Class Notes 2/8

Announcements

The College of Wooster’s Stieglitz Memorial Lecture is on Monday (2/12) at 7:30pm in Lean Lecture. The title of the lecture this year is called “White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meaning of Race” by Matthew Hughey, a professor from the University of Connecticut.

A blog post is due on Friday (2/16) proposing a potential article that you can edit for the Wikipedia Article assignment, so it would be beneficial to start thinking about what topic interests you sooner rather than later.

Culture Blog Post

Woo did his culture blog post on an article in the Smithsonian about Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art that is mixed with dance elements. Woo specifically talked about how the Capoeira has transformed over the years. In the 16th century, Capoeira was only done among enslaved Africans in Brazil to practice defensive attacks so that they could resist European oppression. By late 19th century, the freed slave population moved to urban areas and continued to practice Capoeira for defensive purposes. However, in the 20th century, Capoeira was promoted more as an art form and elites began to support it as well, which allowed it to become the official national sport in 1972. Woo also looked at the portrayal of Capoeira in a video game called Tekken to see how Capoeira plays a role in national identity. Overall, Woo tied this article with the class theme of Brazilian diversity and how Brazilians seek to maintain a culture of their own.

The Day’s Activities

Exploring Primary Sources

After the culture presentation, the class focused on the topic of abolition in Brazil. The specific questions the class took into consideration included: If African slavery was so important in Brazil, how do we explain its abolition? What kinds of sources exist for analyzing slavery and abolition and how do our choices shape the argument we make about the past? In order to tackle the first question, we turned to some primary sources we had for homework from the Brazilian Reader and additional primary sources from Professor Holt. One primary source that we talked about in class was Nabuco’s passage called “Slavery & Society”. Nabuco came from an elite sugar plantation family and was the son of a politician who hated slavery. Thus, Nabuco himself became a famous abolitionist during the 19th century in Brazil. In this passage, Nabuco makes the moral argument against slavery. He claims that slavery has a detrimental effect on Brazil as it morally corrupts society as a whole. Specifically, slavery acts as a huge obstacle to the civilization of Brazil. Nabuco calls Brazilian society hypocritical for tolerating slavery and believes that Brazil is not truly independent until slavery is abolished. The Nabuco primary source allows us to answer how slavery was abolished in Brazil despite its importance in society. Looking at this source only, it can be assumed that slavery was abolished to further civilize society in Brazil, as the social consequences of slavery outweighed the economic benefits. However, by looking at more primary sources, we can get a more complete answer to this question.

Next, we looked at a primary source from Princess Isabel, specifically her final decree of abolition, officially named, “Abolition Decree, 1888.” In the decree, Princess Isabel abolished all slavery and revoked all other laws that stated otherwise. This decree itself abolished slavery, which highlighted the power of the royal family in Brazil at the time. This primary source helped us answer our initial question by considering the power of the elites, specifically the royal family. The other primary source we looked at that was not assigned for homework was a painting called “The Freeing of Slaves” by Pedro Americo in 1889. The painting depicted white people as angels, with the majority of people being women. The white people were all nicely clothed, while the slaves in the painting were naked and depicted as pitiful. This painting depicted abolition as a white gift to black people and, again, suggests that slavery was only abolished because of the elites.

“The Freeing of Slaves” by Pedro Americo in 1889

However, this was not true. The next primary source was a map of the Sao Gancalo Quilombo Minas Gerais from the late 18th century. The fact that the government contained a map of a quilombo hints that the colonial state felt anxious about a possible slave revolt, which suggests that enslaved blacks did try to fight for their freedom and did not just wait for the elites to abolish slavery. This idea was reaffirmed with the next primary source, which was a book confiscated from slaves who attempted to revolt in the Male Revolt in Salvador, Bahia in 1835. This book was worn around the neck and was written in Arabic. This suggests that people planning the revolt were literate and multilingual. It also shows another element to the abolition struggle: possible cooperation between the enslaved and freed.

Map of the Sao Gancalo Quilombo Minas Gerais from the late 18th century

Discussion on Camillia Cowling’s “Debating Womanhood, Defining Freedom: The Abolition of Slavery in 1880s Rio de Janeiro”

After analyzing these primary sources, the class broke into small groups to discuss questions pertaining to the Cowling reading, a secondary source. The questions considered included, What kinds of sources does Cowling use? What is the main argument? How does her research complicate our understanding of slavery and abolition in Brazil? Why is this important? Cowling uses a variety of sources, including letters from slaves, council records, laws, and newspaper articles. Her main argument is that gender and abolition are very connected and that maternalism played a big role in abolition. Overall, she argues that women played a large role in the abolition movement in Brazil, which is often overlooked. Her argument and research complicates our understanding of slavery and abolition in Brazil as the roles of slaves, particularly women, is often not considered in the abolition processes within other countries. Usually, abolition movements are thought of as an elite-led movement, but in Brazil, it is viewed as a legal battle led by enslaved women. This is important to consider when looking at different abolition movements, such as how Brazil was able to minimize violence opposed to the war that broke out in the United States.

By looking at all these primary sources and the informative secondary source, it is clear that one must read many different perspectives on a topic in order to have a more complete understanding of a situation. For example, if we only looked at the primary sources from elites, we would have thought that abolition was an elite led movement. However, by looking at primary sources from slaves and government records as well as the Cowling secondary source, we get a more complete understanding of how the abolition movement work, specifically the huge role enslaved women had.

Key Terms

Quilombo: settlement of runaway slaves

Pano: a headwrap Brazilian women would wear

Christianity: believers in Jesus

Protestant: Christian, but fundamentally different than Catholics due to its emphasis on the bible

Catholics: earliest Christians that are sacrament based, which most Brazilians were in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 20th centuries.

Links

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-slavery/chronology-who-banned-slavery-when-idUSL1561464920070322 This website gives a timeline on how slavery and abolition played out in Brazil.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2518384?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents An article providing an overview of the causes of abolition, including humatarian pressure.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Rio-Branco-Law Gives an overview of the Free Womb Law and the background on how the law was titled.

Possible Exam Questions

How did women play a role in abolition and how did maternalism play a role as well?

Although the Abolition decrees was passed in 1888, how were freed slaves treated after abolition?

Who were all the actors involved in abolition and how did their efforts intertwine to accomplish the goal of abolition?

Wikipedia Post That I want to Research (possibly)

For my Wikipedia Project, I wanted to write something involving a war or battle that Brazil was apart of. So, I searched on Wikipedia for articles either in need of “repair” or others that simply do not exist at all. Then I came across an article called the Balaiada Revolt. It was this slave/poor farmers revolt that tried to change the mass cotton exportations. Ultimately the rebellion was crushed but supposedly it may have had effects on the Emperors stance to slavery.

I find wars and conflicts to be quite interesting. In Colonial Latin America, I had written about the Battle of Racangua and I think it would be interesting to try and find a battle that happened in this revolt. So part of this project I want to try is to find some battle and write about it as a stretch goal for the Wikipedia article .

The article itself is quite small with 3-4 sections that aren’t fully fledged out. There is also one image in the article but that seems to be fine. As it is pertaining to the battle.  The sources used in it seem to be adequate but it does not appear to have any actual primary sources. That is going to be the challenge for this article.

So, for this Wikipedia project, I am going to use some of the sources provided in the article as well some articles from our library. Those being (in order) Balaiada, Elite Politics and Popular Rebellion in the Construction of Post-Colonial Order. The Case of Maranhao, Brazil (1820-41). Unfortunately finding primary sources pertaining to the conflict is rather difficult as I do not speak Portuguese and I cannot find them in our system.

Any feedback or other article recommendations would be appreciated for the project.

  • http://yb7zk3sd3g.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.title=Encyclopedia+of+Latin+American+History+and+Culture&rft.au=Assun%C3%A7%C3%A3+o%2C+Matthias&rft.atitle=Balaiada&rft.date=2008-01-01&rft.volume=1&rft.spage=450&rft.epage=451&rft.externalDocID=3078900522&paramdict=en-US
  • http://0-www.jstor.org.dewey2.library.denison.edu/stable/157731?pq-origsite=summon

Lecture: White Bound Monday 2/12

Matthew Hughey to Deliver Stieglitz Memorial Lecture. Matthew Hughey, associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, will present “White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meaning of Race” on Monday, Feb. 12, at The College of Wooster’s Stieglitz Memorial Lecture. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Lean Lecture Room of Wishart Hall.

“White Bound” investigates whether whites are splintering into antagonistic groups, with differing worldviews, values, and ideological stances, and questions the very notion of a fracturing whiteness, and in so doing offers a unique view of white racial identity. Hughey spent over a year attending meetings, reading literature, and interviewing members of two white organizations—a white nationalist group and a white antiracist group.

Though he found immediate political differences, he observed surprising similarities related to how both groups make meaning of race and whiteness.

“White Bound” was a co-winner of the 2014 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award. Hughey, who earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Virginia, is currently a member of the executive committee for the Eastern Sociological Society and is chair-elect of the Division of Racial and Ethnic Minorities for the Society for the Study of Social Problems. In 2018, he’ll serve as a visiting professor in the department of sociology at Trinity College in Dublin and a visiting fellow in the Institute of Advanced Study at Warwick University in Coventry, England.

The Stieglitz Memorial Lecture was founded by Dr. and Mrs. Lewis N. Stieglitz of Concord, N.H., as a tribute to their son, Martin, a Wooster student who was majoring in sociology when he lost his life in an off-campus house fire on Feb. 11, 1989. The Stieglitz Memorial Fund, the departments of Sociology and Anthropology, the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, as well as the departments of Political Science and Africana Studies are co-sponsoring the lecture.

Culture Blog Post: Capoeira

 

Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art, played a central role in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2017. Through combining musical elements and dancing skills, Capoeira practitioners compose various choreographic techniques that are comprised of constant flows of offensive and defensive movements between two combatants who explore and exploit their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. After the exchange of movements, they patiently seek the perfect moment to strike a decisive blow. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, an online platform that publishes academic research and studies conducted by the Smithsonian institution, Capoeira contains a rich background that emphasizes both its cultural and historical values. Today, fans perceive Capoeira as an art form, rather than a traditional combat practice. However, Capoeira has a deep historical root that traces back to the colonial period.

 

Enslaved Africans in Brazil developed Capoeira to resist European oppression. According to an article published by the Smithsonian magazine, historians surmise that Capoeira originated from quilombos, small communities organized by escaped African slaves and their descendants. The article argues Capoeira emerged as a defensive tool against the Portuguese and was under the influence of African cultural system within quilombos. In the mid-1800s, the Paraguayan War fueled a massive influx of slave population to urban areas in which the African immigrants utilized Capoeira as a mean for protection and survival. However, Capoeira conveyed both aggressive and inoffensive images in the twentieth century. Professions such as mercenaries and bodyguards that require physical protection services trained in Capoeira, whereas urban residents performed Capoeira with musical instruments at bars. During the 1930s, Capoeira underwent various transitions. For example, Master Bimba institutionalized Capoeira as an educational discipline through legitimizing Capoeira in the form of self-defense and athletics, which later contributed to presenting Capoeira as an official cultural practice in Brazil that emphasized “paramount fighting techniques but [an] innovative [and] spectacular visual show.”

Capoeira continued to evolve as an art form during the late twentieth century. According to the Smithsonian magazine, Capoeira experienced a major success in expanding its presence across the nation. In 1964, Master Acordeon promoted Capoeira through touring, hosting seminars, and teaching in local schools of Brazil. His influence later spread throughout the world. He founded the World Capoeira Association, an organization that promoted Capoeira through “workshops, educational trips, publications, and codifying a body of rules for the understanding and respect for the history, rituals, traditions, and philosophy.” Acordeon further propagated Capoeira across Brazil, the Caribbean, and Europe. Moreover, Capoeira was initially introduced to Americans in 1975, where educational institutions such as Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and New York universities implemented Capoeira as their program. In 1990, two Capoeira masters launched an institution that taught Capoeira in United States; their commitment was recognized with the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship. Although many Capoeira masters in Brazil disapproved of the sport’s globalization, Capoeira became an official national sport in 1972.

Capoeira possesses both artistic and cultural values. Capoeira practitioners redefined the sport as an aesthetic work in the twentieth century. For example, Master Joao Grande believes “Capoeira is nature.” His inspirations in creating techniques have derived from observing nature. However, Tekken, a Japanese video game franchise, interprets Capoeira as a combative tool through applying Capoeira techniques in combat. Eddy Gordo, an affluent Brazilian male fighter, plays an important role in Tekken. After his father’s death, Gordo was wrongfully imprisoned, which motivated him to train Capoeira for taking revenge on his father’s killer. Although his ethnicity was not specified in his biography, Tekken designed him as a Brazilian who wears a green and yellow colored outfit, speaks Portuguese, and has a dark skin tone. Recent updates within the game added new features to Gordo’s outfit such as a tiger coat. Furthermore, Gordo manages an orphanage in Brazil in which the children view him as a hero with indestructible combat skills. Overall, Gordo’s characteristics resemble popular representation of Brazil as well as Capoeira. The character requires a consistent control of chain commands to invoke attacks and his skills show a constant flow of various physical movements, which reflects the fighting structure and style in Capoeira. Without the musical components, Tekken portrayed Capoeira as a combat weapon.

Capoeira serves as significant historical evidence of how African slaves in Brazil reacted against European oppression during the colonial period. Stuart Schwartz, a history professor at Yale University, argues various forms of resistance existed throughout the colonial era, in which palmares functioned as a social protection for African slaves. According to the Smithsonian magazine, the African slaves considered Capoeira as a defensive tool to protect themselves from the European brutality, and they practiced Capoeira to break “the bonds of slavery in both physically and mentally.” Furthermore, although the European perspectives categorized the slave resistance as unlawful, the core identity of Capoeira conveys “cleanliness and articulation” that reflect African slaves’ “burning desire for freedom.” Today, the key ideology behind Capoeira transformed yet the sport continues to remain as a representative cultural figure in Afro-Brazilian heritage. For example, in the PBS series “Black in Latin America,” a Brazilian Capoeira master shares that he supervises Capoeira sessions for the youths in Salvador to discipline their minds and prevent young Brazilians being involved in potential criminal activities.

The Smithsonian article argues Capoeira “is a result of the phenomenon of people migrating to new lands…Capoeira was conceived in Africa and born in Brazil.” In class, we discussed the cultural diversity in Brazil. Numerous immigrants with various ethnic backgrounds constitute the Brazilian cultural identity of which Capoeira serves as a popular component. Similarly, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is another example. In 1909, Geo Omori, a Japanese immigrant in Brazil, founded the first jiu-jitsu school. Compared to Capoeira, both sports focus on building individual’s character and physical fitness. In the early 1990s, Brazilian jiu-jitsu became a nationally prominent sport with many practitioners in Brazil and international tournaments. In a broader historical theme, Capoeira alongside Brazilian jiu-jitsu indicates the cultural diversity in Brazil and suggests that the readers fully take account of contextualizing this aspect in understanding the Brazilian cultural identity.

 

Works Cited

Brazil. Directed by Ricardo Pollack. PBS, 2011. Accessed February 6, 2018.

“Brazilian jiu-jitsu.” Wikipedia. February 05, 2018. Accessed February 07, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu-jitsu.

“Eddy Gordo.” Tekken Wiki. Accessed February 07, 2018. http://tekken.wikia.com/wiki/Eddy_Gordo.

Goncalves-Borrega, Juan . “How Brazilian Capoeira Evolved From a Martial Art to an International Dance Craze.” Smithsonian.com. September 21, 2017. Accessed February 07, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/capoeira-occult-martial-art-international-dance-180964924/.

Schwartz, Stuart B. Slaves, peasants, and rebels: reconsidering Brazilian slavery. Vol. 82. University of Illinois Press, 1996.

 

Class Notes 2/6/18

Fun class music:

Announcements:

  • With class presentationspicking up it is important to watch timing to have enough time to accomplish everything.
  • Great Decisions Lecture was on Immigration tonight (2/6/18) with Angela Maria Kelly. She is also having a talk on DACA this Thursday (2/8/18) at 4PM.
  • There is a History major information session this Thursday (2/8/18) at 11AM. This meeting is for anyone who is interested/thinking about a History major or double major.

Cultural Blog Post: Japanese Population in Sao Paulo (David)

Class today began with a Brazilian culture blog post discussing the Japanese population in Sao Paulo. David discussed the wave of Japanese immigration to Brazil and how Japanese culture is a large part of Sao Paulo, especially in the neighborhood Liberdade. This presentation tied into class discussions about the formation of a national Brazilian identity.

https://brazil2018.voices.wooster.edu/2018/02/04/brazil-culture-and-history-post-japanese-population-in-sao-paulo/

Class Discussion:  Independence and Construction of Brazilian National Identity

Class today focused around the story of Brazil’s independence from Portugal and the different ways that the story is told. Discussion centered around the formation of a Brazilian national identity:  Who was included as a citizen, excluded, and who had the right to vote. Within this topic, we also looked at the implications of relying on different historical sources to understanding national identity. We began by looking at primary source photos of King Joao VI and Emperor Pedro !, shown below, while discussing the historic tale of Brazilian independence.

After discussing the historical tale of independence, Professor Holt distributed a partial copy of the 1824 Brazilian Constitution. We discussed in small groups after analyzing the document and its implications for who is defined as a citizen of the newly independent Brazil and who had the right to vote. One main aspect of Brazilian citizenship that was discussed was the focus on loyalty. The newly independent kingdom was wary of Portuguese and African populations within the country and their loyalty to Brazil. The 1824 Constitution provided a primary source document on the legal formation of Brazilian national identity during the time of independence. Class ended by looking at Kraay’s argument around the Dois de Julho Celebration versus the national September 7th independence day celebration. He argues that these celebrations showed the anti-Portuguese and anti-African sentiment that existed during the time of independence.

Key Terms:

  • Liberdade, Sao Paulo: Japanese neighborhood in Sao Paulo
  • Emperor Pedro I: First emperor of the newly independent kingdom of Brazil.
  • Household: Households were seen as the primary political unit in early Brazil. They were headed by one main male figure who held the voting rights within the unit.
  • 2 de Julho: Celebration of winning Brazilian independence from the Portuguese, primarily celebrated in Bahia
  • September 7th: Brazilian Independence Day. This day is thought of as the day that Pedro I declared independence through a declaration.

Further Questions:

  1. How have the early ideas shaped how Brazilian identity is seen today? Especially when looking at the construction of race.
  2. In what ways is the story of Brazilian Independence central to Brazilian history and how they view their history today?
  3. In what way do celebrations challenge/show the formation of national identity? Especially how do they show state identity and does that differ from national identity?

More Sources on Topic:

Roett, Riordan. “The Historical Background: Colony, Empire, and Republic.” In The New Brazil, 19-36. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7864/j.ctt12818n.6.

Kraay, Hendrik. “Between Brazil and Bahia: Celebrating Dois De Julho in Nineteenth-Century Salvador.” Journal of Latin American Studies 31, no. 2 (1999): 255-86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/157905.

Barickman, B. J. “Reading the 1835 Parish Censuses from Bahia: Citizenship, Kinship, Slavery, and Household in Early Nineteenth-Century Brazil.” The Americas 59, no. 3 (2003): 287-323. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1008500.

 

Brazil Culture and History Post: Japanese Population in Sao Paulo

For this Brazil Culture and History Post, I wanted to talk about a population in Brazil that is considered one of the more recent groups of people that immigrated to Brazil. That being, the Japanese (specifically from Okinawa). Marina had mentioned that in Brazil, there was a population of people of Asian descent that live there. I wanted to find more information because the topic is interesting and I could relate it to another class (Intro to East Asia with Professor Bonk) and find out why it had occurred

eople dance samba at an event where members of the Japanese community gathered to watch the FIFA 2013 Confederation Cup inauguration match between Brazil and Japan at a community center in the neighbourhood of Liberdade in Sao Paulo, Brazil on June 15, 2013

  • Brazilian Samba and Japanese dance traditions interacting in Sao Paulo.

This led me to a BBC article called “A Little Corner of Brazil that is forever Okinawa” and it talks about the Japanese population in the Liberdale district of Sao Paulo. In the article, it discusses how this “Brazilian-Japanese” culture formed when the settlers had been living in Brazil for about 50 or so years. Another interesting thing is they managed to preserve their original language of Okinawan, even after their original homeland (Okinawa/Ryukyu) was annexed and culturally/linguistically forever changed during the 1870s by the Japanese Empire. Other cultural things were mentioned in the article such as Japanese Food becoming popular and Shintoist symbols being present on some streets in Sao Paulo.

People are seen outside a restaurant at Liberdade, a central Sao Paulo neighbourhood with a high concentration of Japanese descendants on June 14, 2014. Brazil has the biggest community of Japanese descendants in the world outside of Japan, estimated at 1.5 million people.

  • Japanese restaurant in Sao Paulo

Women are seen at Liberdade, a central Sao Paulo neighbourhood with a high concentration of Japanese descendants, on June 14, 2014.

  • “Torii” or Shinto Archway in Sao Paulo.

This can relate to the class by the ideas that Brazil is pretty much this super diverse country. It has a large number of different kinds of people that all come from different stages of history. From Africans and Europeans to Asians, Brazil is home to all kinds of people. The topic is really in-depth and there is an interesting history between Brazil and Japan.

 

 

Article Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42859249

 

Week 1 Wikipedia Review Blog Post

By reviewing Wikipedia’s article regarding Brazilian history, I read “Race and Ethnicity in Brazil”. The article covers the racial issues in Brazil like the presence of indigenous people, the “Abolition of Slavery” in 1888, “miscegenation”, “genetic studies” and regional demographics. However, not everything in the article is strongly related to the topic, as some of those deviate from the topic by using facts, but failed to tie with the main focus. For example, the “Abolition of Slavery”, the content of this subtitle mostly talked about the dynamic of labor, income and immigration after the end of slavery. “Gilberto Freyre on the criticisms that he received” was extra in this article because this subtitle was mostly comprised of quotations instead original edition of those sources, and those information was not strongly tied to the title of the article regarding racial issues. As a result, the subtitle failed to continue the previous subtitle “Gilberto Freyre’s work” on racial democracy. The article overall covered most of its content on early Portuguese settlement and other European countries’ immigration as the main focus of the race and ethnicity issue, which whitening Brazil to some extent. The article only wrote some brief sentences on African, Arab, Indigenous and Asian culture without furthering into their cultural heritage to the contribution of Brazilian race and ethnic groups.

The citations in the article are made up of sources in Portuguese and English with a variety of facts from articles and statistics from the country and American authors. Some links work, whereas, other links only show a webpage with a display of a list of articles, which it did not direct me to the source. For instance, [37] failed to cite the right page in the book Who Is Black?:One Nation’s Definition. Moreover, the source is biased as the book proposed the idea of having higher socioeconomic class as being “white”. I think that it is offensive to those non-white people because the book portrays whiteness symbolizes superiority. Some citations like [5] and [38] do not direct to the source by only displaying a website with a list of articles and blank page. There is no information out of date because most articles are published within twenty years.

The talk page addressed the ambiguity of the title of the article, as it was written as “Race and Ethnicity in Brazil”. One user thought that it would be better to title as “Race in Brazil” because the article mainly focused on race groups based on physical features instead of describing cultural groups like “Russian Brazilian” and “Italian Brazilian”. Therefore, the user thought it would be better to change the title to “Race in Brazil” and elaborate on race groups instead of immigration from specific countries. The use of language was stressed by another user because some words were not correctly described the specific race group. The word “preto” was considered offensive to the user, and another correct word to describe African Brazilians is “negro”, which is not offensive in Brazilian culture.

This article was rated as a C class article. It is part of the Wiki-project for Geography, Sociology, Anthropology and Ethnic Groups. The way Wikipedia discusses about the topic starts with an overview of ethnic groups and addresses the idea of racial equality. Our class started with the influence of African culture, as many foreigners have failed to learn about Brazil this way and African culture has been neglected by audiences.

Iemanjá

Today, February 2, some Brazilians celebrate the festival of Iemanjá (also spelled Yemanja), one of the most important Candomblé goddesses.  Candomblé, a Brazilian expression of several African faith traditions (especially Yoruba) combined with some elements of Catholicism, is a great example of the kinds of cultural resistance and exchange we started to talk about in class yesterday.  It is also a very visible link between West Africa and the larger African diaspora.

Iemanjá is a female water goddess, a protector of fishermen and pregnant women.  In Bahia, devotees honor her on the official Catholic festival day for Our Lady of Navigators (Feb 2).  Followers make offerings of flowers and other objects that they throw into the sea, or set adrift on small rafts.

It was hard to find a subtitled/English video of the Bahian celebration, but I’m sharing one here.  You’ll her the music, see the blue and white clothing of many devotees, and see a few people entering into religious trances.  (You can find a lot more of videos if you just want to see the celebration).

Panel: The Dream Act Today February 8th 4pm

I write to share an announcement from Dr. Jeff Lantis, Chair of Global and International studies.
*****************
We are excited to announce an upcoming panel and talk-back event, titled “The Dream Act Today: The Immigration Policy Battle from the Front-lines” on Thursday, February 8th, in Lowry 119 at 4:00 pm.  This is a great opportunity to learn more about the history of the Dream Act (DACA) and ask questions about the future of immigration policy in today’s political climate. Guest speaker Angela Kelley is the Vice President of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress. We will also have a faculty moderated panel with student perspectives—and invite a broader discussions over refreshments.
This event is co-sponsored by the Global & International Studies Program, the Departments of Political Science and History, and the Beyond the Border student group.
We hope to see you there!
To learn more about Angela Kelley visit: https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/people/angela-m-kelley

Class Notes- February 01, 2018

Announcements

  •  Tons of grades are posted on Moodle
    • Do not be alarmed since Moodle doesn’t not calculate grades correctly
  • There was a reminder sent on Moodle about the group project and a poll  about what time periods would be the best for watching the three movies.

Blog Post- Jordan Griffin 

His blogpost was about the upcoming presidential election in Brazil and how the two main players are on extreme opposite of the left/right political scale. This election is special because it is coming after the impeachment of the previous president and corruption charges brought against the government. The left political opponent is Da Silva and the right-wing candidate is Bolsonaro. They both want to throw out the current system, but want it replaced with something vastly different.

Class Discussion: To Be a Slave in Brazil

When talking about race in Brazil, it is important to note how the idea of race went from a biological trait to an idea that is implemented within society. In order to talk about slavery, we must know the history of sugar plantations.

How Plantations Worked

Portugal set up the first plantation in Bahia in 1549. However, there were already smaller areas  and Brazil was already in the works for the African Diaspora.

Sugar is one of the most labor intensive labor jobs. it required a a hue industrial processing plant. Once you cut the cane, you only have 24 hours before it goes bad due its short shelf life. With the growing of sugar, the first crop yields the most amount of sugar, but it takes 14-18 months. The second yield takes around 8 months, but the more times it is planted and harvested the less and less sugar is yielded.

Once the canes were cut, it was a fast and harsh process to get it milled/processed as soon as possible. This time was somehow an agricultural time, but needed huge technological advancements for  the actual storing and processing. The machines have these huge wooden rollers that are fed the canes and the juice gets squished out. The rollers are wither ox or water powered. Once the juice is ll collected, the liquid needed to be boiled quickly unless it would go bad. The boiling was supposed to evaporate enough of the water so when it cools it will crystallizes.

Historian say sugar was the worst work to ever be done due to the grueling work hours and the danger that comes with it. it was common during harvest time for the slaves to be working 18 hour work days with being extremely malnourished. Working in sugar ended with many accidents. Slave were either  having their limbs cut off while cutting the cane, getting caught in-between the huge wooden rollers, or during themselves while boiling the sugar. Within the system,  slaves can work into becoming high ranking people on the plantations. Bahia had such an awful reputation for the awful conditions, planters would write guides to each other saying “Plan to replace your entire labor force every 7 years.”

Historiography

When discussing historiography, we need to think about life expectancy and birth rate. With African men being more favorable, there was an imbalance in the sex in Brazil. At some point, death outpaced births. This was also due to the awful working conditions. Sugar was an economic and racist industry. It was racist because it was the whole idea that these people were disposable. Sugar was able to thrive under the idea of othering. Brazil had a different view of slavery due to the social contracts in Iberia and within the Catholic Church/Law. Portugal believed slavery wouldn’t last forever and they also believed in the equality of souls.

 

Schwarts argument

Schwarts’ argument was about resistance within Brazilian slavery. He makes the argument that this should not be compared to US slavery in regards to which was tougher.  He talked about the quilombous and palmares, slave fugitive communities, how militarized resistance, and cultural/religious resistance.

For Next Week

  • finish up the Wikipedia stuff
  • We will be discussing independence and how that played a role in the way Brazilians view what being Brazilian and Portuguese means.