Exploring the cultural lives of African slaves in the early
colonial Portuguese world, with an emphasis on the more than one million
Central Africans who survived the journey to Brazil, James Sweet lifts a
curtain on their lives as Africans rather than as incipient Brazilians.
Focusing first on the cultures of Central Africa from which the slaves
came--Ndembu, Imbangala, Kongo, and others--Sweet identifies specific
cultural rites and beliefs that survived their transplantation to the
African-Portuguese diaspora, arguing that they did not give way to
immediate creolization in the New World but remained distinctly African
for some time.
Slaves transferred many cultural practices
from their homelands to Brazil, including kinship structures, divination
rituals, judicial ordeals, ritual burials, dietary restrictions, and
secret societies. Sweet demonstrates that the structures of many of
these practices remained constant during this early period, although the
meanings of the rituals were often transformed as slaves coped with
their new environment and status. Religious rituals in particular became
potent forms of protest against the institution of slavery and its
hardships. In addition, Sweet examines how certain African beliefs and
customs challenged and ultimately influenced Brazilian Catholicism.
Sweet's
analysis sheds new light on African culture in Brazil's slave society
while also enriching our understanding of the complex process of
creolization and cultural survival.
http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1110
