK BRYAN

REFERENCES

1. Richard Konetzke, "Coleccion de Documentos para la historia de la forma- ción social de Hispano América, 1493-1810'% Madrid, 1953.

2. W. Rex Crawford, A Century of Latin American Thought, Praeger, New York, 1961, p. 105.

3. Robert Toplin, "From Slavery to Fettered Freedom", Luso- Brazilian Review, Summer 1970, Vol. VII, No. 1.

4. Acosta Saignes, Vida de los Esclavos Negros en Venezuela, Caracas, 1967, p. 264, For Quilombos of Brazil, see Edison Carneiro. Guerras de los Palmares, Mexico, 1946.

5. David Bushneil, The Santander Regime in Gran Colombia, Delaware Press, 1954, pp. 172-173.

6. Edison Carneiro, Ladinos e Crioulos, estudos sobre o negro no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, 1964.

7. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, Cuijla, esbozo etnográfico de un. pueblo negro. Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1958.

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.46 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:37:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions