Plantas de la diáspora africana en la agricultura del Brasil

Abstract

DOI: 10.12957/transversos.2017.29994 This paper examines the plants of African origin that became central to subsistence and economy in the era of plantation slavery. Three centers of agricultural domestication in sub-Saharan Africa contributed to the diversity of plant resources that sustained millions subsequently swept into transatlantic enslavement. The establishment of these crops in the Americas occurred in plantation subsistence fields, dooryard gardens, and in agricultural plots of maroon communities.Emphasis is placed on African botanical knowledge and its expression in landscapes of bondage. These reflected the food preferences and cultural identity of the enslaved. In profiling the African plants established in the Americas, this paper seeks to correct a distortion in narratives of the Columbian Exchange, which remain centered on European agency, crops of Amerindian and Asian origin and Africa as a backwater of global plant transfers.