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The fight against racism in Brazil: Abdias do Nascimento and the Movimento Negro (Black Movement)
The fight against racism in Brazil:
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by Zélia Roelofse-Campbell
Head, Unisa Centre for Latin American Studies


Senator Abdias do Nascimento has been a lifelong champion of the rights of Black Brazilians. His work over seven decades1 has been an indefatigable struggle not only for the descendants of African slaves in the diaspora in the Americas, but one of solidarity with victims of racism the world over, including in Africa itself.

The solidarity which bound Black Brazilians to the fights against apartheid was of long standing (Nascimento 1998) but was formalized in 1982 in a motion at the Third Congress of Black Culture in The Americas2, which proclaimed 1982 as the International Year for the Mobilization of Sanctions against South Africa (Afrodiáspora 1983:21). At the same time, support for the independence of Namibia was affirmed (Afrodiáspora 1983:26).

In a motion on the Year for the Mobilization of Sanctions against South Africa, it was deplored that `Brazil was among the countries which were responsible for the relative failure of the sanctions suggested by the UN' since `not only in the diplomatic sphere, but also economically, Brazil maintains close ties with apartheid South Africa' (see Afrodiáspora 1983:21). Nascimento went even further, accusing Brazil of being an accomplice of apartheid, denouncing the fact that Brazil still maintained relations with South Africa3 (see Nascimento 1983).

Nascimento was a member of the Commission of External Relations of the Chamber of Deputies at Congress. In that capacity he made many speeches and tabled many motions in order to mobilize Congress to act against South Africa. In one of these pronouncements he deplored the situation, that Brazil, with the majority of the population being of African origin, with deeply African cultural traditions, could be a country that was helping to sustain the apartheid system (Nascimento 1985:42). Soon after his inauguration, President José Sarney received a delegation of Black leaders at Uberaba, Minas Gerais, on 3 May 1985, when he was requested to cut relations with South Africa (O Globo 1985-05-04).

That same year President José Sarney adhered fully to the UN boycott against South Africa, with Law No 91.524 of 9 August (Saraiva 1996:215). By this decree it was forbidden to have any cultural, artistic or sporting interchange; and trade in arms or oil and its derivatives was also forbidden. Already from 1974 onwards, as the Brazilian Foreign Office began to define its African policy in more detail, there had been a continuous flow of official condemnation of apartheid. At the same time, Brazilian officialdom always maintained that Brazil was a model of racial democracy with a total lack of discrimination.

However, Professor Nascimento dismisses those declarations 'because they are all forms of the traditional hypocrisy of Brazilian paternalism', pointing out that they form part of 'a deceiving discourse, a rhethoric which has been used even by the president' -- an allusion to President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's declaration that he too has 'um pé na cozinha' (a foot in the kitchen), a phrase used to indicate a degree of African ancestry, but an expression found unfortunate and pejorative by Black Brazilians. 'For, if the president indeed has African blood, then he should have the courage to admit it and take pride in it', said the professor, adding that 'this racist attitude is the Brazilian way' (Nascimento 1998).

Nascimento goes even further as he vehemently declares:

What has been happening is that in Brazil Blacks are so destitute that they have paid a high price; for I maintain that Blacks in Brazil are worse off than their counterparts in South Africa. Unlike in South Africa or the United States, in Brazil Blacks do not have the same legitimacy for their struggle. [This is because], although in theory discrimination does not exist, in practice one just has to visit the favelas to see that their situation here is far worse. The conditions of extreme poverty ... The housing situation of the black people [in Brazil] is worse than [that] of animals (Nascimento 1998).

One of the most crucial attacks on Black dignity in Brazil is, according to Nascimento, the anti-vagrancy laws:

Since the time of the First Republic [1889] soon after the abolition of slavery, there is this image of vadiagem -- vagrancy, which has been associated with the Blacks in Brazil. Vagrancy did indeed occur when the slaves were set free, simply because they had no jobs and nowhere to go. But this has become an instrument to reinforce the concept of Blacks as persons with no fixed abode, no decent employment, and no means of supporting their families. And what has been happening? In the guise of law and order these persons accused of vagrancy can be imprisoned as a threat to society. It was easy to declare that these 'vagabonds' should be imprisoned; and no judicial order or anything was necessary in this context. So the Black population became the victim of this sheer arbitrariness and injustice. And this has been happening for over a century; it is an old struggle. As a result the struggle here is very difficult. You will notice that we have achieved little.

In fact Gonzalez (1983:26) states that 'the Law Infractions Code, in its Art. 159, reads that the practice of vagrancy (referring to unemployment) results in prison; so, it is easy to see that it is not permitted for a Black worker to be out of work. It is not by chance that the jail population in our country is constituted mainly of Afro-Brazilians'. This is corroborated by Nascimento when he asserts that in Brazil the justice system is completely White. He goes even further, calling it biased, 'sometimes to a criminal degree' (Nascimento 1998).

It is statistically confirmed that far more Blacks than Whites get convicted in Brazil.4 Statistics also show that for the same crime the Black person always receives a tougher sentence than his/her White counterpart, as usually they cannot afford to pay a lawyer. A lawyer paid by the state to defend them rarely shows interest in their cases, so they become victims even of the legal system. Even though in a democracy the judiciary is supposed to be the most free, the most impartial branch of government, in Brazil it is the opposite: it is indeed biased (Nascimento 1998).

For years the Senator has tabled a bill in the Congress which seeks indirectly to give a degree of support and compensation to the Black population (Compensatory action bill). But this bill is still pending:

While it seeks to redress certain injustices, for instance on the labour front, [where there is discrimination], with the issue of 'a good appearance' [as a prerequisite for job seekers, etc.] [the bill] is still pending. We know that such a bill will never be approved; however, we have to keep presenting it even without hope. [It does not pass] Because [if approved] it would mean a cut in 'their' privileges. And they do not want to give up anything, because this is another characteristic of Brazilian society: it is cruel, perverse, and has no generosity whatsoever (Nascimento 1998).

Gonzalez (1983:25) maintains that:

Racial selection is already seen in advertisements for employment when they require 'good appearance'. This expression, we know perfectly well, means: 'we do not accept Blacks'. It is not by chance that 83,1% of Black women and 92,4% of Black men are concentrated in occupations connected with non-qualified manual work. Or 4/5 of the Afro-Brazilian labor force fall within occupations characterized by low income and school levels.

Quoting Nelson Rodrigues, the famous White Brazilian playwright who was a supporter of the struggle for racial equality, the Senator bitterly declared that a definition of Brazilian racism is 'that here they do not have the guts to burn up the Negro in the street, or to have a constitutional law as in the case of apartheid; here the Black person loses his/her dignity; here the Black person who fights for the rights of his or her people is a marginal; he is not a hero, like in the United States (Nascimento 1998):

This means that the struggle's dignity is taken away. This is far worse, because here we have to fight as if our struggle were a clandestine one. [I am] Not [referring to] the struggle for civil rights or human rights of the whole population. But we [the Black Movement] are always running the risk of being subject to a National Security law, like the one in force until a few years ago, whereby we could be imprisoned like a 'common criminal' who would be a threat to social peace and public order. That is why the situation here is worse, because it deprives the person not only of their humanity but also of their dignity. As a consequence, the struggle here makes no sense because, according to 'them' there is nothing to struggle about, for they there are as it were in a fortress, invested with a monopoly of the economy, with every kind of power, the justice system, military structures, and all this in a country which was built up by Blacks. This is not an assertion made by us, but by White historians and sociologists. Meanwhile Blacks have hardly any representation [in government]; at the moment we are three Black senators. A few years ago there were none. In this context, it is absurd to speak of a democracy. Democracy does not exist here (Nascimento 1998).

In education, the situation is also a cause for concern:

For example, in the United States there are many White people who help and have real solidarity with the Black cause, and also provide for means being channelled so that the Blacks are able to organize themselves. For instance, a Black university has been in existence for more than a hundred years. The result is that there [in the US] they [the Blacks] have their educational institutions, obviously through a great struggle, but still the fact is that the possibility is there; but here there is nothing of the kind. In Brazil one could not even contemplate the thought of having a black university.
It would create quite a scandal [to try and create a Black university in Brazil] because here 'the university is for all'. However, although the Brazilian population of African origin amounts to 70 per cent of the total population, one finds only two per cent of Afro-Brazilians enrolled at universities (Nascimento 1998).

But there is another difficulty, namely that many persons of African origin strive to be White and do not want to admit their origins:

Indeed, this is another type of pressure. But this is also the result of what is happening: there is a filtering of resources which might benefit those who are of a lighter skin colour, those who abide by a European outlook. The African languages were wiped out. (For part of genocide is to destroy culture, and especially the languages.) Soon we shall be commemorating 500 years of genocide.5 But we have been accompanying the struggle against apartheid in South Africa not only with total solidarity, but also with great anxiety on behalf of Brazilian Blacks (Nascimento 1998).

Abdias do Nascimento has been connected to the Black Movement all his life. As a leader of the Movement, however, he is modest about his own achievements:

You must understand that although I did [play a leading role], this was only possible because I received influences and experiences from the past. From then until now the movement has had many high and low points. In the decade of the thirties there was a huge mass movement -- the Brazilian Black Front (Frente Negra Brasileira). This movement was a political party. But with the inception of the Estado Novo, with the dictatorship [of Getúlio Vargas] all political parties were abolished, including the Frente Negra (see the review essay on p. 82 of this journal). As all protest and demonstrations were forbidden, I then had the idea of expressing our views through the means of theatre. And that was of course allowed, because outwardly theatre is pure entertainment, there is song, and dance, etc. However, our kind of theatre was a battle front. Its explicit objective was to combat racism and racial discrimination. Not the kind of theatre that used Black characters as secondary personages, always pejorative: Mae Preta (Black Mother) weeping, or the little Black boy being kicked, for example. Our theatre was focused on all types of racial discrimination. We never had sufficient funds to have our own premises, but performed all over in conventional theatres. It worked as a Black experimental theatre, and it was more like a psychological call, in order to draw the attention of Blacks and Whites (Nascimento 1998).

At that time the Whites thought that Black people were all like the folkloric types being portrayed in the traditional theatre. The objective of the new Black Theatre was to show that the Black people had cultural traditions, a history, had a humanity. But the problem with the majority of Blacks was and is apathy. They are not even aware of their own rights. 'For, having been ill-treated for so long', Nascimento (1998) argues, they took for granted that they did not have any rights, that they had been born that way. There are many Black people who would never dream that they too could fill a public office, or apply for jobs in the public sector. They simply perpetuated the prejudices the Whites had planted in their heads. Having been colonized, they only wanted to copy the colonizer. It was a never-ending struggle.

So Nascimento's aim was to mobilize the Black people to fight for their rights, to free themselves from apathy. They were, so to speak, walking around with their heads bowed, a sign of acceptance of the situation, as if they were drugged. And the drug, Nascimento asserts, was the myth of a racial democracy:

In Brazil racial democracy is proclaimed in such a way that Blacks didn't have the courage to oppose it. The rhetoric was too strong. And they knew that, by opposing it, they would afterwards carry a stigma, like me -- the stigma of agitator, provocateur, and so on, to this day. In the Senate my discourse was always against colonialism, not only outside, but also within Brazil, because we are a colonized people. But my conscience is clear: I am not doing anything against anyone; I am only doing things in favour of my people. Therefore I have no hesitations. I have been incarcerated on various occasions, was both at the Rio and the S'o Paulo Penitentiaries. I was also exiled for thirteen years. And I do not have any bitterness about it. On the contrary, in the thirteen years spent abroad I had the opportunity of taking our struggle outside of our borders, to the United States and Africa; because even Africa was taken in by the idea of a racial democracy (Nascimento 1998).

Abdias do Nascimento is consistent and relentless when it comes to defending the integrity of Black values. Even internationally renowed personalities, like Jorge Amado, have to be understood in the light of this critique. Indeed, Amado has been criticized before for portraying Black characters in his books in an obtuse way, if not through the prism of Marxist ideology (Rodrigues 1997:251). Nascimento explains his point of view:

Recently a meeting of the PALOPS (Portuguese Language Countries) took place in Bahia. I participated as an observer from the Senate. After a meeting the Ministers got together informally. They were all full of praise for Jorge Amado, who is one of the proponents of the so-called racial democracy. At a certain point I could not contain myself and pointed out that they were speaking of a person who had only defiled, sullied the Black race, in spite of his reputation as a great divulger of Black culture in Brazil; one has just to analyse his books to see that the Black female characters are always whores. And the Black priestesses are portrayed as women totally lacking in ethics and moral values, as they are portrayed as sex fiends, baring their breasts, swaying their buttocks, foaming at the mouth for sex. This when the terreiro6 is actually a place of the greatest dignity and decorum. The African woman is thus erroneously portrayed in beautiful prose, and the people are being poisoned [with those images] by anti-African prejudice, which is then being entrenched, because it is already there. Because [what is being portrayed] is not Black, let alone African (Nascimento 1998).

If the questions raised by Nascimento were only related to pigmentation, there would be a danger of over-simplification, as he explains:

People want to diminish the issue as if it were only a question of skin colour. But it goes beyond mere pigmentation, we are talking about a civilization, about African origin. This is the issue, to assume that there is a culture as there is in Europe and other parts. Many people think I am crazy. But what I do is not based on wild ideas, but on documented material. People of a closed Western culture do not accept the beauty, truth of another culture which is different than that of Rome (Nascimento 1998).

But truth can be expressed in many different ways. You just have to look at Ancient Egypt: everyone expresses culture and religion according to their own perspective. This is why I am always accusing our universities; my discourse has been always anti-academia. In spite of this I was awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Nascimento 1998).

Concluding remarks

Professor Abdias do Nascimento has come to be regarded as a symbol of the struggle for the rights of Afro-Brazilians. At the same time he is a passionate advocate for full recognition and readoption of African culture by Black Brazilians.
Prof Nascimento has seen the Black Movement grow from a small political party to a much broader coalition of cultural and political organization nationwide.
He has authored many pieces of legislation placed before the Congress.
But he has not merely been a politician, he is also an artist. His ideas have been expressed on canvass, in plays, poems, articles and books. He has been singleminded in his pursuit of justice for Black Brazilians.
The Black Movement in Brazil, which may have started as a wing of a political party, is today much wider. It is seen to represent several organizations and individuals whose main purpose is the social advancement of Afro-Brazilians and the eradication of racism. Prof Nascimento's efforts are beginning to bear fruit. However, the road ahead for Afro-Brazilians remains an arduous one.

NOTES

According to the Senator, the Black Movement began in the decade of the 20s, when Abdias do Nascimento was only fifteen years old, but was already engaged in the struggle (Nascimento 1998).
The Congress was held in São Paulo, from 21 to 27 August 1982.
These relations were subsequently scaled down considerably, and an Ambassador was not sent until 1990. However, trade relations continued and air links were maintained. At the same time, Pretoria maintained a full embassy in Brasília as well as a consulate-general in São Paulo and a consulate in Rio de Janeiro.
See Roelofse-Campbell & Campbell 1996:21--22.
See Nascimento, 1979 for an explanation of the concept of genocide from the Senator's perspective.
Terreiro is any locale used to perform religious rites of African origin.
REFERENCES

Afrodiáspora. 1983. 'Nota: 1982, Ano Internacional de Mobilizaçao de Sançoes contra a África do Sul' and 'Nota: o Dia Internacional de Namibia'. Ano 1, n· 1, janeiro-abril. pp 21--25 and 26--32 respectively.

Gonzalez, Lélia. 1983. 'Brazilian support of the Namibian Cause: Difficulties and Possibilities'. Afrodiáspora, Ano 1 (Volume 1) No 2, pp 24--32.

Nascimento, Abdias do. 1979. Mixture or Massacre? Essays in the Genocide of a Black People. Buffalo: Afrodiáspora.

Nascimento, Abdias do. 1983. 'Brasil, cúmplice do apartheid' Folha de São Paulo 25--05.

Nascimento, Abdias do. 1985. 'Pronunciamento' [Pronouncement to Congress] in Brasília, 11 April. In Nascimento, Abdias do, Povo Negro Rio de Janeiro: IPEAFRO, pp 41--2.

Nascimento, Abdias do. 1998. In conversation with Zélia Roelofse-Campbell. Rio de Janeiro, 21 September.

Nascimento, Elisa Larkin. 1980. Pan-Africanism and South America. Emergence of a Black Rebellion. Buffalo: Afrodiáspora.

O Globo. 1985. 'Negros pedem rompimento com a África do Sul'. 4 May.

Rodrigues, Ironides. 1997. 'Sebastiao Rodrigues Alves e a inquietação social do negro brasileiro' Thoth n· 2, maio-agosto, pp 251--281.

Roelofse-Campbell, Zélia & Campbell, Keith. 1996. 'State and society in the fight against crime in Brazil'. Acta Criminologica Vol 9 No 1 pp 20--32.

Saraiva, José Flávio Sombra. 1996. O Lugar da África. Brasília: Editora Universidade de Brasília.
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