The Brazilian Black Movement in the Twentieth Century:

A Middle-Class Mulatto Monopoly?

by Alexandra Puerto

The centennial celebration of the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1988 sparked a national controversy over one of Brazil's longstanding racial myths. In the words of historian George Reid Andrews:

While the Ministry of Culture planned a nationwide program of events, state and municipal governments organized conferences, and the media printed and aired special articles and programs, many Afro-Brazilians prepared their own response to the centennial-protest. The Brotherhood Campaign of 1988, for example, mounted an outright opposition to the centennial celebration of the abolition of slavery. Led by the Association of Black Religious and Seminarians and progressive Catholic bishops, the Brotherhood Campaign aimed to bring about change in racial attitudes. The campaign's main objectives included urging those of mixed ancestry to call themselves negro rather than mulato or white; portraying abolition not as a result of white benevolence, the official interpretation, but rather as a way to better exploit black labor; and using the mythic black heroes of Brazilian history, such as Zumbi, in the dominant dialogue of the campaign.[2] The organization of the campaign culminated on 11 May 1988, when five thousand people marched through Rio de Janeiro, led by Frei Davi, the head of Rio de Janeiro's Commission of Black Religious, Seminarians, and Priests. The protesters chanted, "One hundred years without abolition! We are still enslaved! Racial democracy is a lie!"[3] Ironically, despite such a seemingly successful mobilization and the subsequent national debate over "racial democracy," the majority of negros in Brazil avoided campaign activity. This was due, in large part, to the core light-skinned leadership whom negros mistrusted and ideological shortcomings of the campaign that misinterpreted the everyday concerns of negros.[4]

The Brotherhood Campaign of 1988 stands as just one example of the generally limited participation of negros in black political organization throughout the twentieth century. In fact, the black movement has struggled to achieve a mass social base. Recent statistics show that the number of negro organizers throughout Brazil barely reaches three thousand, with only about twenty-five thousand active followers. Considering the movement's estimate of the Afro-Brazilian population, 70 million out of Brazil's 158,200,000, then the black movement has only gained a minority of the Afro-Brazilian population.[5] The key question then is why, despite some triumphs, has the black movement failed to mobilize a significant number of Afro-Brazilians? This essay will examine secondary sources available in English on the Brazilian black movement to analyze the composition and dynamics of organized black political movements as well as the nature of daily, unorganized black resistance and accommodation in twentieth-century Brazil.

Specialists in Afro-Brazilian studies have produced a rich literature, but little of it directly analyzes the Brazilian black movement. Major topics examined by scholars include slavery in the colonial period, Brazilian racial thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, contemporary race relations, and Afro-Brazilian culture and religion.[6] It is only in the last decade that scholars have turned their attention to organized black movements. The works of historian George Reid Andrews and anthropologist John Burdick, in particular, have taken the first steps toward exploring this relatively neglected field; this essay draws heavily upon their research.[7] Andrews' book Blacks and Whites in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988, provides a detailed historical context to explain how race relations have evolved throughout one hundred years in Brazil. Andrews includes the evolution of black organization within his analysis and successfully links the changing patterns of the movement to larger structural developments in Brazil. Burdick's article, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," in the Report on the Americas, focuses more on the processes of resistance and accommodation within the Afro-Brazilian community in order to make connections between black consciousness and popular culture. Both works stress the concept of Afro-Brazilian agency without neglecting economic and racial constraints in Brazil. In addition, both authors avoid trite generalizations by emphasizing the heterogeneity of the Afro-Brazilian population. The observations made by Andrews and Burdick coupled with perspectives from other literature on race in Brazil reveal that the black movement has developed strategies primarily based on educated, middle-class, and mulato experiences.[8] Therefore, despite its admirable efforts, the black movement in the twentieth century has often neglected the foremost concerns of poor negros which constitute the majority of the Afro-Brazilian population. First, a brief consideration of black resistance prior to the contemporary black movement will provide a historical framework.

Early colonial society, according to historian Stuart B. Schwartz, sowed the roots of black resistance in Brazil. Between 1500 and the late 1800s plantation agriculture and African slavery formed the foundations of Brazilian society. Slavery constituted the principal form of labor in the colony as early as 1580; in fact, the largest percentage of slave transports during the Atlantic slave trade, 1451-1870, went to Brazil.[9] This created a complex system of forced labor with inherent tensions and stresses in colonial Brazil. Andrews points out that perhaps the strongest tension in forced labor is "the unrelenting opposition and resistance of those subjected to it."[10] Slave resistance was not confined to heroic rebellions, such as the wave of slave revolts in the 1830s,[11] but rather manifested itself in diverse ways:

Fundamentally, most slaves resented coerced servitude and devised ways to endure, from avoiding confrontation with a master, to escaping him entirely by fleeing to quilombos, en campments of runaway slaves. All methods, however, constituted resistance.

By the 1850s, following the 1841 reform on local jurisprudence and administration, slaves increasingly relied upon the state to escape slavery. Some turned to the royal justice system in hopes of being sentenced to prison or gales (hard labor on a chain gang), which they evidently perceived as preferable to slavery on a plantation. Others held faith in royal justice to try their cases fairly so that they could receive legal protection from the cruelties of slavery. The exceptional abolitionist lawyer in Sao Paulo, Luis Gama, who acquired freedom for several hundred slave clients during the 1860s and 1870s, demonstrates a clear example of slaves using the court system for their release.[13] The struggle for emancipation in the courts marked the earliest organized efforts by free blacks and slaves to change not only their daily lives but also social and political structures.

On 13 May 1888, the Golden Law abolished slavery in Brazil.[14] The movement for abolition, however, accented the tensions between mulatos and negros. Though some outstanding abolitionists, like Luis Gama, were mulatos, most mulato leaders, such as the Baron of Cotegipe, consistently abstained from taking a stand on abolition. In fact, a wide gap of interests existed between negros and mulatos not only over abolition, but also over general issues of race relations in colonial Brazil. Anthropologist John Burdick states that in Brazil, "free mulatos remained so demographically potent and economically vital throughout the slave era that the white ruling class had little choice to concede considerable social mobility to them."[15] This social mobility, then, allowed a spectrum of opportunity for mulatos.

On colonial plantations, white planters used free mulatos as "overseers, slave-catchers, foot-soldiers and gunmen, cattle-hands and subsistence farmers." The labor shortage in Portugal did not permit enough whites to migrate to the colony, so slaveholders manumitted mulatos to such a degree that by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, free mulatos made up in practically every province "at least half and as much as twice the size of the white population." Mulatos also worked in militias to protect white slaveholders' property or as small farmers. Up to seventy-seven percent of mulato farmers on small parcels even owned one or two slaves. Furthermore, mulato farmers were usually dependent on large white slaveholders for "land rights, credit, and protection."[16] Therefore, an alliance took form, however uneasy and unequal, between poor mulatos and the white elite.

Mulatos also contrived advantageous positions in urban areas. By the eighteenth century, many had migrated to the growing cities of Salvador or Rio de Janeiro to work as self-employed artisans and petty merchants. By the late eighteenth century, mulatos outnumbered free blacks as artisans in urban areas by more than four to one. This relatively favorable position in the cities later allowed mulatos to move into the arts and letters, as well as professions such as medicine, law, engineering, and civil service, while slavery was still in force. At the peak of their careers, mulatos could even "buy a certificate of whiteness." For mulatos, the end of slavery could threaten their position both in rural and urban labor markets, which explains why they not only "sat out" the struggle for abolition, but also generally supported slavery.[17] This ethnic gap would later cause serious consequences for the black movements of the twentieth century.

After 1888, in the post-emancipation period, Brazil's exslaves were primarily concerned with demanding fair and favorable working conditions. Organized political activity, however, did not emerge until the 1920s. By 1925, the black newspaper, O Clarim da Alvorada (The Clarion of the Dawn), called for the creation of the Congress of Black Youth, "a big political party comprised exclusively of colored men."[18] This party never materialized, but Afro-Brazilian activist Abdias do Nascimento and five other Africans organized the first Afro-Brazilian youth meeting, the Afro-Campineiro Congress, in Campinas, Sao Paulo, in 1938. Although an Afro-Brazilian intellectual ferment began in Sao Paulo during the 1920s, it was not until the beginning of the 1930s that a black "movement" became institutionalized with the creation of the Brazilian Black Front (Frente Negra) in 1931. Founded by Arlindo Veiga dos Santos, Isaltino Veiga dos Santos, and Jose Correia Leite, the Frente Negra represented the most important organizational effort by negros since the struggle for abolition in the 1880s.[19] The Frente Negra published a newspaper, A Voz da Raca (The Voice of the Race) which called for the "social uplift and economic advancement for the black population as a whole."[20] In addition to its official publication, the Frente Negra organized large rallies and protests, sponsored literary and vocational courses for adults, started a free medical clinic, offered legal advising and mutual aid benefits, and founded a credit union.[21] An article in a mainstream white paper, commenting on the Frente's influence claimed, "One visibly feels the awakening of a national consciousness among the black Brazilians, driving them toward more direct participation in the social and political life of the country."[22] Indeed, the call for black uplift and advancement and the social programs generated by the Frente Negra did shape an unprecedented "black consciousness" in Brazil.

On a material level, the Frente made some strides against racial discrimination. It fought for entry by blacks into the Civil Guard, the state militia.[23] After successful lobbying by the Frente, President Vargas ordered the Civil Guard to immediately enlist two hundred black volunteers. Subsequently, throughout the 1930s, about five hundred Afro-Brazilians entered the state militia and one made the rank of full colonel.[24] The Frente Negra also succeeded in ending whites-only admission policies in many public places such as roller skating rinks, hotels, bars, schools, barber shops, and clubs.[25] In addition, the Frente expanded throughout Sao Paulo state and into southern Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo, and it inspired independent fronts in Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul.[26]

Despite these material achievements, membership remained limited. Andrews believes that the Sao Paulo organization's claim of one hundred thousand members throughout Brazil was exaggerated, and determination of membership remains difficult to assess. Most of the members seem to have been from poor and working-class backgrounds, but leadership was dominated by white-collar professionals. That leaders did not reflect the class of the majority of members, and of Afro-Brazilians in general, did not go unnoticed. A 1935 article in A Voz da Raca reported that negros opposed membership in the Frente because they felt that "more and more there exists in the Front a bloc of conceited black men and women who think that they're better than we are." The article went on to characterize the individuals quoted as "unsophisticated, uncultured, and sunk in ignorance." Not surprisingly, poor negros increasingly were offended by the class exclusivity and cultural elitism of the Frente Negra movement.[27]

Many negros also hoped to improve chances for assimilation. Andrews notes that many saw "whitening" as "the most likely way to achieve that goal."[28] The "whitening" ideal first surfaced among Brazilian intellectuals at the turn of the century, but thinkers of the 1920s such as Joao Baptista de Lacerda and F. J. Oliveira Viana posited a systematic "whitening thesis."[29] They argued that white racial traits dominated in white and nonwhite miscegenation. With time, race mixture would eventually bleach out African and Indian racial attributes and spawn the "whitening" of Brazil. This idea actually countered the scientific racism of the time which interpreted race mixture as a regressive process in which white ancestry was weakened. Andrews points out that "faith in 'whitening' as a vehicle of social mobility" continues even today.[30] For poor negros in the 1920s, the "whitening" option increasingly appeared more feasible than allying with the Afro-Brazilian elite of the Frente Negra.

By the late 1930s, the Frente had also alienated middle-class black moderates and leftists. Sprouting nativism of 1920s' Brazil erupted to extremes in the 1930s as a reaction against increasing European immigration. Andrews argues: "Given this deepening anger against the immigrants, and the xenophobic currents running strongly in Sao Paulo at the time, it was virtually inevitable that the Black Front would embrace nativism from the outset." Some negros accepted the suggestion that the Europeans displaced Afro-Brazilians in the workplace, while others claimed that Europeans not only reaped the benefits of racial discrimination in the workplace but developed it themselves. Ultimately, the Front enforced an anti-immigrant orientation, rejected liberal democracy, and admired European fascism. Eventually, the Frente Negra reflected the broader national political atmosphere when it too fell into right-wing chauvinism, authoritarianism, and xenophobic nationalism. The leaders' strident economic and cultural nationalism caused bitter internal divisions which led dissenters to create the competing Club of Social Culture and the Black Socialist Front.[31]

By the late 1930s, the Frente Negra had fallen on hard times. The Frente's internal divisions and the onset of the Vargas dictatorship in 1937 cut short the nascent period of twentieth-century political mobilization in the Afro-Brazilian community. In 1937, President Vargas banned all political parties and ended electoral politics in Brazil. The Frente's growing weaknesses could not withstand the general atmosphere of intellectual and political repression implemented by the Vargas dictatorship, which lasted until 1945. Afro-Brazilians continued to create cultural and civic organizations such as dancing societies, social clubs, and samba schools, but the Vargas regime, which exerted authoritarian centralized power, squelched mass-based political organization among the black community and other opposition groups.[32] The fall of the Vargas dictatorship in 1945, however, did not restore the black political mobilization of the 1930s.

Attempts were made to rekindle the black movement, but black organizations during the Second Republic, 1946-1964, refrained from direct political participation. Instead, black organizations in this era, according to Andrews, focused on "social and cultural activities and educational outreach." Among the most successful was the Black Cultural Association which worked in conjunction with the Black Experimental Theater and the Brazilian People's Theater. The Black Cultural Association supported "lectures, concerts, night courses, a youth division, and took a leading role in coordinating the city's commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of emancipation in 1958." The black organizations of the Second Republic espoused the principles of racial equality but suggested that it be reached through education and reclaiming an Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage. Blacks avoided a distinctly political program and organized political activity during this period, in part because of the painful experience of the Frente Negra in the 1930s. A combination of white reactionary hostility toward black movements, coupled with the beginning of black platform co-optation by Brazilian politicians, also effectively undermined black political organization. As labor unions included black workers in leadership positions by the 1950s, and populist parties incorporated blacks into the institutions of the Republic, black voters supported either the Social Progressive Party or the Brazilian Labor Party. The lack of independent black political action was reinforced by the military coup of 1964 and the destruction of the Second Republic.[33]

Ironically, the military dictatorship's hostility to mass-based political activities forced the public to invent new forms of political action. The dictatorship destroyed the political parties of the Second Republic and implemented Operation Clean-Up-a campaign to eliminate leftists from all political institutions, the military, and the labor movement. The political repression that ensued escalated to episodes of torturing political "subversives." This official political cleansing lasted for a decade until 1974, when the military decided that order had sufficiently been restored. As a result of this judgment, the second phase of military rule allowed distensao, a period of relaxation, and abertura, a political openness that would eventually restore civil society.[34] The period of intense political repression, which made ineffective or eliminated altogether traditional sources of opposition, inadvertently spawned the new social movements-ecclesiastical base committees, human rights groups, indigenous and environmental groups, women's groups, and black movements-which then became influential political agents. The new social movements, in the words of sociologist Howard Winant, "recreated civil society by expanding the terrain of politics." For many people, especially those traditionally excluded from political processes, the new movements provided first political experiences. For the middle-class, dedicated to democratic and egalitarian goals, the new movements provided an alternative to the leftist and populist traditions of the past.[35]

By the late 1970s, a new generation of black movement organizations had emerged during the abertura pursued by the government of President Ernesto Geisel from 1974 to 1979. The growth of the black movement over the last two decades, according to historian Thomas Skidmore, may come "to rival their most ambitious counterparts of the Frente Negra era in the 1930s." Indeed, abertura even permitted taboo topics, such as challenging the myth of "racial democracy," to surface in public debates. The first striking proof of this change appeared with the decision to include race in the 1980 census, which previously had been an excluded category. This event finally allowed the collection of data crucial to any discussion about race relations.[36]

A new black movement surfaced with the creation of the Movimento Negro Unificado (MNU, United Black Movement) in 1978.[37] The MNU is characterized by John Burdick as "the closest the black movement comes to having a national organization." The new black movement today consists of a loose variety of nearly six hundred organizations with participation in almost every state in the country.[38] Ideologically, the movement aims to repudiate whitening, still Brazil's mainstream ideology of race relations; to argue for the virtues of blackness; to teach younger generations of negros their history and culture; and above all, to provoke nonwhite Brazilians into racial consciousness.[39] Organizationally, the movement includes Catholic lay associations, university-associated researchers, state-sponsored agencies, and informal groups of activists.[40]

These groups offer varying approaches to dealing with racial problems. Some organizations, such as the Afro-Brazilian Research Dance Company in Sao Paulo, interpret racism as mainly a cultural problem to be solved "through the development of black identity, based on the rediscovery of one's slave and African roots." For instance, Sao Paulo's Center of Negro Culture and Art has tried to foster black consciousness through classes in capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art. Other organizations, such as the previously mentioned MNU, Group Nzinga, Group of Unity and Black Consciousness, and Group of Black Women, stress that Afro-Brazilian liberation will come only with change in economic, social, and political structures.[41]

The MNU and other explicitly political groups do not deny the value of reclaiming "roots," but they emphasize racial politics as their priority. The MNU has protested political violence, advocated black employee rights as well as the rights of prostitutes, battered women, and street children, and fought for better health care. Between 1986 and 1988, the MNU was a key player in securing a National Convention of Blacks for the Constitution which, along with black grassroots activity, successfully passed a constitutional amendment outlawing racial discrimination.[42] Two Afro-Brazilian representatives, Congressional representatives Benedita da Silva, the first and only black woman elected to national office, and Carlos Alberto de Oliveira, along with Edmilson Valentim and Paulo Paim, made up the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly evolved into the Palmares Foundation, an organization for Afro-Brazilian affairs linked to the Ministry of Culture in 1990.[43]

The new black movement has obtained ambiguous results in its efforts to effect political change. Activists have pressured Brazilian political parties to adopt antiracist planks in their platforms, to form commissions on racial issues, and to nominate black candidates for office. By 1982, Sao Paulo's governor Franco Montoro of the Democratic Movement Party had created the Council for the Participation and Development of the Black Community. His successor, Orestes Quercia appointed negros to high posts and created an office to eliminate racist hiring practices. In 1986, the federal government created "Palmares National Park" in Alagoas to honor the seventeenth century quilombo. At the same time, however, only a handful of Afro-Brazilians served in Congress or were elected to office throughout the 1980s. The MNU and Abdias do Nascimento, a high profile black activist and scholar, responded to this lack of representation by formally rejecting alliances with white-dominated parties. Burdick, on the other hand, points out that black commissions

Some negro activists did continue to ally with progressive parties such as the Worker's Party led by Luis Ignacio da Silva (Lula) or the Democratic Worker's Party led by Leonel Brizola.[45]

While Brazilian politicians may have co-opted the black platform, the new black movement has achieved unprecedented influence in national politics, despite its failure in electoral politics in 1982 and 1986. Ultimately, the new black movement made the issue of race part of the public agenda in the 1980s. This achievement made Afro-Brazilian concerns national ones and therefore achieved one of the movement's principal objectives-to force Brazil to reconsider the race question. The second major task for the black movement, gaining mass Afro-Brazilian support, remained an obstacle.

New black movement groups are composed "primarily of professionals, intellectuals, and upwardly mobile students, a pattern that has characterized the movement from the start." Indeed, as mentioned earlier, class conflict also occurred in the Frente Negra. The leadership of the new black movement is not only middle-class, but also primarily mulato. A negro near Rio commented to John Burdick, "Mulattos have always tried to run away from us. How could they have our culture? They want to use what we have. . . . They don't know what they are." Another negro claimed, "They say they are negros, but they aren't. They haven't suffered. . . . Mulattos still think they are better than us. They think the black man still needs to look to them as masters."[46] This racial tension between mulatos and negros is historically rooted in the slave era and has evolved throughout the centuries as mulatos generally distanced themselves from a black identity through "whitening." And yet, although the mulato middle-class leadership in the new black movement does embrace black identity, poor negros mistrust their intentions because in the Brazilian social ladder, mulatos still occupy a position above negros. In addition, poor and working-class Afro-Brazilians face more imminent challenges than alienation by middle-class mulato leaders. Andrews argues, "their lives are afflicted by so many additional problems, and Brazilian racial ideology offers them such strong incentives to ignore a problem which rarely takes overt, physical form, that relatively few of them respond to the black activists' call for a movement to combat racism."[47] Poor negros are aware of racism, but because of their dire economic situation, they find issues of class politically more important than those of race.

Engaging in black popular culture, unlike joining an organized political group, offers poor and working-class negros a flexible and creative adaptation of "black consciousness." Religion and music, in particular, provide alternative interpretations of Brazilian history and race relations and a welcome escape from everyday realities. The religions of umbanda and pentecostalism, according to Burdick, provide "powerful counterdiscourses to racism." These religions emphasize spiritual transformation and discontinuity with society, allowing negros to step out of their everyday social roles and create a new identity.[48] Music also challenges traditional concepts of race in Brazil. The music, lyrics, and dance of samba originated in slaves' calls to African gods. Today, thousands of favela dwellers join samba schools, which organize parades for Carnaval. Classic samba provides "the vehicle for subtle, ironic commentaries on race relations and society in general"[49] On a broader scale, the recordings of the musical group Olodum, based in Salvador, have gained national influence. The group's music is Afrocentric and addresses Afro-Brazilian history, links to Africa, black diaspora, and black collective racial identity. "Its deliberate evocation of the African diaspora," states Howard Winant, "refuses the official Brazilian racial ideology in all its forms, from Freyre's Lusotropicalism to racial democracy. Acting through popular music, Olodum attempts to reinterpret the question of race, and to valorize black identity, in a manner which addresses millions of Brazilians."[50] Olodum's reclaiming of black identity resembles the consciousness raising of black political groups, but with the advantage of exerting an immense appeal to the masses of negros, precisely what the black movement needs. While creative adaptations of "black consciousness" through popular culture offer escape from the everyday struggle for survival, they may also undermine the possibility of organizing an assault on exploitative structures. In effect, negros today, like slaves in the colonial era, have devised multiple ways to cope with and resist racial discrimination, from militant black protest to reliance on spirit mediums.

The modern Brazilian black movement, most visible through the Frente Negra in the 1930s and the new black movement in the 1970s and 1980s, has changed over time, but two constants have remained: the dominance of a middle-class, mulato leadership, and the inability to mobilize the majority of the Afro-Brazilian population. The two are directly linked, since the leaders have neglected the primary political concerns of poor and working-class blacks-economic survival. If the movement continues to base its efforts on the primacy of race rather than taking into account other social factors affecting negros, then the Brazilian black movement stands virtually no chance of expanding. It is still too early to accurately assess the long-term consequences of the new black movement or to predict its future, but its success will only take place if it develops and identifies a pluralistic consciousness. Racial identity alone cannot provide a basis for collective organizing, for Brazilian black communities are as beset with divisions along class lines as any other community.

Alexandra Puerto, a master's candidate in history at SFSU, studies the social and intellectual history of Latin America and Latin American/United States relations. She received a bachelor of arts from Parsons School of Design in New York in 1990.Puerto will complete her SFSU degree in Fall 1997 and plans to apply to Ph.D. programs.

1. George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in Sao Paulo Brazil, 1888-1988 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 224. The term "racial democracy" was first coined by Brazilian author Gilberto Freyre in the early 1960s. It assumes that widespread miscegenation in Brazil led to nonracist social relations. For this interpretation of Brazilian racial harmony see Gilberto Freyre, The Mansions and the Shanties: the Making of Modern Brazil (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963).

2. For a discussion of the Brotherhood Campaign of 1988, see John Burdick, "Slaves and Wanderers: Negros in the Religious Arena," in Looking for God in Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 156-160.The Portuguese term negro translates to black. See George Reid Andrews, 249-58 for a discussion of Brazilian racial terminology. Zumbi was one of the chiefs of Palmares, the maroon society of Alagoas, who supposedly demonstrated unyielding resistance to the Portuguese until his defeat and death. Today, Zumbi is the central figure in the negro version of umbanda.

3. John Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," Report on the Americas 25 (February 1992): 22.

4. Burdick, "Slaves and Wanderers," 157-59.

5. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 25. Serious discrepancies exist in estimates of the Afro-Brazilian population. Brazil's census lists it as 5.84 percent, the Britannica Yearbook at 33 percent, and the black movement at about 45 percent of the population. The number is hard to measure because those of mixed ancestry usually describe themselves as white or mulato rather than black.

6. An exhaustive review of relevant literature is beyond the scope of this essay; however, a brief list of important works in English follows. On slavery see A. J. R. Russell-Wood, "Iberian Expansion and the Issue of Black Slavery," American Historical Review 83 (February 1978): 16-42; Stuart B. Schwartz, "Plantations and Peripheries, c. 1580-1750," in Colonial Brazil, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 67-144; Stuart B. Schwartz, "The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil: Bahia 1684-1745," Hispanic American Historical Review 54 (1974): 603-65; Stuart B. Schwartz, "Recent Trends in the Study of Slavery in Brazil," Luso-Brazilian Review 25 (Summer 1988): 1-25. Thomas Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Racial Thought (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), is a seminal work on Brazilian racial thought and provides an excellent bibliography on the topic. Gilberto Freyre and Florestan Fernandes are the two most influential Brazilian scholars on the study of race relations in Brazil. See Freyre, New World in the Tropics (New York: 1959); Freyre, The Mansions and the Shanties: The Making of Modern Brazil, (New York: 1963); Fernandes, "Beyond Poverty: The Negro and the Mulatto in Brazil," in Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America, ed. Robert Brent Toplin (New York: 1974); Fernandes, "Immigration and Race Relations in Sao Paulo," in Race and Class in Latin America, ed. Magnus Morner (New York: 1970); Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society (New York: 1969); and Fernandes, "The Negro in Brazilian Society: Twenty-Five Years Later," in Brazil: Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Maxine L. Margolis and William E. Carter (New York: 1979). The significant works on Afro-Brazilian culture produced by anthropologists are far too extensive to cite here.

7. See Andrews; and Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement."

8. In general, Brazilians determine three racial categories: branco, white, a person of more or less unmixed European ancestry; mulato, a person of mixed ancestry; and negro or preto, black; a person of unmixed African ancestry. The term negro, however, has become increasingly politicized by the black movement and now connotes a person with any visible African ancestry, mixed or unmixed. see Andrews, 263-64.

9. Stuart B. Schwartz, "Plantations and Peripheries, c. 1580-1750," in Colonial Brazil, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 81.

10. Andrews, 28.

11. Andrews, 29-32.

12. Andrews, 29.

13. Andrews, 35.

14. Andrews, 39.

15. John Burdick, "The Myth of Racial Democracy," Report on the Americas 25 (February 1992): 41.

16. Burdick, "The Myth of Racial Democracy," 41, 42.

17. Burdick, "The Myth of Racial Democracy," 42. Historian Carl Degler in his book Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the Unites States (New York, 1971), formulated the "mulatto escape hatch" theory. It posits that those of mixed ancestry enjoy opportunities for upward mobility generally denied to those of pure African ancestry or dark skin.

18. Andrews, 145.

19. Abdias do Nascimento and Elisa Larkin Nascimento, Africans in Brazil: A Pan African Perspective (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1992), 15.

20. Andrews, 128.

21. Nascimento, 15; Andrews, 149.

22. Andrews, 148.

23. The Palmares Civic Center in Sao Paulo, named after the seventeenth-century quilombo of Palmares, was founded as a community center for blacks in 1927. In 1928, it initially created a campaign to overrule the government decree banning blacks from enlisting in the state militia. For a description of Palmares Civic Center activity, see Andrews, 145-46.

24. Andrews, 151.

25. Nascimento, 15.

26. Andrews, 149.

27. Andrews, 149, 150.

28. Andrews, 136.

29. See Thomas Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 64-69, for an explanation of the "whitening thesis."

30. Andrews, 136, 242.

31. Andrews, 152-155.

32. Andrews, 181.

33. Andrews, 188, 186, 187-188. For a discussion of the Black Experimental Theater, see Nascimento, 24-29.

34. Andrews, 189.

35. Howard Winant, "Rethinking Race in Brazil," Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (February 1992): 185-86.

36. Thomas Skidmore, "Race and Class in Brazil: Historical Perspectives," Luso-Brazilian Review 20 (Summer 1983), 110.

37. Winant, 187.

38. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 24, 23.

39. Skidmore, "Race and Class in Brazil: Historical Perspectives," 111.

40. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 23.

41. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 24. For a discussion of black women in the MNU, the Black Women's Collective, and the CECF's Black Women's Commission, and their involvement in the feminist movement, see Sonia Alvarez, Engendering Democracy: Women's Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 232-34.

42. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 24.

43. Nascimento, 182.

44. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 25.

45. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 25.

46. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 25, 26.

47. Andrews, 199.

48. Burdick, "Slaves and Wanderers," 147.

49. Burdick, "Brazil's Black Consciousness Movement," 27.

50. Winant, 190.