It has said by more than one author that any account of the Negro in Brazil would be no less than the history of the country itself. This is obviously an exaggeration, for the same thing has been said of the Portuguese, who made a nation of Brazil through the development of a patriarchal, slave-holding, agrarian system, in which the Negro was a basic element, but not the whole system.

There are also interpreters of Brazil's social and cultural development who consider that the Indian - and not the European or Negro "intruder" - should be the central figure. According to them, Brazilian history should be Indocentric ( to use the technical term), and not Lusocentric of Afrocentric.

The problem of which group has played the greatest role in Brazilian history is a difficult one to deal with objectively; but the best evidence so far assembled by social anthropologists and historians seems to indicate that the Negro is second only to the Portuguese as the basic element to which Brazil owes not only its economic existence, but also the main extra-European traits in its modern culture and social organization.

Throughout America, Brazilian culture is noted more for these extra-European traits ( although it remains predominantly European in culture) than for its passively colonial sub-European characteristics. And much of what contributes to this vigorous beginning of an original Brazilian culture comes from the fact that the Negro, as a result of the comparatively liberal treatment given him by the Portuguese, has had an opportunity to express himself as a Brazilian and not as an intruder, either ethnically or culturally. It is also because he has had an opportunity to express himself as a Brazilian of African origin and not as an undesirable African who should never have been introduced into Brazil at all.

The African came as a slave to Brazil as early as the 15th century, the very century when the country was discovered by the Portuguese. He was introduced, first to supplement, but soon to take the place of the Indian who was so hard to maintain in slavery that it became uneconomic to use him as a slave.

Admirers of the Indian regard this as evidence that he was, and is, ethnically superior to the African, in whom social psychologists like McDougall have not hesitated to find a sort of instinct of submission. More than this, they see here evidence to confirm the idea that the Indian should be considered by Brazilians as the really "noble savage", whose blood Brazilians should be proud and honoured to have running in their veins.

This may be true, but it is also true that the insubordination of the Indian slave to his captors, and his lack of adaptability to routine agrarian work in the Portuguese plantations were not entirely an expression of race, psychology or character; they were also a consequence of the fact that culturally most Indians were in a nomadic, non-agricultural stage, while many of the Africans brought to Brazil as slaves had reached this agricultural stage and therefore accepted a sedentary life more readily then the Indians.

Besides, it is not correct to say that Africans in Brazil were always submissive to their masters. Africans adapted themselves to their sedentary life, but not always to slavery. From the early colonization period, right down to the abolition of slavery by the Brazilian Empire in 1889, there were a number of slave uprisings, not only on plantations, but also in towns and cities.

The most important Brazilian city during the colonial period, Salvador da Bahia, was rocked by a violent rising of African slaves against their masters in the early days of the Impire. The astute Mussulman slaves were the "grey eminence" behind this and other slave risings - for among the Africans imported for household and plantation work, Brazil was fortunate in having a considerable number of Mussulmans, and a still large number of Negroes who had come under Islamic influence and adopted that religion and part of Mohammedan culture.

A number of these imported Africans knew how to read and write Arabic, and some of them even imported Arabic books though a French bookseller in Rio. At that time, a large number of write plantation owners hardly knew how to read their prayer-books or write notes for their wills, while the ladies were kept so ignorant that they were considered accomplished when they could laboriously trace their own Christian names!

It seems also to have been a fact that a number of girls were imported from Africa to Brazil to be the mistresses of Portuguese princes of trade established in cities like Salvador. Therefore these girls were selected somewhat according to Caucasian standards of beauty and European refinement, and usually from slightly Arabized and Islamized African groups.

In connection with the history of the Negro in Brazil, it should never be forgotten that Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese who, as early as the 15th century, became captors of slaves in Africa. These were used in domestic as well as in plantation work, and some were treated as if they were members of the white families to whom they became attached. The 15th century Portuguese historian, Zurara, tells us that he knew a number of such cases.

The Portuguese had probably learned from the Moors to be humane to their slaves in the field and more than humane to their slaves in the home. This explains why so many of the slaves introduced into Portugal during the 15th cerntury were gradually Christianized and Europeanized, instead of being kept apart as "Negroes" or "barbarians".

Such an example was followed, to a large extent, in Brazil, though it must be admitted that, under the pressure of violent economic and environmental changes, some masters were both inhumane and cruel to their slaves.

A number of these masters had only one aim: to become rich in the tropics as quickly as possible. Therefore, they treated their slaves, not as members of their patriarchal family, according to the best Arab and Portuguese tradition, but as animals, from whom an ambitious sugar cane or coffee planter sought to extract the maximum of productivity for a minimum of expense in food, clothing and lodging.

But it is only fair to say that, as a rule, the patriarchal system of slave-holding and agrarian family life preserved in Brazil some of the Arab methods of dealing with slaves that 15th century Portugal introduced into Europe. A number of reliable foreign observers tell us that slavery in Brazil was more humane than in other parts of America and of the world.

Some of them go so far as to contrast the situation in Brazil with that of workmen in the new factories of Europe during the early 19th century. They reached the conclusion that it was better to be a slave in a typically patriarchal sugar or coffee plantation in Brazil than a labourer in a European factory at that time.

Comparisons have also been made between the treatment received by slaves in Brazil under the patriarchal system and that received by free labourers during the years of economic laissez-faire that followed the liberation of the Negroes in Portuguese America. Some investigators reached the conclusion that the slaves, under the patriarchal, paternalistic regime, were probably better cared for by their masters than free labourers, black and white, during these years of transition. But it is probably true that this period, cruel as it was, contributed to the development of a more virile personality among the ablest groups of black or coloured labourers.

Throughout the history of Brazil, the contribution of Negroes, both slave and free, has not only aided Brazil's economic development, but enriched Brazilian cultural life. In addition, as more than one foreign observer has pointed out, the Negro has contributed to what may be described as the most originally Brazilian types of feminine grace or beauty.

Brazilian quadroon or octoroon girls have a special charm that harmonizes peculiarly with the forms and colours of the tropical landscape. It is rarely attained by completely white girls or girls with only a touch of Indian blood. And it is common, now, in Brazil to observe, in even the whitest Brazilian girls, a sort of subtle or indirect imitation of this type of feminine beauty or grace, as in the Negro's rhythm of walking, and her grace in dancing and smiling.

One may say that, even without race mixture, the profound influence of the Negro has made itself felt in Brazil. Every Brazilian, no matter how blonde, bears in his soul something of the Negro. This influence is to be seen in a number of intimate aspects of Brazilian life or culture such as in the colourful from of Catholicism which delights their senses, and their typical way of walking, laughing and dancing.

The Negro influence is evident in Brazilian music too, particularly in lullabies, ghost and animal stories, and folk tales.

As from Brazilian cooking, it would be nothing more than that of Portugal, with a touch or two of Indian influence, were it not for the African contributions such as African vegetables, African stimulants to taste of the kind that have been described as "aphrodisiac to one's appetite". These, Brazil has assimilated and blended with European, Arab, East Indian and American Indian tastes.

In fact, African culture in Brazil is far from a mere museum or anthropological curiosity. It is not merely picturesque, but living and creative.

A Brazilian whose skin in black and whose hair is woolly does not consider himself na African or a Negro, but a Brazilian. This explains why his situation is entirely different from that of the Negro in the United States or in South Africa, even though he may not be as well adjusted to predominantly European ways as he is to those which characterize modern Brazil.

This also explains why it was so natural for a famous Brazilian Negro, with a good European literary education, to have once said in a speech: "We, members of the Latin race..." In Brazil, a Negro with a literary education finds no difficulty in considering himself not only a Brazilian, that is a full-fledged citizen of Brazil, but also a Latin, a member of the Latin race.

Fonte: FREYRE, Gilberto. The negro's role In brazilian history. Courier - UNESCO. Paris, n. 5, v. 8-9, p. 7-8, Aug./Sept. 1952.