Chica Da Silva - The Myth

The Myth

Chica was a symbol of Brazil's so called "racial democracy." Currently, however, scholars maintain that she used miscegenation and her connections as a tool to achieve a higher social status, as did other African Brazilians at the time. Historian Júnia Ferreira Furtado sustains that concubinage and marriage between white male and black female in colonial Brazilian society was a way found by the enslaved to change their social position and to escape racism:

Manumission, rather than the beginning for the formation of a positive black identity, was the beginning of a process of acceptance of values of the elite, in order to insert them (former slaves) as well as their descendants in this society. Sex was decisive to the relative facilitated access to freedom and concubinage with white men offered advantages to black women because, once free, they reduced the stigma of color and of slavery for them and for their descendants.

João Fernandes and Chica da Silva's relationship was a scandal in colonial Brazilian society. Chica da Silva, formerly enslaved, had become one of the most powerful women in colonial America. Chica was banished from the parish church, which was reserved for Caucasians only. To show the locals Chica's power, João Fernandes built a luxurious church attended just by herself. However, as Furtado discloses, Chica attended brotherhoods exclusive to whites, as a way to try to fit into the status quo and be aware of its schemes against her and her people.

Contrary to what was propagated, Chica also had enslaved workers and there is only one reference that shows that she granted freedom to one of them. Historians view this as the main difference between the experience of African Americans in Brazil and their counterparts in the United States. While in the US, African American enslaved individuals had a more unified movement, in Brazil they tried to integrate into mainstream society as mixed-race people saw that "whitening" themselves was a way to escape from their enslaved past. Although the enslaved didn't have too much of a choice if the master or mistress decided to use them as sex objects, they took advantage of the situation, especially in regard to their offsprings who were part European. The colonial Portuguese mentality was also more tolerant than the US Anglo-Saxon one on race when it had to do with their mixed-race offsprings. Whereas Anglo-Saxon slave holders forced their own race-mixed offprings into slavery and sold them to other masters as well, making a profit from them, Luso-Brazilians generally freed their own mixed-race children and often granted them nobility titles. This happened perhaps because of the lack of Portuguese women that migrated to Brazil.

Chica, as the other freed female slaves, achieved her freedom, loved, had children and raised them up socially sought to reduce the mark that the condition of Parda (brown) and former slave had to herself and to her descendants.