Afro-Brazilian - Evolution of The Black Population in Brazil

Evolution of The Black Population in Brazil

Before abolition, the growth of the black population was mainly due to the acquisition of new slaves from Africa. In Brazil, the black population had a negative growth. This was due to the low life expectancy of the slaves, which was around 7 years. It was also because of the imbalance between the number of men and women. The vast majority of slaves were men, black women being a minority. Slaves rarely had a family and the unions between the slaves was hampered due to incessant hours of work. Another very important factor was that black women were held by white and mixed-race men. The Portuguese colonization, largely composed of men with very few women resulted in a social context in which white men disputed indigenous or African women. According to Gilberto Freyre in colonial Brazilian society, the few African women who arrived quickly became concubines, and in some cases, officially wives of the Portuguese settlers. In large plantations of sugar cane and in the mining areas, the white master often choose the most beautiful black slaves to work inside the house. These slaves were forced to have sex with their master, producing a very large Mulato population. The English diplomat and ethnologist Richard Francis Burton wrote that "Mulatism became a necessary evil" in the captaincies in the interior of Brazil. He noticed a "strange aversion to marriage" in the 19th century Minas Gerais, arguing that the colonists preferred to have quick relationships with black slaves rather than a marriage.

According to Darcy Ribeiro the process of miscegenation between whites and blacks in Brazil, in contrast to an idealized racial democracy and a peaceful integration, was a process of sexual domination, in which the white man imposed an unequal relationship using violence because of his prime condition in society. As an official wife or as a concubine or subjected to a condition of sexual slave, the black woman was the responsible for the growth of the "parda" population. The non-White population has grown mainly through sexual intercourse between the black female slave and the Portuguese master, which, together with assortative mating, explains the high degree of European ancestry in the black Brazilian population and the high degree of African ancestry in the white population.

Historian Manolo Florentino refutes the idea that a large part of the Brazilian people is a result of the forced relationship between the rich Portuguese colonizer and the Amerindian or African slaves. According to him, most of the Portuguese settlers in Brazil were poor adventurers from Northern Portugal who immigrated to Brazil alone. Most of them were men (the proportion was eight or nine men for each woman) and then it was natural that they had relationships with the Amerindian or Black women. According to him the mixture of races in Brazil, more than a sexual domination of the rich Portuguese master over the poor slaves, was a mixture between the poor Portuguese settlers with the Amerindian and Black women.

The Brazilian population of more evident black physiognomy is more strongly present along the coast, due to the high concentration of slaves working on sugar cane plantations. Another region that had a strong presence of Africans was the mining areas in the center of Brazil. Gilberto Freyre wrote that the states with strongest African presence were Bahia and Minas Gerais. Freyre wrote, however, that there's no region in Brazil where the black people have not penetrated. Many blacks fled to the hinterland of Brazil, including the Northern region, and met Amerindian and Mameluco populations. Many of these acculturated blacks were accepted in these communities and taught them the Portuguese language and the European culture. In these areas the blacks were "agents for transmitting European culture" to those isolated communities in Brazil. Many blacks mixed with the Amerindian and caboclo women.