Upload
buitruc
View
215
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
The Making of Kongo Identity in the American Diaspora: Case Studies from Brazil and Cuba
Interrogating what conditions informed the creation, re-making or
even the forgetting of African ethnic and cultural identities in the Americas
is an issue that scholars from Melville Herskovits onwards have wrestled
with.1 Although the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and lately the
partially completed African Origins Project have contributed significantly to
our knowledge of the African homeland and the ethno-linguistic origins of
significant numbers of enslaved Africans, linking enslaved Africans in the
Americas to their places of origin in Africa and the historical conditions of
their enslavement remains a daunting task.2 The problem is even more
challenging if the focus is on Central Africans who appear in the records
under broad ethnic or regional categories such as nacão/nacíon (nation)
“Angola,” “Congo” or even “Cassange.”3
Since identities are situational, examining the central African
background of these enslaved Africans is a crucial first step in understanding
1 For a recent attempt to reconsider the Herskovits syncretic model see, for example, Andre Apter, “Herskovits Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnatinal Studies, vol. 1, no. 3 (1991), pp. 235-260. 2 The recent studies of Henry Lovejoy offer exciting examples of what is possible if these databases are fully exploited. See, for example, Henry Lovejoy, “The Registers of Liberated Africans of Havana Slave Trade Commission: Transcription, Methodology and Statistical Analysis,” African Economic History, v. 38 (2010), 107-135; Henry Lovejoy, “Old Oyo Influences on the Transformation of Lucumi Identity in Colonial Cuba,” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2012. See also Gwendolyn Hall, Africans in America. 3 See, for example, Camilo Agostini, “Africanos e a Formaão de Identidades no Além-Mar: Um Estudo de Etnicidade na Experiência Africano no Rio de Janeiro do Século XIX,” História & Perspectivas, Uberlândia (39): 2008, pp. 241-259
identity formation in the Americas. The history of the Kingdom of Kongo,
the Kingdom of Loango, the Kingdom of Ndongo and Portuguese Africa (all
located in modern Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and even parts of
Republic of Congo) from where these enslaved Africans originated is well
represented in extant primary sources beginning from the late 1400’s
through the last years of the slave trade. Moreover, extensive accounts of
the cultural practices of Africans in these kingdoms are also available.
Enslaved central Africans in Brazil and Cuba left their own cultural marks
and these have also entered the historical records.
Exploring specific historical events and descriptions of cultural
practices recorded during the period of the slave trade must be the entry
points for assessing whether enslaved Africans had strong attachments to
their place of birth in Africa, its history and culture. Records of these events
allow us to interrogate to what extent the African background may have
informed identity formation in the Americans. During the past two decades,
several Brazilian scholars have examined the links between African history
and Afro-Brazilian identity formation.4 The general consensus, however, is
to view these claims as political motivated. In fact Suzel Ana Riley went so 4 For one of the earliest studies see Elizabeth W. Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). See also Agostini, “Africanos e a Formaão de Identidades no Além-Ma,” pp. 241-259. See also Reginaldo Prandi, “De Africano de Afro-Brasil: Etnia, Identidade e Religião, Revista, USP, São Paulo, no. 46, pp. 52-65, Junho-Augusto, 2000. The scholarship on identity formation among enslaved central Africans in Cuba is almost non-existent but see Lovejoy above.
far as to dismiss Afro-Brazilian claims of African-informed identity and
culture as politically motivated forums “for collectively negotiating the past
as a means of constructing critiques of their present experience.”5
Stewart Hall’s contention that creating identity is a continuing process
which is “never complete or final, but always in the making, thus always
changing” offers a framework for interrogating identity formation among
enslaved Africans in Brazil and Cuba during and after slavery. For Hall,
history, language and culture are malleable tools for identity construction.6
An analysis of selected historical and cultural practices in Africa, the history
of the autos de congo, congada, (King of Kongo) and similar celebrations in
Brazil and “cabildos de Congo reales” (Cabildos of Royal Congos) in Cuba
are relevant entry points into how Congos (and other central Africans) made
and remade their African Diasporic identity in Brazil and to a lesser extent in
Cuba.
Autos de Congo and the Making of Identity in Brazil
Folklorists working in Northeast Brazil during the late 1800’s and
early 1900s were some of the first outsiders to observe, record and analyze
what was by then the end-product of African Diasporic-identity making in
Brazil. Gustava Barosa and Luís da Câmara Cascudo, two of the earliest 5 Suzel Ana Reily, “To Remember Captivity: The Congadas of Southern Minas Gerais,” Latin American Music Review, 22.1 (Spring/Summer 2001): 4-31. 6 Stewart Hall and Paul Du Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity (Sage, 1996), pp. 1-17.
folklorists to study Afro-Brazilian cultural festivals called autos de congo,
congadas, cucumbis, maracutas and the like were convinced that the
dramatizations were based on actual historical events that occurred in
Angola and Kongo during the period of the Dutch occupation (1641-1648).
They concluded that the performances were the result of hundreds of years
of adaptations during which enslaved central Africans and their descendants
(as well as enslaved Africans from other regions of Africa) made and
remade African history, language and culture in exile. Barbosa also
suggested that the autos de congo and the congadas began to appear at the
beginning of the eighteenth century when these memories surfaced among
Africans even as white Brazilians had forgotten them.7 In the process they
used the rituals connected to the autos de congo and the like where the
King of Kongo was the central player to develop an African-Diasporic
identity in Brazil.8
By the early twentieth century these celebrations consisted of
elaborate folk dramas performed publicly on saint’s days (particularly Saint
Anthony and St. Benedict) in communities form the Amazon in the north to
7 Gustavo Barosa, Ao Son da Viola new ed. (Rio de Janeiro: 1949), p. 170; See also, Barosa “O Brasil e a restuaração de Angola,” Anais da Academia Portuguesa de História, VII (1942), pp. 43-60; Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Made in Africa (Pesquisas and notas), (Brazil: Global Editora, 2002, 4th ed.). 8 Barosa, Ao Son da Viola); Barosa “O Brasil e a restuaração de Angola, pp. 43-60; Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Made in Africa.
Porto Alegre in the south. In the dramas the King of Kongo, his queen and
his court took center stage. Barosa, for example, noted that the performers
sang in an African idiom, and the long speeches that the leading figures
dramatized were all spoken or sung in an African idiom. Culture was also
an important element of the spectacle. In the autos, for example, the most
important roles in the celebrations were set aside for the King of Kongo and
a queen--often identified as Queen Njinga—along with court officials. The
historical events that the dramas recorded would be easily recognized by any
historian of pre-1860 central Africa.
The central part of the public drama involved the king of Kongo
publicizing his royal power and prestige. In one dialogue from a 20th century
maracuta performance, the King of Kongo proudly announced:
Eu sou Rei! Rei!Rei I am king, King, King Rei do meu Reinado! King of my kingdom Maracutal la do Congo Maracuta there of Kongo La do Congo There of Kongo Nêle foi corado! In that land I was crowned!9
Another core part of the drama included the verbal and physical
combat between the King of Kongo and members of his court and the
ambassador of Queen Njinga. Some of the songs that accompanied the
9 Vanda Cunha Albieri Nery, Maryely Cornélia Eliciano, Vanessa Faria Firmino, “Dança Conga: o ritual sagrado de uma tradição milenar” Intercom-Sociede Brasiliera de Estudos interdisciplinares da Comunicção XXVI Congresso brasiliero de Ciêcias da Comunicação-BH/MG 2 a 6 Set 2003, p. 21.
dramatization sometimes linked a historical Kongo with the 17th century
ruler Queen Njinga of Ndongo.
For example, in one congada that Barosa witnessed in Fortaleza
performed by two rival groups, the king, called Dom Henrique Cariongo,
appeared as well as Queen Njinga, represented by her ambassador. The
ambassador, after first convincing the king’s secretary that he was not a spy,
announced to the secretary “I am the ambassador that brings the embassy of
Queen Njinga for D. Henrique, King Cariongo.” Although he initially
encountered some resistance, when the ambassador finally obtained
permission to enter into the king’s chamber, he revealed his true identity.
He informed the king that he was not a soldier (guerreiro) but a knight
(cavaleiro), a representative of his nation. He also informed the king that as
a “son of Guinea” his monarch had sent him to bejewel his feet.10
Moreover, some of the popular refrains in many congadas leave no
doubt as to the dominant figure of Queen Njinga. In one of the congadas,
the performers chanted:
Mando matar Rei meu Senhor E quem mando foi Rainha Njinga
(I was ordered to kill the King, my Lord And it was Queen Njinga who ordered me!)
10 Barosa, Ao Son da Viola; Barosa “O Brasil e a restuaração de Angola,”, pp. 43-60; Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Made in Africa (Pesquisas and notas), (Brazil: Global Editora, 2002, 4th ed.).
In another part of the Congada Njinga appeared in all her power:
Senhora, Rainha Njinga, mulher of Camumbira de Moxaritatiguari, Senhora Dona Flor de Cambange
que passeai em terras de gentes Gines e faz anos que nao vem cá. (Mistress, Queen Njinga, woman of Camumbira Of Moxaritatiguari, Mistress Dona Flor of Cambange who stayed in the lands of the Guine people and who for many years has not come here.) 11 In this auto de congada, Afro-Brazilians encapsulated the entire
history of the relationship between the King of Kongo and Queen Njinga of
Ndongo (1582-1663. Between 1620s and the 1660s both kingdoms were at
the height of their power and exchanged embassies as well as engaged in
warfare.12
The performers also creatively situated the King of Kongo and Queen
Njinga in their midst in Brazil. Although this part of the auto highlighted the
relationship between the historical queen Njinga and not King Garcia II of
the Kongo (who was her ally from 1641-1648 but whose lands she also
invaded and with whom she exchanged embassies) the congada highlights
later historical events. In the congada the king was identified as D. Henrique
King Cariongo (an actual Kongo king known as D. Henrique who ruled from
1842 to 1856. This was a period when slaves from the Kingdom of Kongo
11 Albieri Nery et al. “Dança Conga: o ritual sagrado de uma tradição milenar”, pp. 21-32. 12 See, for example, Linda Heywood, “African Goddess: The Life of Queen Njinga Mbandi of Angola” Unpublished Manuscript.
who knew about King Dom Henrique were still arriving in Brazil.
Interestingly, enslaved captives from Angola would also have been familiar
with the name Njinga since the rulers of the kingdom of Ndongo/Matamba
bore the title “Rei Ginga.”13
How was it possible for Africans to remember and re-enact in the
autos de congo, congadas and other celebrations in Brazil specific historical
events like the conversion of the King of the Kongo, the relationship
between the kings of Kongo and Queen Njinga, and other events in the life
of central Africa? Barosa and Câmara Cascudo suggested that the
performances and lyrics of some of the autos de Congos and other Afro-
Brazilian celebrations that emerged in the Northeast and elsewhere referred
to actual historical events that occurred during the period of the Dutch
occupation of Angola (1641-48) when Brazilians troops expelled the Dutch
and re-conquered the country.14 Barrosa went so far as to claim that the
autos de Congo performed during the congadas began to appear at the
beginning of the eighteenth century when these memories surfaced among
13 See, for example, See also P. Graziano Saccardo, Congo e Angola con la storia dell’antica missione dei Cappuccini (Venice, 1982), 14 See for example, Gustavo Barosa, Ao Son da Viola new ed. (Rio de Janeiro: 1949); Barosa “O Brasil e a restuaração de Angola,” Anais da Academia Portuguesa de História, VII (1942), pp. 43-60; Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Made in Africa (Pesquisas and notas), (Brazil: Global Editora, 2002, 4th ed.).
Africans, even though they were forgotten in Portuguese and Brazilian
popular culture.15
Despite these early observations, it has only been in the last two
decades that Brazilian historians have attempted to examine religious and
other cultural practices of Afro-Brazilians with an eye to their central Africa
roots.16 As regards to religious practices and other cultural practices of
central Africans in Brazil, these too were informed by their African
background. James Sweet, for example, provided extensive details on the
specific cultural practices of enslaved Angolans (Francisco Dembo and
Domingos Umbata (Mbata) who lived in Salvador, Brazil in 1634 and 1646.
Francisco was most likely captured and enslaved during the Portuguese wars
against the rulers of the Dembos who were sympathetic to Queen Njinga,
while Domingo may have been enslaved during the series of succession wars
in Kongo during the 1930s. In any event both continued practicing many of
the religious rituals from their homelands.17
Several other studies have argued that Brazilian institutions such as
the black Brotherhoods of the Rosary (Irmandades) and the festivals
15 Gustavo Barosa, Ao Son da Viola, p. 170. 16See, for example, Maria de melo Sousa, Reis Negros No Brasil Escravista : História : História da Festa de Coroação de Rei Congo (Belo Horizonte : Editoria, 2002) ; Juliana Beatriz Almeida de Sousa, « Viagens do Rosário entre a Velha Cristianidade e o Alem-Mar, » Estudos Asiasticos, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 1-15 Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary, esp. Pp. 37-63. 17 James Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship and Religion in the African Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (North Carolina Press, 2003), pp.132-33.
associated with the congadas, cucumbis have links to central Africa.18 A
recent penetrating analysis by Camilla Agostinni who studied the responses
that enslaved Africans in Rio de Janeiro gave in criminal processes covering
the period from 1820 to 1880 about family and homeland suggest how
important the African background was in informing identity in Brazil.
Agostini concluded that despite the stereotypes about the African nations
that emerged from the slave trade, “experiences in Africa informed the
construction of identities of African orientation in Brazil.”19
Despite the interest in the African background, Brazilian scholars still
have not systematically examined the plethora of readily available
seventeenth and eighteenth century documentation on Angola and Brazil to
link the folk-dramas that originated in northeast Brazil and which spread to
other regions to their African historical antecedents. Such as exercise would
help explain why ideas of royalty that linked the King of Kongo to Queen
Njinga, elaborate public embassies, and Catholicism figure so prominently
in Brazil’s folk culture.
In fact, both the early folklorists as well as several recent works on
Brazilian folk culture locate the antecedents of the congadas and other Afro-
Brazilian folk festivals in Portuguese medieval religious and secular folk
18 See Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary), esp. pp. 37-63. 19 Agostini, “Africanos e a Formaão de Identidades no Além-Mar…,” p. 258
festivals and pay little attention to whether similar festivals were
commonplace in central Africa during the period of the slave trade.20 Other
historians, although acknowledging the central African connections, argue
for a Brazilian birthplace.21 Even when Brazilian scholars acknowledge the
prior existence of practices associated with the well-known Brotherhood of
the Rosary in Central Africa, as the study by Maria de Melo e Sousa, they
still do not explain why central African events and not those from other
regions of Africa that provided slaves to Brazil came to be retained as
memory in Brazil.22
Kongos, Kimbundus and the Place of Royalty in Central Africa
Any scholar who has studied the seventeenth century writings of
rulers and other officials from the kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo and the
Europeans with whom they had extensive diplomatic, commercial and
cultural ties comes away with the sense that rulers and peoples had well-
developed notions of an African identity despite their deep integration into
the Atlantic World. Their deep sense of identity goes a long way in
explaining why central African historical motifs, particularly the King of
20 See, for example, Cascudo, Made in Africa, pp. 33-40. 21 Kiddy, “Who is the King of Congo? A New Look at African and Afro-Brazilian Kings in Brazil,” in Linda M. Heywood (ed.) Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 174-75. 22 de Mello e Souza, Reis Negros No Brazil Escravista; Almeida de Souza, “Viagens do Rosário entre a Velha Cristandade…” pp. 1-15; Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary, pp. 37-63.
Kongo and Queen Njinga, came to serve as vehicles for memory and identity
among enslaved central Africans arriving in northeast Brazil in the 1600s.
Central African motifs related to royalty, Christianity, and embassies
came to dominate the folk-cultural landscape of colonial north-east Brazil
(and more recently of all Brazil) because central Africans comprised the
largest segment of the slave population during the seventeenth century when
Brazilian folk culture began to emerge in the region. These slaves came from
an African environment where kings and queens were attached to the idea of
royal rule and defended their claims to royal privileges and rituals.
Moreover, this was a period when the politics of diplomacy between the
Kongo kingdom, the Portuguese kingdom of Angola (Reino de Angola) and
the kingdoms Ndongo and Matamba reached beyond the borders of central
Africa to Portugal, Rome, and Brazil. Finally, it was also a period when the
Portuguese, the Kings of Kongo and Queen Njinga of Ndongo/Matamba all
helped to spread Catholic teachings and rituals in their kingdoms. This
environment provided enslaved central Africans who came to northeast
Brazil with the building blocks for the cultural traditions that would in time
become part of the folk tradition, particularly the congadas.
The idea of royalty and the rituals associated with it was particularly
pronounced in the Kingdom of the Kongo. Protestant and Republican-
minded Dutch representatives who were staunchly anti-papist and who they
developed diplomatic relations with the King of Kongo were taken aback
with royal rituals at the Kongo court. Dutch writers such as Johann Nieuhof
and Olifert Dapper who commented on the issue believed that the adulation
and respect the Kongos showed the king was unnatural and bordered on
idolatry.23 Missionaries likewise condemned the Kongos for the attitudes.
Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi noted that Kongos were always ready to praise
their country, suggesting that it was the most beautiful country, had the best
food, the nicest climate and the like. The missionaries noted that one of the
stories the Kongos believed was that God sent his angels to create the rest of
the world so he could devote himself to constructing Kongo.24 The
missionaries regarded the pride that Kongos showed for their king and
country as outrageous and included it as one of their major “defects. Writing
in the late 1650s Cavazzi commented that the Muxicongos (Kongos) had an
exaggerated idea of their own pasts and glories and “think this part of the
world not only is the largest but also the happiest, richest and beautiful of
all.”25 He also expressed disdain with the way that even Kongos of humble
peasant birth all wanted to be addressed with the title of “Don or Dona.”
23 Dapper and Johan Nieuhof, 24 Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, Historica Descrizione dei tre Regni Congo, Matamba, ed Angola (Bologna, 1687), Book 1, paragraph 156 (p. 63). 25 António Cavazzi de Montecculo, MSS, Araldi, Missione Evangelica, Vol A, Book 1, 154
Cavazzi and other missionaries also commented on the ostentatious
public displays of Kongo’s elites. For example, traveling through the
Province of Mbamba in the mid-1660s, the missionaries Micheanglo de
Gattini and Diongi de Carli commented on the dress of the Duke noting that
although not as elaborately dressed as his overlord then King Alvaro, the
Duke’s attendants included “the son of some lord who carried his hat,
another his symitar, and a third his arrows. Fifty blacks went before him
playing confusedly on several instruments, twenty five of note and one
hundred archers followed him.” The women of “quality”, he commented
“wear the finest cloth of Europe.”26 Indeed, António Cadornega, the
Portuguese chronicler and soldier in reference to the famous 1665 victory at
the Battle of Mbwila that Portuguese forces had over the Kongos believed
that despite their inglorious defeat (the King Antonio’s head was paraded by
victorious troops in Luanda, the “Nação Muxiconga (Kongo nation)”
remained “arrogant.”27
Observers also made similar observations about the role of royalty in
the Kingdom of Ndongo. Queen Njinga Mbandi’s long rule (1624-1663)
and frequent wars against the Portuguese were without doubt the most
visible way in which she broadcast her royal status. Njinga was proud of her
26 Michelangelo de Gattina e Dionigi Carli, Viaggio nel Regno del Kongo (Milan, 1997), p. 572. 27 Cadornega, História, Vol. 2 p. 208
royal lineage. Her father, Ngola Mbandi Angola, was the 8th King of
Ndongo, and a 1585 description of him as fled his court at Kabassa after
being abandoned by many of his vassals leave no doubt about his own ideas
about his royal status. A Portuguese chronicler captured his sentiments. He
wrote, “he still thinks of himself as the greatest king in the world” and
“believed that they were only three kings in the world “Congo, Portugal and
him.”28 Writing several decades later from Queen Njinga’s court in
Matamba, Cavazzi, confessor to the queen, noted the emphasis on royalty.
He wrote that the Mbundu were so proud of their king that “they judge
themselves the first among all the people of the world and do not credit the
stories of the Europeans concerning the magnificence of such kings and
monarchs and the beauty and other qualities of such kingdoms in the
universe…”29
Describing Njinga’s first audience with the Portuguese Governor João
Correia de Sousa in 1622, Cavazzi also captured this royalist bias. He
described her as entering the hall wearing precious gems and “dressed in a
remarkable way according to the custom of black people, accompanied by a
good many pages & waiting women.”30 Njinga dismissed the governor’s
demand that her brother pay tribute to the Portuguese with a royal hauteur, 28 Diego da Costa, letter, 20 July 1585, MMA 3, p. 319. 29 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book I, 154; See also, Cavazzi, Historia, Book 1, paragraph no 156. 30 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Vol. A, Book 2, p. 25; Cavazzi, Descrição Histórica, Vol. II, p. 67.
remarking that “such a condition should only be placed on a nation that has
been conquered [and] “not on one that spontaneously offers friendship.”31
After being elected “Lady of Ndongo” in 1624 following her brother’s
suspicious death, Njinga devoted as much attention to orchestrating her royal
status as she did to stave off Portuguese designs on her kingdom. She
desperately wanted the Portuguese and her own people to acknowledge her
as queen. Within a few months after her brother’s death she was being
addressed by the title “Queen of Dongo,” and not long after had another title
“Angola Quiluange” which meant “Queen of Angola.”32 In fact, Cadornega
who first faced her in a 1639 battle noted that her success in the wars she
waged against her Mbundu detractors led the people to adore her “as their
Queen and Lady.”33 By the end of her life her subjects regarded her as a
“Goddess.” Not only did Njinga successfully claim royalty, but the
Portuguese also concurred, addressing her as “Lady Queen” and “Your
lordship” noting that she came “....from the royal blood of Kings and
Emperors.”34
Furthermore Njinga took advantage of every opportunity to remind
the people of her royal status. This attitude prevailed even in her last years 31 Cavazzi , Descrição Histórica , Vol. 11, pp. 67-68. 32 Queen Njinga to Bento Banha Cardoso, 2 March 1625, quoted in Fernão de Sousa to Conçalo de Sousa and Brothers, c. 1630, FHA 1: 244-5. See also Antonio Brasio, Monumenta Missionario African (MMA) (Lisbon: Agancia do Ultramar, 1956) Vol. V11, p. 249. 33 Cardonega, História, vol. 2, p. 293-4. 34 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 5, Letter of 13 April 1651, pp. 8-9.
when she had returned to Christianity and swore obedience to Pope. Indeed,
in 1662 after Njinga receipt of a letter from Pope Alexander VII
acknowledging the receipt of her swearing obedience to Rome and the
Catholic Church, she still wanted her people to recognize her royal status
according to Mbundu customs. Thus on the day that she had set aside to
have the missionary publicly read the contents of the Pope’s letter, she
appeared at the public square to receive the traditional royal greeting that
consisted of “clapping of hands, shouting and daubing themselves with
earth.”35
Njinga not only promoted herself as a king/queen through her own
words and actions, but also made it possible for the royal Ndongo line to
continue. Even while living in her quilombo (war camp) she paid attention to
royal etiquette. Cadornega reported that when Portuguese troops captured one
of Njinga’s capitals, they found Cundi/Barbara (her sister who the Portuguese
kept as a prisoner for several years) in a house waited on by “40 ladies.” She
was “dressed in rich cloths, her fingers full of gold rings, on her head and neck
with beautiful jewels and necklaces.”36 Njinga spent more than twenty years
negotiating for Barbara’s release to ensure that she would take over as queen
35 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Bk 2 chapter 11 p. 5. 36 Cardornega, História 1, pp. 414-16. See also Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, chapter 7, p. 11.
after her death. Barbara was elected queen because the people believed in
“her… dignity and Royal crown.”37
Barbara herself did much to uphold the idea of royalty despite the
more than two decades that she had spent as a Portuguese prisoner and her
conversion to Christianity. Facing imminent civil war from disgruntled
Mbundu nobles and people who blamed the missionaries for Njinga’s death
and for the illness that Barbara contacted soon after her accession, the newly
installed queen allowed permitted some Mbundu royal rituals at court in
order to demonstrate her royalty.38 Moreover, like their neighboring royals
in the Kingdom of Kongo, all the rulers of Matamba (from King D. João
Guterres Ngola Kanini who took over the kingdom in 1669 to Queen Ana
Guterres III who was killed in a coup in 1767) asserted their royal claims to
the throne of Matamba and expected to Portuguese and neighboring African
rulers to treat them as royals.39 The custom of electing kings and queens
(reis gingas) in the area continued into the 19th century even as the
Portuguese increasingly controlled more and more of the territory that
Njinga had left.
Catholic Christianity as a Mark of Identity in Central Africa
37Cavazzi, MSS, Araldi, Vol. A Book 2 Chapter 14, pp. 15-16. 38 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 15, p. 9 39 For the history of these rulers of Matamba see Fernando Campos, “Conflitos Na Dinastia Guterres Através Da Sua Cronologia,” (Paper presented at the Canadian Association of African History, 1992).
The place of the Catholic Church in central Africa as a marker of
identity among Kongos and Kimbundus in Africa provides persuasive
evidence for why this identity re-appeared in Brazil among enslaved central
Africans. From the turn of the 1600s to 1860s when millions of captives
from the kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo were shipped as slaves to Brazil
and Cuba, a significant percentage of these enslaved central Africans
identified themselves as Catholics or were familiar with the rudiments of
Catholic Christianity. During the first years of their arrival in northeast
Brazil, the Catholicism they brought with them was home-grown.
Kongo had the longest and most sustained exposure to Christianity, a
relationship that began when King Nzinga Nzuwu converted to Christianity
in 1491. Throughout the sixteenth century and increasingly in the
seventeenth century the Christian identity of the kingdom and its population
set Kongo apart from other central Africa polities. The many churches that
sprang up in the capital and provinces, the presence of Christian crosses
even in remote villages, the political intrigues in which noble factions and
priests became involved, and the host of public religious rituals in which the
Kongos participated were the visible symbols of this Christian identity.40
40 John Thornton, “Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo.” Journal of African History, 54 (2013), pp. 53-77.
Public religious ceremonies involving the entire community were
quite commonplace. By the beginning of the 1600’s Kongo’s capital, São
Salvador was an Episcopal See with a Cathedral with twelve churches and a
large Catholic population. From her Kongo kings sent and received
embassies from the rulers of Portugal, the Papacy, the Portuguese colony of
Angola and Dutch in the Netherland and Brazil. Kongo welcomed several
orders of regular clergy, including Dominicans, Capuchins and Jesuits.
Moreover had its own lay teachers who spread Christianity throughout the
kingdom, but also Kongo had a corps of parish priests and lay ministers and
teachers who catered to populations even in remote districts! The capital was
a bevy of coronations and rituals where Catholic rituals mixed freely with
Kongo ones despite kings preferences for promoting celebrations of the
Brotherhood of the Rosary the “was it was done in Portugal.” Elite Kongos
who lived in the capital became members of various religious Brotherhoods
that had their own offices in the capital.41 Throughout seventeenth and early
eighteenth century foreign missionaries who visited Kongo described being
41 Luis de Cácegas and Luís de Sousa, “História de S. Domingos, MMM 5, pp. 608. See also, Linda Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge University Press, 2007); see also, See also, John Thornton, "The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1483-1750," Journal of African History 25 (1984): 147-67.
welcomed by huge crowds eager to have their children baptized as was the
case in 1610 with Dominican missionaries.42
Furthermore, no provincial noble would go off to war without first
making confession and taking Holy Communion, and some armed themselves
“with the relics of various saints.” Christian Kongos who made up the army
would also have been familiar with, and were likely to have been
participants in the elaborate military/religious festival held on St. James Day
(July 21) where the Kongo king received homage, collected taxes, and
witnessed the military dance performed by soldiers called sangamento.43
As their Kongo counterparts, Christianity was also a marker identity
about the Mbundus who lived in Portuguese Angola and in the kingdoms of
Ndongo and Matamba. This experience informed the identity and cultural
practices of the enslaved Mbundus who ended up in Brazil and Cuba. Most
Mbundus who lived in the Reino de Angola (Kingdom of Angola) which the
Portuguese controlled had a Creole Christian identity informed by Christian
and Mbundu religious and cultural beliefs and practices. Mbundus living in
Luanda and next to the various Portuguese settlements along the Bengo and
Kwanza Rivers were first exposed to Christianity by the earliest Jesuit
42 MMA 5: 607-14 [Luís de Cácegas and Luís de Sousa, História de S. Domingos (Lisbon, 1662), Pt II, Liv IV, cap XIII, pp. 612-613; Luís de Cácegas and Luís de Sousa, História de S. Domingos, p. 608. 43For a description of this celebration for the early 1700’s see John Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 30-35.
missionaries who accompanied Portuguese armies in the wars against the
Ndongo kingdom from the 1570s onwards. According to a report covering
the years from 1600-1611, the number of African Christians in Luanda
already stood at 2000, although none of the Christians knew how to make
the sign of the cross and “no more than two were married in the Church.”
However, the missionaries stressed that the Mbundus were quick learners, and
that “most of them knew the orations and sang in the streets…or in their
houses.”44
During the 1620s Mbundu rulers who became allies of the Portuguese
were publicly baptized as was the son of the Portuguese ally Aire
Aquiloange who had been sent to Luanda in 1627 to be converted. Aire
Aquiloange’s baptism took place on 31 May, the Day of Most Holy Trinity.
Not long afterwards his parents were also baptized by one Father Paccoino on
St. Peter and Paul’s day, 29 June, his father receiving the baptismal name
“Felipe in honor of Your Majesty”.45
By 1628 the number of African Christians in the colony was large
enough that officials built a chapel dedicated to the Lady of the Rosary
specifically for them, and stipulated that the chapel be used to catechize
Africans “in their own language,” to hear their confessions, and to oversee
44 MMA 5:239-40 45 Fernão de Sousa to Governo, 2 August 1627, FHA 2, p. 183.
their burials.46 Missionaries also took Christianity to Africans who lived in
the nearby settlements areas along the Bengo and Galungo Rivers where
Portuguese lived with their African slaves surrounded by independent
Mbundu communities. The numbers of Mbundu Christians in these
communities increased over the years. By 1635 Tavares estimated that over
“200,000 souls” had been baptized in the seven parishes of Portuguese
Angola, excluding Luanda in Angola. 47
These Mbundu Christians were not the barely catechized slaves on
whom the priest threw water and in whose mouth they put salt as they
waited to board the vessels that would take them to the slave ship. In
describing his approach to teaching Africans in Bengo, Tavares wrote “I
give lessons of catechism several times a day, then have them memorize
prayers. I divide [them] into groups, men on one side, adult women on
other, young girls aside, etc. I give each group an interpreter.48 Religion and
religious pageantry among Mbundu in Luanda and the other Portuguese
settlements continued to develop after the Portuguese reconquest of Angola
46 Cardonega, História, II, 26-28. 47 Tavares to P. Provincial of Portugal, Jeronimo Vogado, 29 June 1635 [ARSI Lus. 55, fols 84-107; Evora CXVI/2-15, peça 15i, fol.76v-77. 48 Pero Tavares, Fl. 86.
from the Dutch in 1648.49 The number of Mbundu Christians in Portuguese
Angola continued to increase throughout the 1700’s and into the 1800s.50
Indeed, these Mbundu Christians were developing a Creole
Christianity which would inform the identity that enslaved Africans from
Portuguese Angola carried with them to Brazil.51Already by the 1650s
missionaries complained that a few miles outside of Luanda the people were
“only Christian in name…all works and deeds are heathen.”52 Indeed, the
creolization of Angola culture was so pronounced by the 1670s that the
missionary Merolla noted that Angolan Christians living among the
Portuguese participated in a “pagan” ritual for the burial of their deceased
called tambi. Merolla condemned the practice noting that “these
abominations (tambi) were used among some depraved Christians not only
in the kingdom of Angola but in Luanda itself.”53
The most notable aspect about the spread of Christianity among the
Mbundu Christians in the early 1600s was that their chapels were all
dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary. There were chapels to Our Lady of the
Rosary in Cambambe, Pedras Negras, and Massangago--all major centers in
49 Cardonega, História, vol. 2, p. 386. 50 Cardonega, História, Vol. 2, p. 390. 51 See also Heywood and Thornton, Atlantic Creoles, pp. 185-196. 52 Informação sobre as missões q sepodem fazer em Angola e outros Reinos vizinhos, nd. C 1650? [ARSI 55, 195-99] 53Giralamo Merolla da Sorrenta, “A Voyage to Congo, Part II” in Awnsham and John Churchill, A Collection of Voyages and Travels, (London, 1702), Vol. I, 1674.
Portuguese controlled Angola where Mbundus lived. Other chapels were
dedicated to Saint Benedict as well. Kongo and Mbundu Catholics, as their
Portuguese counterparts in central Africa at the time participated in the many
yearly religious celebrations associated with Catholicism. Some of these
celebrations were decidedly creole as “Christian rituals from the Iberian
church, and …Mbundu and Kongo rituals” mixed freely.54
Olifert Dapper, describing Portuguese Angola as the Dutch found it
during their seven year occupation (1641-48) noted that “in recent years
many of them, by the endeavor of the Portuguese Jesuits, have been brought
from their idolatry to the Roman religion and baptized….every Sova [local
ruler) usually controlling a few villages] has a chaplain in his Banza or
village, to baptize children and celebrate mass.” 55 The missionaries
considered the Christian Mbundus “Christian in name only,” because they
failed to understand that as their Kongo counterparts, Mbundu Christians
had developed a Catholic Christianity that was informed by Mbundu cultural
and religious beliefs. Their many public religious festivals and burial rituals
had an African and not a European orthodox orientation.56
54 David Birmingham, “Carnival at Luanda,” Journal of African History, Vol. 29 (1988), p. 97. 55 John Olgiby, Africa (London, 1670), p. 569. 56 For a recent discussion of this issue see John Thornton, “conquest and Theology: The Jesuits in Angola, 1584-1650,” Journal of Jesuit Studies, no. 1, 2014, pp. 245-259.
Njinga’s baptism in 1622 eventually led her many years later to
declare Catholic Christianity the official religion of the kingdom of
Ndongo/Matamba which she then ruled (1657-1663). During the six years
after this decree Njinga lived as a devout Christian and worked hard to turn
her followers into Catholics.57 She spearheaded the establishment of the
religion after she signed the peace treaty with the Portuguese in 1657 and
invited priests to convert her people. Moreover, she also supported a chapel
of Our Lady of the Rosary which she organized in 1657-8 in the church of
Saint Anne that she helped to build. Indeed, some of her followers became
members of the Brotherhood and when Njinga died “twelve brothers of the
Most Holy Rosary” accompanied her burial procession.58 Like her Kongo
counterparts Njinga gave the Capuchin missionaries permission to convert
her regional vassals, and many of them and their people were baptized.59
The Catholicism that Njinja pioneered in Ndongo/Matamba did not
disappear with her death in 1663, for her sister, Barbara ruled from 1663-
1666, who had been converted while a captive in Luanda and who had lived
many years under the Portuguese attempted to keep Catholicism alive.
Moreover, when Njinga’s niece, Donna Veronica Guterres who became
57 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 10, p. 5 58 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 14, p. 6. 59 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2 Chapter 11 p.1-2.
Queen in 1681 took over the kingdom, she also maintained some elements of
Catholicism that Njinga and Barbara had institutionalized. Well into the
1700’s rulers in Matamba attempted to get Capuchin priests to return to the
country.
Njinga’s efforts to establish orthodox Christian rituals in Matamba
were only partially successful as during the civil war the thousands of
Christians in Matamba were either killed or sold off to the Portuguese for
slave as slaves in Brazil. In fact many members of Njinga’s court who were
members of the Nossa Senhora de Rosario Brotherhood brought the
knowledge of membership in Brotherhoods with them to Brazil. But
Mbundus from Matamba, like their counterparts in Kongo and Portuguese
Angola, also brought the mixed Christianity with them as well. Chief
among these were mourning rituals associated with deaths, called by the
people tambo or tambi. 60 Although missionaries did everything they could
to stamp out the “tambi” (even exporting many of the religious practitioners
to Brazil and elsewhere) many of these practitioners were welcomed by their
compatriots in the plantations and cities in northeast Brazil. In Brazil,
enslaved Africans, Christians as well as non-Christians, (and even some
Portuguese whites) brought this creole Christianity with them to Brazil.
60 Cavazzi, MSS Araldi, Book 2, Chapter 14, p. 14
Northeast Brazil: Kongos, Angolas and the Construction of Afro-Brazilian Identity Although “Kongos” and “Angolas” began appearing in the records of
colonial Pernambuco in large numbers from the 1580s (in 1584 there were
10,000 slaves in Pernambuco who were identified as “Angolas and
Guineas,”61 imports from Angola steadily (an Angolan wave) increased from
1600 to1725 (especially the early decades of the 17th century). During the
entire period when the Charter generation of Africans set down roots in
northeast Brazil and other regions of the Americas, a total of 1,386,527
slaves or 46.6% of all the slaves exported to the Americas came from
Central Africa.62 Moreover, during the years from 1600 to1650 86% of all
the captives exported from Angola ended up in Northeast Brazil
(Pernambuco and Bahia).63
The central African presence in the northeast was dramatic. In 1612
an anonymous writer assured the crown that settlers in Pernambuco “are
powerful in slaves of Guinea because of the many vessels from Angola
61 Anais Pernambucos, Vol. 1, no. 6, p. 557. 62 For the discussion of Charter Generation see Heywood and Thornton, Central Africans. For a relevant debate see Francisco Betancourt, “Creolising the Atlantic World: The Portuguese and the Kongolese,” Portuguese Studies, no. 1, vol. 27, pp. 56-69. 63 Thanks to Davis Eltis and David Richardson for sharing with me their unpublished paper where they have recalculated the figures appearing in the 2000 DuBois Database. David Eltis and David Richardson, “Missing Pieces and the Larger Picture of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: Some Implications of the New Database,” Unpublished Ms. 2006.
which come every year.”64 The numbers of central Africans imported into
the region continued to increase in the following decades. When the Dutch
took over Bahia in 1620, Isaak Commelyn, a Dutch official actually
consulted local records in Pernambuco and calculated that between 1620
and1624 alone some 15, 430 slaves had entered Pernambuco from Angola.65
The scale of this Angolan wave can be gauged from a letter that Governor
João Correia sent to officials in Lisbon in 1625. Correia informed officials
that “each week 200 or 300 pieces are traded being a thousand a month [and
that] 12,000 leave from this port each year with which the Indies and Brazil
are provided.”66
The predominance of central Africans from the kingdom of Kongo,
the kingdom Angola and Ndongo on sugar plantations and in the cities of
northeast Brazil during the early 1600s when the Dutch were challenging
Portuguese hegemony there. Pernambuco officials were sufficiently
concerned about retaining control over the city of Salvador. That he
cautioned in a 1630 report that he warned superiors in Portugal that the loss
of Bahia to the Dutch would mean the loss of other parts of Brazil since the
64 Engel Sluiter, “Report on the State of Brazil, 1612,” Hispanic America Historical Review, vol. 29, n0. 4 (Nov. 1949), 518-562. 65 Anais Pernambucos, Vol. 2, no. 8, p. 419 66Fernão de Sousa, “Relação de Dongo que foy a elRey nosso Senhor,” 6 September 1625 FHA I, p. 200
New Christians, Indians and “Negroes from Angola …would not hesitate to
pass over to the enemy in exchange for their freedom.”67
The demographic strength and importance of the central African slave
population also came to the attention of the Dutch conquerors. In 1637 a
Dutch official pointed out that enslaved Africans from Angola were more
desirable than their less numerous West African counterparts the Ardras. In
his view the Angolans not only because “rendered better service” but also
because the Ardras “speak a language that our older negros do not
understand, not one person,” while recently arrived Angolans “are instructed
by older negroes who understand each other’s language.”68
The fact that Kimbundu was the lingua franca on the plantations was a
striking example of cultural carryover from central Africa to Brazil. During
the Dutch occupation the central African predominance also came to the
attention of visitors to the region. Pierre Morreau, a Frenchman visiting Recife
in 1644-45, observed during his stay in the city every month there arrived in
Recife “a multitude of poor, naked slaves fed like dogs that the king of Kongo
and the Queen of Angola and their…governors exchange for cloth, hats,
67 Two Unpublished Portuguese Manuscripts about the Dutch Conquest (1624) & Iberian Recovery (1625) of Salvador da Bahia in Brazil A Forgotten Letter Written by Martim Correia de Sá, 1630. (Rio de Janeiro: Editoria Index, 1999), p. 79 68 Anais Pernambucos, vol. 2, no. 8, p. 419
various types of instruments of iron…”69 The number of enslaved central
Africans continued to increase and by 1666 when the Marques of
Mondevergu visited the city he identified “negros who are brought from
Angola” along with Portuguese, Indians, Tapuios as comprising the four
castas (ethno-racial) who made up the city’s population.70 Although the
number of central Africans fell off somewhat the 1670s as the importation of
“Minas” from Dahomey increased, Central African imports to the Northeast
still represented a significant percentage of the slave population, and in fact
continued into the 19th century.
In Pernambuco and other regions of the northeast, Kongos and
Angolans sought to maintain their Christian identity and royalist propensity
in novel ways. The fact that some members of the Kongo and Mbundu
nobility and ordinary Christian villagers were also enslaved made it easier
for these ideas to thrive.71 For example, one group of Kongo nobles who
were captured and exported to Pernambuco early in 1622 ended up in
“Maranhão and other localities” within a few months of their arrival.72
Although in 1624 some of the captives were rounded up and returned to
69 Pierre Moreau, Histoire des Derniers Troubles entre les Hollandois et les Portugais, 1644-5 (Paris, 1651) Portuguese Trans., p. 35. 70 Alfredo de Carvalho, O Marques de Mondevergue em Pernanbuco, 1660,” “Revista do Instituto Archeológico, Histórico e Geográfico Pernambucano, Vol. XIII, no. 70, pp. 637. 71 Jesuits to Lord Collector, 20 October 1623, MMA 15, p. 514 72 Royal Letter to Governors of Portugal, 9 December 1622, MMA 7: 64-5
Kongo as a result of complaints that Kongo King Pedro and a Jesuit report
made to King Philip in Spain, many others remained in Brazil. Other noble
captives joined them in subsequent years.73 Some of these included the 200
Kongo Christians from the village of Ulolo in Kongo who King Garcia
condemned and sent as slaves to Brazil in 1651. The villagers were found
guilty of murdering the missionary Jorge de Geel who had traveled to the area
to weed out “unchristian practices.”74 Missionaries in Kongo had no
compunction in selling of Kongo Christians accused of practicing witchcraft
to Portuguese slave traders. 75
Mbundus with their Creole culture also ended up as slaves in Brazil
and as the Kongos maintained their Christian identity and royalist bias. In
1634, for example, Pero Tavares traveled on a slave ship from Angola to
Brazil, and reported that there were 600 slaves on board. Tavares “confessed
all.” Most of the Mbundu captives, he noted were already baptized, but “knew
nothing of the faith.” He did note that others who came from some “200
leagues in interior of land, or just as arrived in city…were baptized and
embarked as soon as ship set sail.”76 Furthermore, Cadornega wrote that after
73 Royal Letter to Governor of Brazil, 18 March 1624, MMA 7: 220 74 “Provisão de D. Garcia Afonso II Sobre O Padre Jorge de Geel” 2-3-1653, MMA XI, pp. 264-267; See also Saccardo, Congo e Angola con la storia dell’antica missione dei Cappuccini (Venice, 1982), p. 490. 75 Merolla, “Voyage to Kongo”, p. 617. 76 Tavares, Fol. 106
the reconquest of Angola in 1648, and the wars of retaliation that the
Portuguese troops made against Njinga and the Mbundu rulers who had
allied with the Dutch, the governor “sent the guiltiest [of the Mbundu
prisoners] secretly to this city….” These prisoners joined others who had
been “redeemed and purchased” and were sent out on the slave ships.77
Moreover, many Christians from the Bengo region who the missionaries
condemned for practicing witchcraft were also sent to Brazil, as was the case
with those that Merolla described in the 1680’s.78 Njinga also sold many of
her own people to Portuguese traders. In fact, the civil war that followed her
death led to the export of many of the Christian Mbundus who had officiated
at her funeral. Finally, during the 18th and 19th century hundreds of
thousands of Mbundu, many of them creoles from Portuguese Angola ended
up as slaves in northeast Brazil and in Rio de Janeiro as well.79 In Brazilian
cities these Mbundu Africans were identified as creolos (Creoles).
The Christian and Creole identity of the Kongos and Mbundus was
visible in north east Brazil from the time the group arrived. The earliest
reference to Kongos and Angolas comes from Curia Archives in Salvador at
Praia baptismal records of the church (recorded on 10th December 1601)
77 Cardonega, Hisória, vol. 2, p. 387. 78 Merolla, Relatione de Viaggio, p. 615. 79 Evora CXVI/2-15, peça 15i, fol. 75v-76
identified this. For example, the daughter of Sebastião Congo was baptized
on 10 December 1601, and in 1605 several Kongo and Angolans were
married and were received into the church. The group included Francisco
Congo who was married to Maria, and Sebastião Angola who was married to
Maria Conga. In addition, the records for the period from to 1604 to 1611
indicate that the church had received into the congregation João Quiloange,
and his wife Maria Cahango, as well as a Maria Quiloange.80 These three
Mbundus were members of the Mbundu ruling families who had been
baptized in Africa and therefore were not required to undergo another
baptism. They, along with many white Portuguese were accepted as good
Catholics. These Angolans and their children were the founders of the
central Africans community that would later be associated with the Afro-
Brazilian Brotherhoods. 81
The Christian identity and royalist bias made Kongos and Angolans
stand apart from the enslaved West Africans from Dahomey as the latter
were imported in larger numbers during the 1700s. Kongos, Angolans and
their descendants were the first Africans to establish the Nossa Senhora de
Rosario Brotherhoods and begin the custom of electing kings and queens. In
80 Estante 2, Cx. 9, Paróquia Conceição da Praia, 1649-76, Fol. 17, 25.
81 Estante 2, Cx. 9, Paróquia Conceição da Praia, 1649-76, Fol. 17, 25.
1627, for example, the members of the Nossa Senhora de Guadeloupe dos
Homens pardos de Olinda (Brotherhood of Guadeloupe of Creoles of
Olinda) were identified as playing a leading role in the church festivities,
which involved the election of kings and queens.82 Father Santa Maria,
writing in 1627 noted that the establishment of the chapels and brotherhood
“raised the profile of free blacks and captives of the city of Olinda, who,
besides being poor, founded a famous church dedicated to Nossa Senhora de
Rosario (Our Lady of the Rosary).”83
Two years later in 1629 to honor their patron, the members of the
brotherhood made a 24 inch image of the Virgin Mary and Child filled with
gold and celebrated with “a big festival in the church.”84 During the
celebration they “carried it to the newly built chapel and “made a great feast,
in their manner.” The members also held “various sermons…with …much
grandeur.” This first celebration attracted the entire population of Olinda
who “competed to participate in the festivities.”85 The members of the
Brotherhood of the Rosary seemed to have continued functioning even
during the Dutch occupation. In 1654 the Brotherhood of Nossa Senhora do
82 Mario do João Varela, A Capelina dos Quinze Mistério e a devoção do Rosário entro os Pretos”Revisto do Arquivo Municipal de São Paulo, XXXIX, p. 319 83 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 5 p. 32 84 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 2, p. 468 85Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 5, p. 32
Rosário of Olinda held its first election.86 By the 1680s several other
churches and brotherhoods in Pernambuco catered to the African population,
including the chapels and brotherhoods associated with the original Church
of Nossa Senhora de Rosario built in 1627 before the Dutch invasion.87
Kongos and Mbundus also demonstrated the Christian and Creole
identity in other ways as well. For example, in 1668 when the Capuchin
missionary Dionigi Carli passed through Pernambuco on his way to Kongo
he recorded having observed a black woman “who kneeled, beat her breast
and clap his hand on the ground.” When he enquired of the Portuguese who
were observing the antics of the Kongo he was told “Father...she is of the
Congo and was baptized by a capuchin. And being informed that you are
going thither to baptize she rejoices, and expresses her joy by those outward
tokens.” As he traveled through the town he noticed that it was full of
people, especially of black slaves from “Angola, Kongo, Dongo and
Matamba.” 88
The Marques of Mondevergue who was visiting Pernambuco in 1666,
provided one of the earliest and most elaborate descriptions of public
celebrations that Kongos and Angolans in the area organized. The Marques
recorded that on Sunday, September 10 he saw present when the Angolans 86Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 4, no 1, p. 395 87 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol 2, p. 468. 88 Guattino e Carli, Viaggio ne Regno del Kongo, p. 157.
began their “festa” (celebrations) in Pernambuco. He noted that the events
began in the church and after having “gone to mass,” about four hundred
men and one hundred women “elected a king and a queen and marched
through the streets, singing and dancing and reciting improvised verses,
accompanied by drums, trumpets, and tambourines.” The group was dressed
in the clothes of their masters and mistresses and carried cords of gold and
other trinkets of gold and pearls, while some wore masks. These festivities
lasted an entire week, during which time the “king and the officers did
nothing other than “parade gravely through the streets with a sword and a
dagger in the belt.”89
The custom of electing a king and queen and the symbols that they
carried, a sword and axe, were undoubtedly copied from the ceremonial
sword carried by the king of Kongo and the axe represented the famous
battle axe that Njinga always carried and was said to be expert at using.
These brotherhood and the celebrations they sponsored took firm root
in the region. In 1683 the governor of Pernambuco João de Sousa informed
the officials of the cãmara of Olinda that the members of the brotherhood
who had demonstrated “elevated zeal and Christian piety” despite being
black and were “faithful Christians” had petitioned the king to ask for
89 Alfredo de Carvalho, “O Marques de Montevergue em Pernambuco, 1666,” Revista do Instituto Archeológico, Histórico e Geográfico Pernambucano, Vol. XIII, no. 70, 637-638.
permission to purchase the freedom of their enslaved members. The petition
pointed out that the members of the brotherhood had collected funds among
themselves to buy from slavery “all the slave men and women of their color”
since many of them suffered terribly under slavery since they were “sons of
honorable men who served in the war.” The group’s request pointed out that
the captives were taking measures into their own hands by fleeing their
captivity and joining the “negroes of Palmares” and thus separating
themselves from the “church community.”90 The petitioners received the
permission they requested and on 17th of November a royal provision called
on the cãmara to choose two who would oversee the freeing from captivity
all the “slave men and women of color” at a reasonable price, following the
example set for the “Brothers of the Rosário of São Tome and Lisbon.91
This Charter Generation and their “Creole” children not only
supported their own chapels and brotherhoods, but they also participated in
European churches as well. The actions of Henriques Dias, the grandson of
Angolans and an intrepid resister against the Dutch is illustrative of the
strong identity of the central Africans. Dias began his military career in
1630 and by 1636 he was the head of a group of 40 “Negros de Angola”
who took up arms against the Dutch. By 1648 the group had expanded into
90 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 2, no. 3, p. 468 91 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 2, p. 469
a formidable black regiment whose ranks included “Ardras, Minas,
Angolans and Crioulos” (Dahomeans, Gold Coast, Angolans and Creoles).92
Yet at the same time he was deeply pious man, and in the middle of a
difficult campaign against the Dutch who sent a major force against him to
dislodge his regiment from their camp, he consecrated a simple chapel to
“Nossa Senhora da Assunção” where the dead soldiers were interred. A
permanent church was finally constructed on the site one hundred years later
following several persistent petitions to the king by the descendants of the
soldiers.93
The central Africans who founded the state of Palmares also exhibited
the marks of their Creole identity in the religious activities they practiced. .
Johan Nieuhof who lived in Brazil from 1641-46 and who was familiar with
the situation in Palmares noted that even though the Africans of Palmares had
forgotten “all subjectivity, they have not lost all recognition of the
church,”94since they had a “well made” chapel that contained “a fine statute of
the infant Jesus, another of our Lady of Conception, and another of Saint
Blaise,” and that they were able to baptize their children and marry because
they had “one of their most ladinos (Creole) who they venerate as pastor.”
92 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 4, p. 317 93 Anais Pernambucanos, Vol. 4, pp. 231-2 94 Edison Carneiro, O Quilombo dos Palmares 2nd ed. revised (São Paulo, Companhia Editoria Nacional, 1958), p. 246.
Nieuhof, noted however that the baptisms and weddings that the people
followed did not reach the standards of European norms since they were
“without the particulars required by the law,” especially because “each one has
the wives he wants.”95 Undoubtedly the central Africans were practicing the
Creole Christianity that flourished in Angola.96
The public festivals which followed the religious ceremonies
organized by the black brotherhood of Nossa Senhora do Rosario or St.
Benedict had become so essential to the slaves that in 1681 the Antonio
Viera, the leader of the Jesuit Order in Brazil, warned plantation owners that
they should not deny their slaves their only time of enjoyment when they
“create their kings, sing and dance for some hours on some days of the
year.” He also encouraged them to allow their slaves to “enjoy themselves in
the evening after they have completed in the morning their feasts to Our
Lady of the Rosary [or of] St. Benedict.97
Although their Creole identity made central Africans more appealing
to Brazilian slave owners, their most important legacy was their
contributions to Afro-Brazilian culture and identity. The brotherhoods that
they founded and the celebrations and rituals connected with them
95 Carneiro, O Quilombo, p. 236. 96 See Thornton, “Conquest and Conversion.” 97 André João Antonil, Cultura e opulêcia do Brasil do por suas drogas e minas (Lisboa, 1711), ed. Afonso de Tauney, São Paulo, 1922, p. 68.
eventually received official recognition. With official recognition they
celebrated their Christian identity with their membership in the brotherhood
of Nossa Senhora de Rosario and their royalist bias by participating in
increasingly elaborate parades where they elected their king and queen and
dramatized central African historical events with musical instruments and
music patterned after what they had known in Africa.
The first written record of Africans electing a “King of Congo”
occurred in 1711 when the Brotherhood of the Rosary of Blacks of Olinda
received official recognition from the Bishop. During the celebrations not
only central Africans but all the enslaved African elected the “King of
Congo.”98Central Africans in other parts of Brazil also tried to retain a unity
and distinct identity. A series of reports from the governor between 1725
and 1728 concerning an uprising of slaves in the Minas Gerais concluded
that one reason the revolt failed was owing to a dispute among the slaves
since “the negros of Angola wanted a person from their kingdom to be king
of all and the Minas also wanted their own countryman to be king.”99
Although Brazilian slave owners attempted to exploit the different ethnic
identities of the enslaved Africans, what was important was the legacy they
left of the Central African presence in Brazil and elsewhere. 98 Ovidio Martins, “A Presença do Negro na Documentacao Colonial Brasileira,” no page number. 99 Lucilene Reginaldo, “Os Rosários Dos Angolas: Irmandades Negros, Experiêcias Escravas e Identidades Africans Na Bahia Setecentista,” Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2005, p. 154.
Throughout the 1700s and 1800s the public celebrations celebrating
the election of the “King of Kongo” continued. By the early 1800s the
central Africans were openly connecting the King of Kongo to Queen Njinga
and this custom took root all over northeast Brazil. These celebrations were
not limited to the northeast, for by them Rio de Janeiro had become the main
port for the hundreds of thousands of central African captives entering
Brazil. Visitors to Brazil as well as Brazilian intellectuals left detailed record
of the public celebrations where the King of Kongo and Queen Njinga held
court. By this time although the elections involved individuals who claimed
direct Kongo (or central African ancestry), Brazilians of various part of
Africa participated.
When Henry Koster visited Itamaraca, one of the oldest settlement in
Pernambuco he left the earliest and most detailed account of the celebrations
which had become elaborate public spectacles. Although he wrote that the
participants were celebrating “the white man’s” religion and copying his
dress, in reality they were continuing to publicize their royalist orientation
and Christian outlook whose deep roots lay deep in central Africa but which
they had adapted to Brazilian reality. Koster commented:
The election of a king of Congo by the individuals who come from that part of Africa seems indeed as if it would give them a bias towards the customs of their native soil. But the Brazilian Kings of Congo worship Our lady of the Rosary, and are dress in the dress of the white man, they and their
subjects dance, it is true, after the manner of their country; but to these festivals are admitted negroes of other nations, creole blacks, and mulattoes, all of whom dance after the same manner, and these dances are now as much the national dances of Brazil as they are of Africa.100
Thus by the time folklorists like Barosa observed began to record the
celebrations, the customs had come to define not only Kongo and Angolan
identity, history and culture in Brazil, but also Afro-Brazilian identity.
Congo Reales, Cabildos and Kongo Identity in Cuba
Cuba, as Brazil, received its first group of enslaved central Africans
during the mid-to-late decades of the 16th century. The majority of these
Africans came from the same locations as the people who went to Brazil (the
Kingdom of Kongo, Portuguese Angola and Ndongo). Although for much of
the seventeenth century the numbers of central Africans in Brazil far
outnumbered their counterparts in Cuba, here, as in Brazil, central Africans
were identified in official records as Congos and Angolas. Significant
increases in the importation of enslaved Central African into Cuba had to
wait for the last years of the eighteenth century up to the 1860s. Between
1801 and 1866, for example, when 766,411 enslaved Africans were
imported into Cuba, Central Africans from the Kingdom of Kongo and its
100 Henry Koster, Vagens Pictoresca atraves Brasil, p. 411.
hinterlands, Portuguese Angola, Matamba, Loango and elsewhere accounted
for at least 31% (240,669 persons) of all the enslaved African imports.101
As other Africans, enslaved central Africans lived in Havana and
Santiago de Cuba, the main cities in Cuba. Like their Brazilian counterparts,
Kongos and Angolas (variously called in Cuba Kongo Reales, Kongo
Mondongos, Mondongos) brought their royalist orientation and Christian
identity with them to Cuba as well. These became most visible in the culture
that the central Africans promoted in the cabildos (social organizations) that
Africans who gained their freedom (along with enslaved Africans) were
allowed to establish from the mid-1700s into the late 1800’s.
Early Cuban ethnographers such as Fernando Ortiz dismissed
evidence from late nineteenth century sources that the cabildos elected kings
and queens that had African antecedents. In fact he actually asserted
categorically that “such opinion appears infantile to me.”102 The evidence,
however, suggests otherwise. Both official and non-official sources clearly
demonstrate that Kongos and Angolas in Cuba, like their Brazilian
counterparts, organized celebrations centered on the election of “kings and
queens.” Moreover, they also held public celebrations where they played
101 Eltis, Atlas of the Atlantic Slave Trade. 102 See, for example “ La Antigua Fiesta Afrocubana del día de Reyes” in , Ensayos etnograficos Fernando Ortiz, selleción de Miguel Barnet y Ángel L. Fernández, Ensayos etnograficos (Habana, 1984), p. 53.
African musical instruments, did African dances, and also regularly met in
the cabildos for “consultations” presided over by the “kings and queens.”
Cabildos were different from the religious brotherhoods that catered
to free Africans (morenos) and their mixed-race children (pardos) ). The
religious brotherhoods operated along the same lines as those in Brazil. One
of the earliest brotherhoods of pardos was called Santo Espíritu de
Humilidade e Paciencia (Holy Spirit of Humility and Patience). These
brotherhoods were officially recognized by the Catholic Church and
followed the same formal rules as the white brotherhoods.103 During the late
seventeenth century as the numbers of Africans who gained their freedom
(morenos) increased, the public meetings and celebrations they sponsored
proliferated. In time, the locations where they held their informal gatherings
and reunions became known as cabildos de naciones. This was because the
cabildos were organized by Africans who came from the same linguistic
regions (for example, Kongos and Angolans).104In their cabildos Kongos
and Angolas took the opportunity to continue with some of the royalist and
Christian practices that had shaped their identity in central Africa.
By the early years of the eighteenth century, several of central African
cabildos de naciones operated but were not formally recognized by the 103 María del Carmen Barcia, Los Ilustres Apellidos: Negros in La Havana Colonial (Havana, 2009), Appendix, pp. 45-65. 104 Carmen Barcia, Los Ilustres Appelidos, passim.
religious or secular authorities. This situation changed in 1755 when the
religious authorities intervened to regulate the cabildos since they suspected
that Africans were using them to perform “primitive rites and illicit dances,”
drumming, and the like. The new regulations that were put in place required
that the leaders (capitazes) of the cabildos register them with secular
authorities who would grant them official permission to hold meetings and
authorize their public celebrations. Although the cabildos were not affiliated
to the churches as the brotherhoods in Brazil or the Cuban white and pardo
cofrarias were, the Catholic hierarchy spearheaded an attempt to transform
them into Christian organizations because they feared that they were too
independent. The attempt to bring the cabildos de ncciones more directly
under official control and to eradicate African customs led the authorities to
distribute a statute of a Saint to each cabildo. Once they received this
religious affirmation members had to meet on the Saint’s Day to oversee
celebrations as well as attend Sunday services. Priests were also sent out to
cabildos to perform baptisms and to teach members the catechism.
The cabildo that the African-born central Africans organized was
under the patronage of Santo Rey Melchor (Saint King Melchor) and the
leader had to make sure that members participate in the yearly veneration of
the saint as well as be present every Sunday and feast days to participate in
religious activities.105 By the mid-eighteenth century when the new laws
regulating cabildos came into effect, enslaved Africans in Cuba with Central
African origins were all classified as subgroups of Congos in official
records. In 1755 the first official count of cabildos listed a total of six Congo
cabildos –two were identified as Congo Mundongo (people from the
Kimbundu region), another was listed as Congo Loango, and the remaining
three were listed as simply as Congo. Throughout the nineteenth century as
more Central Africans gained their freedom (became emancipados) they
founded new cabildos. In fact, one of the few studies of cofrarios and
cabildos in Cuba identified a total of 119 cabildos operating in the island
between 1755 and 1917. Of these, at least 26 were Congo cabildos. Six of
the Congo cabildos were identified as Congo Mondongos.106
Some of the Congo cabildos were still functioning during the first half
of the twentieth despite the spate of laws passed in the last two decades of
the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century closing
all cabildos. In fact, as late as 1947 Fernando Ortiz visited one cabildo
called Congo Kimalimbu that traced its foundation to the middle of the
105 Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Escribanía D’Aumy, Legajo 917, no. 6, p. 37. p. 29-32. 106 María del Carmen Barcia, Los Ilustres Apellidos: Negros in La Havana Colonial (Havana, 2009), Appendix, pp. 406-413.
nineteenth century. The founder Francisco Alcassar who died in 1882, was
born in Nsundi, one of the core provinces of the Kongo kingdom.107
Although evidence of the persistence of Kongo (and Kimbundu)
royalist and Christian identity is not as visible in the Cuban Kongo cabildos
as in the brotherhoods in Brazil, the founding and operation of cabildos
provided the unique conditions for the creation and recreation of identity. In
the Congo reales cabildos African-born members from the core provinces of
the Kingdom used their common language, their Christian cultural heritage,
and their knowledge of courtly life in the kingdom to fuse together a
distinctive identity which all Cubans accepted. During the nineteenth and
early years of the twentieth century Congo emancipados were identified by
their Christianity identity, the tendency to identify the heads of their
cabildos as kings, and their attention to public rituals and parades. This
Christian and royalist bias informed Congo identity in Cuba.
These royalist and Christian orientation of the African-born Congos
from the central Africa emerge clearly in contemporary documents detailing
disputes and other activities of the Congo cabildos. The documents reveal
that the early founders of the cabildos congos were Congos who came from
the core provinces of the kingdom. The first detailed references are from a
107 “Cabildo Congo Kimplimbu”
1780-82 inquest that investigated a dispute between members of a cabildo
called Santo Rey Melchor. The cabildo had been founded several decades
earlier in Havana by Congos from the kingdom of Kongo. The dispute arose
because various members were contesting the ownership and use of the
cabildo property, the use of funds collected by the members and the
succession to office. 108 The inquest tells much about the identity of the
founders and the makeup of the cabildo’s membership. In the first case the
records show that the members of the cabildo were all born in the main
provinces of the Kingdom of Congo (Mbata, Soyo, Mbanza Kongo, and
Sonso) and had gained their freedom after years as slaves in Cuba. These
men referred to themselves as Congo reales (Royal Kongos), a clear
indication of their identity with the king and kingdom.109 Furthermore, their
royalist bias was evident in their use of the word “palace” to identify the
building that housed the cabildo. The Christian identity was also important.
One if the main duties of the leader was to require all members to participate
in the yearly veneration of Rey Melchor, as well as be present every Sunday
and feast days to participate in religious activities.110
108 Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Escribanía D’Aumy, Legajo 917, no. 6, p. 37. 109 Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Escribanía D’Aumy, Legajo 917, no. 6, p. 37. 110 Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Escribanía D’Aumy, Legajo 917, no. 6, p. 37. p. 29-32.
The cabildo congo reales continued to operate well into the 1900s
even after several laws were passed beginning from 1877 restricting their
activities. In 1884 another piece of legislation totally banned the Dia dos
Reyes-the major annual function when all the African cabildos paraded
through the streets of Havana and other major centers performing their
African music and dances and carrying their flags and other symbols of the
nations and saints.
A series of letters written between the 1860s to the early 1900s which
were sent by the head of the cabildo congo reales in Havana and Matanzas
to various government officials as well as to local cabildos reveal that the
leaders of the cabildo congo reales in Havana took their position as head of
all cabildos seriously. They regarded themselves as the sole representative
between the authorities and all the naciones aftricanas in Cuba. During the
period the king intervened to resolve various conflicts concerning opening
up of new cabildos in Matansas and Cardenas, and attended to issues of
local leadership of cabildos. The head of the cabildo congo reales also sent
several letters to regional and national authorities requesting permission for
the cabildos to celebrate various functions through the public thoroughfare
using African musical instruments. The leader also vetoed requests that
undermined the leadership of the central cabildo congo reales which he
oversaw at the headquarters in Havana.111 In 1886, for example, the head of
the cabildo congo reales petitioned the authorities asking for permission to
establish a cabildo under the protection of “Nuestra Señora des Mercedes
(Our Lady of Mercy)” in Matanzas.112 One such cabildo composed of free
and enslaved Africans from Ndongo had been in existence in the city since
1844.113
Other Congo cabildos were established under the patronage of
“Nuestra Señora de Rosario (Our Lady of the Rosary) and Santo Antonio,
the two Saints who were very important in the history of the Kongo
Kingdom and Ndongo. In fact, the cabildo Nossa Señora de Rosario which
was in existence before 1860 was specifically associated with the Congo
Mundongos, people originating from Portuguese Angola and Ndongo.
These cabildos, as others, were ultimately under the patronage of the cabildo
Santo Rey Melchor congo reales. In 1888 when a dispute arose over the
position of the cabildo Ganga (one of the five nations --Congo Reales,
Carabali, Mandinga, Mina, and Ganga) that the authorities recognized, the
head of the congo real Modesto Enrique wrote several letters to the
authorities contesting the position that the Gangas had taken to act 111 For the various disputes see Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, Fondo, Religiosos Africanos. 112 Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, Fondo, Religiosos Africanos,“Comunicaciones referente al cabildo Congo Reales. 113 Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, Fondo, Religios Africanos, Comunicaciones referente al Cabildo Vigen de Mecedes.
independent of the congo reales. In asserting his right as the head of all the
cabildos in Cuba, he reminded the authorities that “since antiquity, the
leader of the congo reales had been officially recognized as the Crown and
head of the five nations.”114 In fact, at an official meeting of the heads of all
five cabildos naciones, the head of the congo reales was addressed with the
title “The King Melchor, his patron Nossa Señora de Rosario, and the Congo
Reales.” The four leaders of the remaining cabildos had no titles and were
subordinate to the head of the congo reales. Thus although Africans from
other regions in central Africa--the Loangos, for instance had a cabildo
under the patronage of “El Virgen de Belen”—which was founded in 1818
and those from elsewhere in Africa headed cabildos—(ganga, Mina, etc.)
operated cabildos, these never achieved the kind of public acclaim nor did
their public stature compare with that of the head of the congo reales.115 The
legal position that congo reales held reinforced the ethnic identity markers
that they had brought with them from Africa and allowed them to
manipulate it to create a new Congo identity in Cuba.
As in Brazil, throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s the Christian
identity of the cabildo congo reales attracted the attention of visitors to the 114 Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, Fondo, Religios Africanos, Comunicaciones referente,al cabildo Cayetano de nacion Congo Luango, 1883. 115 Archivo Historico de Cuba, Provincial Matanzas, [AHCPM] Fondo, Religiosos Africanos, “Comunicaciones referente al cabildo Virgen de Belem”; AHCPM, Fondo Religiosos Africanos, “Communicaciones referente Virgin de Mercedes.[The folder deals with the Cabildo Mondongo).; See also María del Carmen Barcia, Los Illustres Apellidos: Negros en La Habana (Habana, 2009), Appendix.
island. Fredrika Bremmer, for example, who visited Havana and Matansas in
1853 and described the various “cabildos de naciones” which were located
in Serro, some two miles outside the walls of Havana at the time. Noting that
in this location the free Africans met to dance, play drums, she compared the
cabildos “public houses” in Europe.116 After visiting several of the cabildos
what caught her attention was the Christian appearance of the cabildo de
Congos which she noted contained “several Christian symbols” which the
members displayed on the walls.117 From the celebrations and other
spectacles she observed in Havana and other cabildos, she concluded that
members of the Congo cabildos appeared to be genuine Christians even
though she disproved of their retaining “somewhat of the superstition and
idolatry of their country.” Undoubtedly the African born Congos were
practicing the Kongo Christianity they brought from their homeland. 118
The Kongo Christianity that Kongos practiced continued into the
twentieth century. In a 1921 article written by Fernando Ortiz one of his
informers an-- “old Congo” referenced the Christian practices associated
with the Congo cabildos that functioned during his youth (1860a). He noted
that for three days following the elections for the “rey congo” (see below)
members of the cabildo congo reales lighted candles and held ceremonies in 116 Fredriker Bremmer, The Homes of the new World, vol. II (New York, 1853), p. 276. 117 Fredriker Bremmer, The Homes of the new World, vol. II (New York, 1853), p. 383. 118 Fredriker Bremmer, The Homes of the new World, vol. II (New York, 1853), p. 383.
honor of St. Anthony (the Patron St. of Kongo).119 Official reports also
referenced the Christian background of the Congos in Cuba. A Havana
newspaper that carried national news included in its 11 February 1913
publication a note about the burial of the “king of the Congos, his majesty
Canute Montalvo.” The report noted that many of “his subjects”
accompanied the body to the cemetery singing “mournful songs” and that on
passing in front of the Catholic Church the bells rung “in honor of the
deceased.” The correspondent went on to wish the deceased “eternal rest and
also sent “to his numerous family our deepest sympathy.”120 Despite their
slave status in Cuba, the Christianity and royalist orientation that marked
Kongos (and Angolas) from the kingdom in Brazil also set them apart in
Cuba as well.
The royalist orientation of the Kongos (and Angolas) was reinforced
in Cuba in other ways as well. The role of the government in the colony, as
in Brazil, played a crucial role her. By the early 1800s provincial governors
and other local authorities designated the Santo Rey Melchor cabildo as the
most important of all the cabildos in Cuba, and identified the head as the
“ambassador” for all the other cabildos de naciones in Cuba. In fact, the
head even had the authority to impose fines on heads of other cabildos.
119Fernando Ortiz, Ensayos Etnograficos (Habana, 1984), p. 13. 120 Ortiz, Ensayos Etnograficos, p. 36 note 6.
Records for the period show that the head of the Santa Rey Melchor
cabildo actually referred to himself as king. This was the case in 1808 with
the Santa Rey Melchor cabildo in Havana where the “President” or head of
was addressed by the title “King Mofundi Silaman.”121 The social status of
the “rey congo” only increased during the following years. In October 1848,
for example, when Jose Trinidad XXXV, the head of the cabildo congo
reales in Santiago de Cuba died, the official compendium which listed all
the important events for the region included an announcement about his
solemn burial. Identifying him as el rey Congo [king Congo], the writer
noted that many people of his “congregation” attended and that he was
honored with a volley of artillery fired at his funeral.122
References to the royalist identify of the cabildos of Congo reales
appeared in some of the earliest ethnographic records of noted Cuban
ethnologists Fernando Ortiz and Lydia Cabrera. In 1906, for example, Ortiz
recorded the story told to him by an old ex-slave who recalled “the royal
Congos are the slaves who are called in Africa angunga [Kongo word for
bell] because they have a bell in their country.”123 Ortiz, in referring to the
royalist elements among the congo reales summarized the elaborate
121 Proclama que en un cabildo de negros Congos de la ciudad de La Havana pronunció su Presidente…” (Havana, 1808) 122 Emilio Barcardi Morreau, Cronicas de Santiago de Cuba, vol. 2 (Barcelona, 1908-1913), pp. 369-70. 123 Jesus Guanche, Africania e Etnicidade en Cuba (Habana, 2008), p. 212.
procedures that his informant, the “old Congo” related to him. The “old
Kongo reported that election of the head (king) of the cabildo occurred
every four years [and] was an elaborate affair which seem to mimic the
process for electing kings in the Kongo Kingdom. The “old Congo” insisted
that only the Congos elected kings and that the Lucumis (Yorubas) did not
elect kings.124
Events surrounding the rey congo also continued to make national
headlines in Cuba and no doubt helped to reinforce the royalist and Christian
identity of members of the congo cabildos reales. For example, a Havana
newspaper which carried announcements from other areas of the country
included in its 11 February 1913 publication a notice about the burial of the
“rey Congo, his majesty Canute Montalvo.” The report noted that many of
“his subjects” accompanied the body to the cemetery singing “mournful
songs” and that on passing in front of the Catholic Church the bells rung “in
honor of the deceased to who we desire eternal rest, sending at the same time
to his numerous family our deepest sympathy.” The royalist identity was
also reflected in descriptions from old informers and newspapers accounts
about the dress and deportment of the “King Congo” during the Day of the
124 Fernando Ortiz, Ensayos Etnograficos (Habana, 1984), 13
Kings celebration. In one of his early essays Ortiz described the dress and
demeanor of the king:
On the Day of Kings, rey congo wore jacket and pants, two pointed, tasseled cane, etc. All these attributes were of European origin, and also a royal robe and the one scepter were the very one that the African Congo king received when he gave allegiance of the king of Portugal in 1888.125 The several letters that the heads of the congo reales cabildo in
Havana forwarded to government officials between 1878 and the first two
decades into the 20th century leave no doubt that the leaders and members
alike were invested in protecting their position.. Whether they intended to or
not, their royalist orientation and Christian outlook helped to preserve the
traditions and explain why Kongo Christian ideas and notions of royalty
persisted into the twentieth century.126 Although the rey congo did not have
the same level of national recognition and position in Afro-Cuban folklore
and memory as was the case with the “rei de Kongo in Brazil, the status and
role of the rei congo set him and the congo reales apart from other Africans
in the island.
When Lydia Cabrera did her ethnographic work in Cuba, she
deliberately set out to learn more about the congo reales whose exalted
public had given way to accusations of witchcraft and who been supplanted
125 Ortiz, Ensayos Etnograficos , p. 12. 126 Ortiz, “Los Cabildos Afro-Cubanos” in Ensayos Etnograficos Miguel Barnett and Angel Fernández, eds. (Habana, 1984) p. 13.
in the larger public eye by the more organized lucumis (Yorubas) and their
Orisha religion. Cabera, recalling celebrations she had seen as a child,
sought out former slaves who she knew would recall the glory days of the
congo reales. Old Congos she interviewed not only spoke the dialect of
Kikongo (in fact one man who used in the kingdom of Kongo) but described
rituals to her that contained many similarities with the Christianity of the
Kongo kingdom. Cabrera’s study provides rich details of the persistence of
Congo exceptionalism in Cuba.
Most of the materials she collected came from African born elderly
Congos or creoles (some of them were well into their 90s and were alive in
the mid-1950s), and recollected their personal interactions with Congos born
in Africa who were members of the cabildos Congo reales. Some of the
Afr0-Cubans had lived during the last years of slavery and recalled that
during that time “the congos were as numerous as the lucumis.” One of her
interviewers stressed that members of the congo reales were all “natives of
Guinea” and that they were found in “the cities as well as the haciendas.”127
Some of them recalled that the Congos were distinguished by their rituals of
royalty and Christian identity. Her elderly informants who were descended
from Lucumi Africans defended the congo reales when others vilified them
127 Lydia Cabrera, Reglas de Congo, Palo Monte, Mayombe (Miami: Peninsular, 1979), p. 1.
as primitive. They dismissed these accusations, and instead asserted that on
the contrary, all the congo reales “were very civilized” and had “in their
cabildos a ceremonial court, a kind…Because of this many hand-drawn
carriage workers and man-servants who were rich were congo reales.”128
The description of the rituals that in the cabildos congo reales that one
elderly Cuban described to Cabrera leaves no doubt that the Kongos in Cuba
attempted to recreate the rituals and bearing of the kings and nobility of the
Kingdom. Recalling the setting for a typical audience that the rey congo of
the cabildo congo reales held, the informant recalled:
That was really Congo di Ntótila (the Kingdom of Kongo) the same Kongo kingdom with the King and Queen, the vassals, and all with order and respect. For this the cabildo congo was regarded as a kingdom. The celebrations were very good, the best; there everything was luxury. The King came down with his frustraque and sword and was seated on the throne with the Queen. There he governed like an African!”129
Although he did not know it, the image that Cabrera’s elderly Afro-
Cuban informant described did not depart much from the many visual and
descriptive images that European missionaries and secular visitors to the
court of the kings recorded over the 400 years and more that Kongo kings
held audience in their court at Mbanza Kongo.
Despite the ridicule that enslaved Kongos faced with in their attempts
to recreate Kongo and central African religious life and culture during the 128 Cabrera, Reglas de Congo, p. 14-15.. 129 Cabrea, Reglas de Congo, pp. 15-16.
congadas in Brazil and in their cabildos in Cuba, there is no doubt that the
Cristian and royalist outlook which Kongos (and Kimbundus) brought with
them from Africa allowed them to survive the enslavement. More important,
however, these traditions are visible in the folklore of Afro-Brazilians and in
the several instances of Kongo linguistic and cultural influences in Cuba.