African culture in Rio Grande do Sul

The presence of black slaves is attested in the state since the beginning of the 18th century when the territory began to be conquered from Spain, which was the original owner of these lands by the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Between 1725 and 1727, a group led by the Portuguese João de Magalhães, mostly composed of slaves, was assigned to protect the Lagoa dos Patos, to establish a registry to collect taxes on cattle going to Laguna and to make alliances with the Indians.

[1][2] In 1727, sergeant-major Francisco de Souza Faria opened with the help of slaves a road through the Serra do Nordeste to facilitate the passage of cattle from the south to the markets in the center of the country.

[4] According to Gitibá Faustino, "the gold exploration in Minas Gerais, in the 18th century, had fundamental importance in the development of the gaucho[note 1] charqueadas, which became the supplying source of meat for the auriferous region.

[9] This labor force was responsible for much of the state's economic emancipation process, mainly due to its massive presence in the charqueadas, which until the late 19th century were the largest source of foreign exchange.

Research by Paulo Roberto Moreira showed that in the 19th century more than ten thousand manumissions were granted in Porto Alegre, and about 37% of them were paid by the slaves themselves, but only 19.23% were free, meaning they did not impose any conditional bond or obligation.

Of note is the case of Inácio José Filgueira, a mulatto who bought his manumission and was able to occupy for many years, in the early 19th century, the position of kapellmeister of the Old Mother Church of Porto Alegre, but, typically, not without facing constant opposition.

[14] Studying the case of Pelotas, but reflecting a general reality, Beatriz Loner stated:[15] There was practically no manual profession that did not have representatives of this ethnic group in its performance, both in the imperial period and in the Republic.

[12] They also contributed with games, legends, cuisine, and sayings, such as "The axe forgets; the tree remembers," and "The horse that arrives early drinks the good water.

[11] According to José Antônio dos Santos,[18] "The process of industrialization and urbanization that was instated, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, demanded from the whole of Brazilian society new forms of social and political organization.

"Theories of racial improvement and searches for rational explanations for racism, such as those advocated by Nina Rodrigues and Oliveira Vianna, which achieved considerable repercussion at the time, discouraged mestizaje or preached the cultural, intellectual and genetic inferiority of the Black.

During the Getúlio Vargas government, the nationalist campaign of compulsory "sociocultural cysts" to homogenize society, erasing ethnic-cultural differences, aggravated the situation.

[25][26] In the words of Patrícia da Silva Pereira:[24] "The entire social sphere of this early 20th century was going through the problem of the proliferation of eugenicist studies, scientific racism, and the progressive expansion of the ideas of whitening in Brazil, where rulers and the population of the wealthier classes publicized the need to expand the coming of white European immigrants, who would 'whiten' the Brazilian population, having a hope that, even by miscegenating with blacks and Indians, they could 'save' the future of an entire nation, with purer genes and more likely to be socially successful.

In Porto Alegre, in the 1950s, entire black communities, such as those of Cabo Rocha, Ilhota, Colônia Africana, and Areal da Baronesa, were removed from the center and sent to peripheral areas, forming neighborhoods such as Restinga and Vila Jardim.

[27] The speech of the province president on the eve of the abolition of slavery in Porto Alegre, in 1884, which established a form of freedom conditioned to additional compulsory labor for a number of years, stating that "the freedmen will prefer in their great majority to follow their former benefactors because in Rio Grande do Sul slavery was always a family institution, the slave participating in all the advantages of the masters, to whom they must be tied today by the bonds of gratitude and whose intelligence and experience they cannot do without.

[4] Recent studies have proved that these claims are myths and do not correspond to the facts, and have documented the inhumane treatment to which most slaves were subjected as well as the large contribution of blacks to the culture.

[8][29] In the words of ethnologist Ruben Oliven, "if the construction of this identity tends to exalt the figure of the gaucho to the detriment of the descendants of German and Italian settlers, it does so in an even more exclusionary way concerning the black and Indian.

"[8] The movement for the rescue and valorization of African-Gaúcha culture was recorded throughout the 20th century,[30][31] starting with a series of periodicals founded and run by blacks, dedicated to defending their banners, especially in the fields of discrimination, identity, collective organization, education, and professional training, such as O Tagarela (Rio Grande), A Alvorada (Pelotas), and O Exemplo (Porto Alegre).

[32] According to José Antônio dos Santos:[18] "Although the gregarious character is part of an African ethos, today celebrated as 'africanities,' we still have the marked influence of Catholicism in African-Brazilian culture, which also encouraged social organization and racial-ethnic solidarity.

The black brotherhoods and the workers' mutual societies provided assistance in the event of illnesses, financial help in material difficulties, and in the funeral ceremonies of their members.

"Many blacks were beginning to gain space and respectability in teaching, union organizing, and other areas,[9][30] such as Dario de Bittencourt, lecturer and professor of law at UFRGS and director of the newspaper O Exemplo,[30] Paulino Azurenha, considered by many authors the best literary chronicler of the state in the early 20th century and an important figure in journalism,[32] and José Cândido de Campos Júnior, lawyer, district attorney, intendant of Caxias do Sul, and grand-master of the Masonic lodge Força e Fraternidade.

Although this production has helped overthrow historiographical myths of great influence in the past,[4] prejudices at various levels are still strong and[30][40] the state has an expressive number of reports of racism.

[31] Also emerging was the Espaço Afro-sul Odomodê, a music and dance group with an important trajectory, interested in the dissemination and valorization of Afro-Brazilian culture and its origins, as well as developing social work with young people in street situations.

[48] These communities constitute centers of resistance against oblivion, as well as having developed cultural expressions of unique characteristics,[41][49] giving visibility, as Paulo Sérgio da Silva stated, to "a little-known face in the treatment of social issues in Rio Grande do Sul.

[55] Vera Lopes, Jessé Oliveira, Lilian Rocha, Jorge Moacir da Silva, Glau Barros, Pâmela Amaro, Josiane Acosta, Sirmar Antunes, Zilah Machado, Sidnei Borges, Djâmen Farias, Jorge Onifadê, Lupicínio Rodrigues, Horacina Correa, Vladimir Rodrigues, Celina Alcântara, Renato Borba, Nina Fola, Giba Giba, the group Instituto Brasilidades, Oliveira Silveira, the group Maracatu Truvão, the group Caixa Preta, Álvaro RosaCosta, among others, were or are references in poetry, literature, music, and theater in the state, many of them recognized on a larger scale through various awards.

In Porto Alegre this process became emblematic, and still according to Germano,[8] "The festivities organized in these spaces by blocos, cordões, and black carnival societies have a special meaning for carnivalgoers to this day, as they are associated with a history of resistance, maintenance, and creation of ethnic boundaries by African descendants in the past, and are continuously evoked in the present.

"[57] Luiza Helena de Bairros, a native of Porto Alegre, was chief minister of the Special Secretariat for Policies to Promote Racial Equality between 2011 and 2014.

[...] If, in most of the country, national identity was built on the notion of mestizaje (mixed-race), in Rio Grande do Sul it cultivated an ideal of Europeanity that excluded the black population.

"[29] The black contribution to the state is of significance on a range of areas: Economy, the press, arts, spirituality, social movements, folklore, education, feminism, politics, and society; renewing and enriching the regional collective culture and identity and influencing the national reality.

In the words of Paulo Romeu, a member of the African community interviewed by researcher Patrícia da Silva Pereira, the term "is being used more, in the popular sense.