06-Feb-2024 The African Diaspora in Brazil

As I started to read about the forced African descent into Brazil, I started to feel really sad for the people of Africa. They were taken from their homeland continent and dispersed all over the world. I started to wonder how would anyone truly know what part of Africa their ancestors originated from if so many were sent to Brazil even before American became involved. Slaves were treated pretty badly in Brazil. They felt it was cheaper to just work them literally to death and go get more than to give them adequate food and water and clothing to sustain life for any long period of time. How cruel to even think of just working a human living breathing creature until they just died? Our entire world is built on the greed and self preservation of those in power. From the Africans who sold their citizens into slavery, to the Europeans that stole the Africans and forced them into slavery in strange lands across the Atlantic and Caribbean. The amazing part of it all is that through out all the inhumane treatment, our culture survived and became imbedded in the culture of others.

Brazil has the largest number of people of African descent in the world, with the US running at a close second. However, most Brazilians of the darker skinned race are still considered as second rate citizens and live in extreme poverty. The racial divide in Brazil is not really about ethnicity but more about class and actual pigmentation of their skin. The lighter skinned Brazilians are treated as beautiful and can open more doors even if they are African. The darker skinned Brazilians are considered ugly and they have a harder time at achieving certain notoriety. I found that so interesting because here it is all about ethnicity. Brazillians have always mostly lived side by side no matter if they were African or Portuguese or European. It was more or less that the poor lived with the poor and the rich lived with the rich. If they could find a way to give more rights to the poor and better education, I think Brazil could be a place on earth where all colors of people and ethnic races could live in harmony. However, greed and wealth are powerful and that is what started slavery and still exists today that divides many countries.

In the eighteenth century in Brazil, a slave woman named Chica da Silva was freed by a Portugal nobleman in the diamond trade and she became his permanent mistress and the richest woman in Brazil. The story of her life is amazing because a slave girl ended up creating generational wealth for her family. She had thirteen children about 13 months apart and educated them all in the finest schools. She married the girls off to rich Portuguese men and her sons became royalty. She owned property in houses and slaves and lived among the white rich as if she belonged. Her partner built a church for her when they would not let her worship with the rich white people and people came to her church to worship with them of all colors. She is held on a pedestal by the brown people of Brazil as a hero, although she sacrificed pieces of her culture and ancestry to become so admired. Although she owned slaves, she did treat them with more dignity than other slave owners. However, she still owned slaves and made them do slave things like nurse her babies and deliver her children and work her property for free, even after she had been a slave herself and owned by four people. I wonder how she was able to incorporate herself into that world after being a slave? Reading about Brazil, makes me want to visit to see how I would be treated in Rio de Jenairo. How are black Americans treated there? Below is a little bit of history about Chica da Silva.