History of the Negro People; 4; Brazil: The Vanishing Negro

[beep] [music] [music] The following program is from NET the National Educational Television Network. [explosion sounds, music] [Host] Carnival in Brazil, three days and four nights in Brazil. It's origins? Pagan and Christian. The music and dance? African. In the fusion of white Europe with black Africa, Carnival symbolizes Brazil's reputation as a racial paradise. [music]

[Carnival music] [music] [singing, drums] [drums continue] [Ossie Davis] My name is Ossie Davis. The experience of the Negro in Brazil and the rest of Latin America has been different than ours. So different that where we are caught up in a struggle often accompanied by racial strife, Brazil has been described as a racial paradise. What has been the experience of the thirty million Negroes in Brazil? Has Brazil solved the crises that plague our country? And can we learn something from Brazilians that can provide us with answers to our American dilemma? In our History of the Negro People series, we came to Brazil to explore these questions.

Jorge Amado, perhaps the leading Brazilian novelist, told us [speaking Portuguese] [voiceover] I believe that Brazil is a country where a process which is perhaps unique in the world is taking place. It is a melting pot of peoples and races that is someday going to reach a point where you won't to be able to talk anymore about pure white or pure black. Our experience differs fundamentally not only from North America but from all other countries. It is unique because it is an experience of the mixing of races, the mixing of blood. Here next to me is Maria Alves, a movie actress, and Brazilian mulatto beauty who herself demonstrates the very positive results of the blending of the races. And the reasons for the Brazilian experience line

our past, our history. [music] [Ossie Davis] Brazil, in 1500, was a wild and primitive land of savage animals and the cannibalistic Indian, oldest inhabitant of the new world, predating both Portuguese and Negro by more than 1,000 years. In 1500 a Portuguese ship blown off its course arrived in Brazil. Colonists soon followed. Many were adventurers and criminals. To most, this barbaric country was a place of exile. The Portuguese came with no experience in farming and a distasteful work. A Renaissance humanist wrote "if there are any people more given to laziness than the Portuguese, I do not know where it exists." Slavery seemed

a convenient answer. The Portuguese attacked and massacred the Indian and made him the first slave in the new world. But the Indians failed to meet the rigid qualifications for slaves in the sixteenth century. They died by the thousands. A Spanish friar Bartolome de las Casas gave up his land and slaves and returned to Spain where he begged the Spanish regent for an end of the enslavement and slaughter of the Indians throughout Latin America. To save the Indians, las Casas suggested an alternative candidate: the hardier African Negro. In Africa itself slavery, both black and white, was not

new. Arab traders and African priests had been buyers and sellers of slaves for thousands of years. Now the Portuguese took over. for these Africans, the Moslems, the Bantus, and the Sudanese, the trop over was the beginning of a tragic future. From thirty to forty days they crossed the South Atlantic. These sailing clippers were known as coffins. The slaves were kept in the hold, from five in the afternoon until eight in the morning in darkness. The loss of human cargo ran as high as 70 percent. When they arrived in Brazil they were catalogued and sold. First they were sent to the sugar plantation, for sugar was the unchalleged king of Brazil for many years. Then gold was discovered, and the Negro worked in the gold mines of the new world. There was also a great demand for skilled artisans.

Life was harsh. Almost any offense would result in whipping with a raw, twisted leather hide. More serious crimes warranted more sophisticated punishments, such as fastening the slave for several days by his ankles or his arms. In 1607 a group of Negroes revolted, the first of many uprisings. But the Negro was more assimilated in colonial Brazil than in North America. He was welcomed into the Catholic church where he was baptized and married, and the white colonist and Negro slave lived together intimately. Black nannies brought up the children. The Portuguese adapted African cooking and the men who did not bring wives with them

took on the Negro women as concubines, sometimes even married them. On May 8, 1888, the Chamber of Deputies drew up an abolition bill as most Brazilians began to realize that slavery was doomed. Crowds gathered below as the debate raged inside. On May 13, the Princess regent banished slavery from Brazil as thousands of Brazilians roared their approval. Emancipation took twenty three years longer, but one war less, than in North America. Professor Marvin Harris is the Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University and an expert on race relations in Brazil. [Marvin Harris] After 1888, there was no history in Brazil of the type of Jim Crow, sharp racial struggle, race riots, lynchings, public discrimination, public transportation and

schools just nothing comparable to it. The whole trajectory of experience in Brazil between the races has been a much milder sort of experience. [Davis] Today the majority of Brazilians, it is said, are the descendants of masters or slaves, the casa grande, or big house still survives. Inside the house the descendants of a Portuguese master still gather for Sunday dinner. The family silver and crystal are almost the last vestiges of a more elegant past. Although the days of master and slave are gone, the children still enjoy some aspects of the old casa grande life. They ride their horses as they have done for generations through the fields of sugar cane, where Negroes still work as their slave ancestors did, but now for a salary of under ten dollars a week.

These Negroes, like the white family in the casa grande, hold onto their old traditions, African traditions. A few miles away is the city of Salvador, the first capital of Brazil, in the province of Bahia. Salvador was the biggest port of entry for slaves in the Western Hemisphere. Few people in this city can be be sure they're not just a little black. More than 50 percent of the population is of mixed ancestry. Many whites in Salvador would be classified as mulatto in the United States. Brazilians call Bahia "The Old Mulatto Woman." Dr. Gilberto Freyre, former member of the National Assembly and former

Ambassador to the United Nations is Brazil's greatest historian. [Gilberto Freyre] The influence of the Negro on Brazilian life is immense. Both historical and at present, when the presence of the Negro is everywhere in Brazilian culture, in what is most characteristic in Brazilian culture. You'll find that Brazilians now are even proud of the fact that they have a Brazilian cookery that's considered by some to be the rival cookery of the French one, fo the Chinese one. They are proud of the fact that this very characteristic Brazilian cookery has many traits of African influence. In fact if it were not for the great African influence, there would not be a Brazilian cookery.

[percussion music] Capoeira, another African tradition. Once a way of fighting between slaves with razors strapped to their ankles, has slowly changed until now it is a ritual dance that's accompanied by African instruments. The dancers keep in time to the rhythm as they attack each other with hands, feet, and head, just stopping short of landing a blow. But the greatest African influence is its people. This woman is known simply as Olga. She lives in the slums of Salvador. Many of the people who live in these slums are of mixed blood

and some would even pass for white. (street sounds) Olga lives in this house. She has eight children. The oldest boy works for the federal government. Loro, who's twenty one is an electrician and mechanic. The other children pick up work where they can. But Olga is not simply a housewife. She is the high priestess of the Candomble. Candomble, practiced in Bahia, was originally an African fetish cult brought by slaves and altered by time. But still essentially African.

[Olga, translator voiceover] People come to me because of sickness, because of setbacks, because of spiritual persecutions. They come for many reasons and they kneel on the ground and try to feel that sense of personal exultation. [Davis] As priestess Olga has profound responsibilities as moral and spiritual leader. At a consultation this woman asks Olga to help her sick daughter. Olga must divine the spirits' orders and in the reading of her shelves she finds the prescription for this woman's troubles. [drum music] [drums continue, singing] Olga and her followers, called Daughters of the Saints,

are preparing for the traditional dance of the Candomble. Roosters and chickens are sacrificed to the spirits. Their blood rubbed against a holy tree. Herbs are gathered and African songs are sung in their original African tongue, Yoruba. Special food is prepared to offer the spirits. [drum music] [drum music] It is the night of the Condomble, the climax of religious activity for Olga and her followers. Many of the participants and spectators are white. They find in Candomble a vitality lacking in their own church. [drum music] [drums, singing]

Olga's Candomble is matriarchal, men participate only as spectators and musicians. Believers are assigned a special saint similar to those worshipped in many parts of Africa. In the music and dance they hope that he will enter their bodies. They yearn to be possessed. At the time of possession, it is said the saint descends into the head, and through the body he dances and talks. Then the daughter of the

saint dances in a trance, possession is complete. [drums] [chanting] [chanting continues] [chanting] But if Olga is an African priestess, she's also a Catholic. She sees no conflict between the Catholic church and the worship of her African ancestors. The saints of Candomble are fused with the saints of Catholicism. If African tradition is still strong in Brazil, it

is also changing. It is absorbing and being absorbed with the religion and tradition of Catholic Brazil. Many of the people who attend its vivid ceremony come as spectators rather than converts and the younger generation of Negroes is little interested in its values. They're less concerned with their past as Africans and more with their future as Brazilians and as Negroes. Olga's son Loro prefers soccer to the African Capoeira. But though he works and plays with whites, he is fearful about the future. [Loro speaking, translator voiceover] I have been handicapped by my color in many things, in jobs, at parties, in many little ways that are hard to relate. I would prefer that my wife would be lighter than I because I would like to have lighter children. If I

marry lighter and have children who look more white, they will have more opportunity to get ahead in life. I want the best for my children. I don't want them to suffer the disappointments I did because of my color. Professor Thales de Azevado is an anthropologist at the University of Bahia. We ask him about racial discrimination in Brazil. [de Azevado] You can very easily see that the Negroes have been retained in a very low position in our society, which is due to discrimination through our history by the means of these devices which I have mentioned formerly. The Negroes are not accepted in some schools in some jobs we have practically no Negroes in the higher ranks of the army, in the clergy, at least we have no bishop who is a Negro, we have priests, but we have no bishops, and in the private schools sometimes they are not accepted, at least they are not accepted in the

proportion that they exist in the population. I think these are the means through which we descriminate against them. They may rise indivually but not as a group. [Oscar de Paula Assis, translator voiceover] The precedence that exists in Brazil as I said is a discrimination of color, so much so that people who are descended from Negroes but have lighter skin or finer features pass for white, those with darker skin have more difficulty than those with lighter skin. The Brazilian in general doesn't have a major prejudice. He has color prejudice. [Ossie Davis] Professor Harris, do Brazilian Negroes have the same emotional and psychological problems as American Negroes? [Harris] My experience is that Brazilians are not troubled

by the question of who they are racially to the extent that many Americans are. The reason there -- the explanation of that I believe is because Brazilians have a chance of changing their racial identity during their lifetimes. [Davis] And how is this one? [Harris] Well, one way to do it is to improve one's job. Get a better job, get a better education, make some money, as a matter of fact, there's a saying that goes "money whitens." [Davis] "Money whitens" in Brazil means that if a Negro is wealthy enough and well-educated, he can share the advantages of Brazil's upper class whites. He is not even called a Negro. There are no "whites only" signs anywhere, but Negroes are tacitly excluded from many places. Social segregation is the unwritten rule.

Yet if money whitens, few Negroes have much money. The favelas, or slums, do not discriminate. The houses are built on wood, cardboard, and scrap metal. Of the thousands who live in these favelas, a large number are Negro. The hillsides on which the slums have sprung up have no electricity, no sewers, or paved roads. Whatever enters the favela is carried in by hand and by foot. Yet the favela is not a ghetto. People live here not just because they are colored, but because they're poor. It is possible for the Negro to educate himself and move out, and he can also marry out.

[Female speaker] My daughter is married to a white man and she has no problem at all. She's very light skinned and of course she has three children now, and well they're almost white. [Antonio de Barros] Yes, I have Negro blood, through my father, my greatest-- my great- grandfather was a mulatto. I looks like a white man, nobody ever said to me that I'm a mulatto or I'm not a white man and if I were a mulatto perhaps, perhaps I should not care about that, why care? [Rene Ribeiro] As you know, passing-- passing in United States, it is a shame, is a a technique unaccepted and rejected by both parties, both the white and the Negro, they reject the one tries to pass, while in Brazil passing is a

common thing. [Gilberto Freyre] It's rare now to find a Negro of the pure dark type in Brazil. It's possible to find, but it's very difficult because race mixture has been-- miscegenation -- has been in Brazil as you know a process of two very much generized, and the result of this that the different types of race mixture are numerous in Brazil, and the survival of pure Negro types are very scarce, very rare. [Harris] We too in the United States have miscegenation, one has but to take an objective view of the Negro in prominent positions in the leadership of the integration movement here within the United States to realize that many of these people are not by Brazilian standards Negro at all. We have

a system however of reckoning racial identity, which does not tolerate any intermediate status, hence we are faced here with the choice of being either Negro or white. This is a biologically inappropriate and foolish type of categorization, at least from the point of view of genetics and anthropology. I think it's quite reasonable to predict that as things go on as they have been going on in Brazil for another century or so we can expect that both whites and Negroes will disappear and my own feeling on this subject is why not, because the resulting mixture will take its place among the bonafide racial groups of the world. All the racial groups of the world that we know of are mixed groups, there are no pure races. [Jorge Amado] The Negro from abroad cannot comprehend us. They

find us a Negro race which is intermixing with the white and a new race is emerging. But first he thinks this is a subtle form of prejudice because the Negro is disappearing but then it would also be a simple form of prejudice against the white, because of the white man as such is disappearing also. But even if the Negro vanishes eventually as a pure race in Brazil, his influence and his mark on us are deep. We are convinced we are taking the right path and that racial democracy may really be Brazil's great contribution to a universal humanistic culture. [music] [band music] [marching band music] [music]

[music continues] [outro music] This is NET, the National Educational Television Network. [silence] [silence]