Identities in Flux. Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil by Niyi Afolabi

Abstract

Reviewed by: Identities in Flux. Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil by Niyi Afolabi Wesley Costa de Moraes Afolabi, Niyi. Identities in Flux. Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil. SUNY P, 2021. 284 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4384-8250-7. The history of race relations in Brazil is distinctive: the country was the main destination of African slaves in the Americas and the last one in the region to abolish slavery in 1888. It also crafted the longstanding belief that racial and cultural miscegenation led to the creation of a truly racism-free society. Quite understandably, to this day the enduring reality of deprivation and violence affecting people of darker skin in Brazil is hard to digest and even harder to change. Niyi Afolabi notes that the scholarly production scrutinizing this reality has mostly perceived the condition of Afro Brazilians as static, or denoting resignment. Indeed, evidence demonstrates that they remain in the destitute social location assigned to them by a highly stratified society. Nevertheless, Afro-Brazilians have used multiple strategies to defy such rigid patterns of social and geographical immobility. The author explores some Afro-Brazilian icons to reveal their frantic struggle for movement in the social landscape. Within a self-misleading color-blind national ideology, regarding these icons as static, or yielding, diminishes their symbolic importance. Pragmatic education should afford a less myopic understanding of Afro Brazilian history towards debunking the "mythical racial paradise" that is Brazil (232). Afolabi initially lays the historical groundwork of the sociocultural, political and economic formation of Brazil. The conceptualization of Brazil as racially harmonious begins with the Portuguese promoting themselves as colonizers with a special disposition to mix with other races. It is in everyday realities that, up to this date, Afro Brazilians experience rife racism and how it perpetuates their sacrifices for the benefit of the whiter classes. Reflecting the centuries-long harm done, denying an open debate on race relations crystalized the acceptance of inferiority by many Afro Brazilians. It is this passivity that ultimately the author sets out to redress by replacing static conformism with intense movement —a rebellious flux. Following a chronological order, chapter 2 presents the first icon: Zumbi dos Palmares, the leader of a 17th century settlement of runaway slaves whose death is now commemorated as a national holiday. Zumbi has been regarded both as hero and villain, and it is precisely this realm of contradictions that the author explores in its fluidity. As Zumbi strived to create a society where all were equal, his principles were and are easily incorporated into discourses preaching miscegenation. The stark [End Page 203] contradiction is that Zumbi was considered a threat and later killed, while the runaway community was eventually destroyed by successive military invasions. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the only female Afro Brazilian in the book, Xica da Silva, who lived for 15 years with a Caucasian diamond contractor in an out-ofwedlock relationship that bore thirteen children. Xica's life is hugely popular, with novels, soap operas and movies telling the story of how this 18th-century scandalous relationship allowed her to gain independence and, illustrating Afolabi's sense of identities in flux, some social power, although with blatant restrictions. Her life is surrounded by controversies and myth, and the author contends that the focus on her sexuality fails to acknowledge her as a true heroine in the context of Afro Brazilian migrating identities, of which particularly her mixed-race children would benefit. In chapter 4, Afolabi explores the character of Pedro Archanjo in Tenda dos milagres, a novel written by Jorge Amado. A fervid advocate of Afro Brazilian culture, Amado was born and raised in the cradle of African presence and influence in Brazil: the state of Bahia. Archanjo is based on real-life Manuel Querino, who is considered the very first Afro Brazilian historian. Querino extensively documented the African customs and contributions, challenging the Eurocentric Brazilian history and decoding the migrating identities between Africa and Brazil. As Afolabi points out, Querino's work is yet to be fully recognized, and Amado's novel is a noteworthy endeavor in that direction. In chapter 5, the author examines the Brazilian version of the Greek myth of...