Exploring the cultural lives of African slaves in the early
colonial Portuguese world, with an emphasis on the more than 1
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.
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