Free The Afro Brazilian History Essay Sample

The slave trade between the Africans and the Brazilians resulted to Afro-Brazilian people. The slaves mostly originated from West Africa and the Bantu-speaking communities in Mozambique and Congo. The afro-Brazilians faced many challenges in Brazil even after the ban on slavery. Their religion was banned, and the Portuguese wanted to do away with their culture, leading to the criminalization of cannabis that was associated with the Africans. The many European immigrants in Brazil led to an increase in population and social issues began cropping up such as negative stereotypes on Africans. The economic gap between different races continued to widen. In a bid to escape the harsh conditions by the Portuguese, the slaves who managed to escape came together and formed the Quilombo.
They had their culture intact, and they even incorporated the Brazilian influence in their dance, a popular one being the capoeira. The Portuguese were very aggressive in the slave trade, but later some of them like the bandeiras abandoned the trade in search of minerals. The Portuguese were very eager to acquire the Dom Joao Island from the Chinese, but they were later driven away by the Japanese. The afro-Brazilians were inspired by the civil rights movements in the United States and in the 1980s they began the Pan-African movement in Africa and the black power movement in United States and Caribbean.
The bandeiras comprised of Portuguese, who settled in san Paulo back in the seventeenth century. Initially, they used to deal in the slave trade but later they ventured into gold and diamond mining. They used various tactics to acquire slaves from the regions they went in search of minerals. They would set tribes against each other making them weak, thus were able to enslave the two tribes. In instances where they did not get enough people to work in the mines, they would raid the communities and set their houses ablaze and thereafter capturing them as they moved out of the houses.
The African descendants in Brazil did not forget their culture completely. In the sixteenth century, they invented the capoeira dance which also incorporated the Brazilian culture. The dance was probably the only survival hope for the slaves who had to put up with the harsh conditions in the plantations. The Brazilian economy mainly depended on sugar cane farming and processing thus there was a need for workers in the farms and factories. The best source of the workers was the slaves who were imported from Africa. The slaves worked under very harsh conditions, and that is why they invented the capoeira to keep their minds away from the Portuguese’s brutality. The slaves who escaped the Portuguese rule established their settlements far from their masters, and they developed the capoeira even better to be able to fight their enemies. Capoeira was no longer a survival too but a martial art.
Dom Joao was an island that was exclusively inhabited by the Chinese before the Portuguese missionaries began to settle towards the end of the seventeenth century. Later the Portuguese soldiers began protecting the island, and they even collected taxes. They established schools to educate the Chinese and other residents. Following the invasion of Japanese in china in 1938, the Portuguese were driven out of the island by the Japanese but later china was able to reoccupy Dom Joao.
Quilombo was founded by people of African origin mostly the slaves who escaped from the inhumane acts of their masters in the nineteenth century. Later the settlements provided shelter for other minority groups in Brazil such as the Jews, Arabs and Europeans who were oppressed during the colonization. The Quilombo was said to be the most active resistance from slavery. Many of these settlements were located near plantations thus were able to help more slaves escape but the Portuguese used to destroy them.
In conclusion, the slave trade in Brazil led to social issues like racism. The Africans, who were taken as slaves were treated very badly by their masters, and they had to get away from the slavery. They had to find ways of defending themselves and have been very active in condemning the acts of racism.