GIFTED BRAZILIAN DANCER.
XVII. Senhorita Eros Volusia, exotic Bahian of Negro ancestry, whose dancing of the MACUMBA, or African war-dance, has made her famous. Member of Brazil’s Ministry of Education, for which she conducts courses in the African dance.
The descendants of the Mina women in Brazil are still a delight to the connoisseur of feminine beauty and sprightliness. As one writer says, “Her turban, her shawl, her ornaments, her elastic step in the heeled slipper, display a native grace unattainable by modern fashion.”
The narrow streets of Bahia are filled with “erect, well-built Negroes, their bodies clothed in the gaudy colors dear to the Negro, gold chains about their necks, their brown skins covered with bracelets, great hoops in their ears. Their full print skirts sway gracefully as they walk with unshod feet. Bahia is the paradise of children, little black, brown, and tan babies clothed in nature’s original garb.” Of course there is much poverty, squalor, and ignorance, too.
Color prejudice in Southern Brazil, and even in Rio de Janeiro has increased considerably in recent years by English, America, and Nazi residents. In the pre-Hitler years, no immigrant to Latin America was less prejudiced than the German. He came to Brazil as Ruhl says, “to become one of the people; to live their life and marry their daughters even though the child of the future generation may have a quaint kink in its hair.”52 Now, however, Nazi units in Brazil, and other South American countries, have terrorized the otherwise broad-minded Germans into showing race prejudice as one way of cementing Nazi unity.
Thomas Mann, Germany’s greatest living writer, and Nobel prize winner, comes of this German-Brazilian stock. Professor Phelps says, “His mother was the daughter of a German planter in Brazil and a Creole wife.” (N. Y. Herald-Tribune, June 23, 1938.)
As for white American influence in the Latin-American countries it has been worse even than the Nazi one. The average American carries color dissension abroad as Eugene Sue’s Wandering Jew carried the plague from continent to continent. Inman writes of “the prejudice introduced and maintained by the Anglo-Saxon residents in America” and adds, “In the present world-wide agitation over the question of race, it is particularly regrettable that foreign countries should desire to transfer their own prejudices to Latin America as Germany has done, and it must be admitted as the United States has done by importing its prejudice against Negroes into Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other Caribbean areas.”53
E. Franklin Frazier says, “The British and the Americans draw a color line not only in their social contacts with Brazilians but as white collar workers. Americans who have gone to Brazil as technical advisers have insisted that even distinguished black officials be ejected from hotels and when their wishes were not respected they have left the hotel. In spite of the good neighbor policy it is likely that increasing financial and industrial penetration of Brazil by Americans will accentuate discrimination on the basis of color. Even at the present time Brazilians are careful to select pictures of the right complexion for the American public.53a
Gilberto Freyre, one of Brazil’s leading writers, is very frank on the subject. “For thirty years,” he says, “Brazil has been menaced by Nordic civilization and the menace grows daily. .
“The state of Santa Catharina, for example, is full of North American, British, and German agents, who are out not only to exploit the colored man as an inferior but agitate for purity of race… .”54
Nor does this mean that all Brazilians are free from color prejudice themselves, especially in their intimate social affairs. As in colonial days, there are still circles where even light-colored mulattoes would not be admitted, much less a Negro. There are societies not only in Brazil but throughout Latin-America even in those lands “most liberal toward Negroes in which the appearance of a Negro would be regarded as a profanation.”55 Yes, and there are circles, too, not entirely white, where it is only the rare American, Englishman, or German, who is admitted. Latin peoples, regardless of color, rarely admit strangers to their homes.
In the Brazilian navy, as in the American one, there is much color prejudice, too. Negroes, at least those visibly so, are admitted as seamen but not as officers. So badly were the blacks treated that they revolted in 1911 under one of their number, Joao Candido, and seized the new battleship, Minas Geraes. In the higher class barber-shops, especially in southern Brazil, mulattoes will be served but the black man is refused. The latter, too, are not usually found in banks and other similar places.
One wonders, however, whether a certain attitude in the blacks have not something to do with their not being in these higher positions. Numbers of unmixed blacks, not only in Brazil, but in Africa, and in other parts of the New World do feel themselves creatures apart because of their color and are thus less likely to push themselves into places where they are not supposed to be “wanted.” The man who goes only where he is “wanted” is doomed to remain at the foot of the ladder. He must make himself wanted. Any number of unmixed blacks can be found who are isolationists. Bennett, a white American, who lived forty years in Brazil, says that he was once walking on the Rua Nuova in Rio, when he saw a party of white tourists suddenly come into close proximity with a black woman, who, at once, drew aside with a lofty air, and exclaimed, “Oh meu deus, os brancos perto de mim.” (Oh, my God, the whites so close to me.)56 I have noticed the same thing in Africa, and incidentally among other aborigines, as the Indians. Oppression has bred isolationism into them. Columbus tells how very friendly and kind the Indians were at first; later, under ill-treatment, they shunned the Spaniards like poison. The identical is true of the African.
But even with matters as they are, the status of the unmixed black in Brazil is far superior than it is in the British West Indies or the United States. He is not forced into segregated areas, and if he is a skilled workman, he may be placed over lighter colored men. Koebel tells of seeing full-blooded Negroes in charge of parties of white and mulatto workmen in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, and even in Santos, the part of Brazil that is most white.57 Also he is not barred from public places of amusement, and the general tendency is to accept him as a member of the human family. “Brazil,” says Harding, “is the country of all countries where social democracy really works. The most tolerant of all the world’s people, Brazilians completely erase social lines. White, red, and black pigments have been poured into a gigantic homogenizer to produce the conglomerate Brazilian race which views with equanimity the commingling of bloods… If you expect to enjoy yourself here you must rid your mind of race prejudices. In restaurants, street-cars, theatres or anywhere else you may be seated immediately beside the ace of spades and if you don’t like it you have the privilege of getting out.”58
Moreover Brazil is discovering her own wonderful personality and in proportion as she is doing so the old racial inferiority complex and prejudice in favor of European ways and culture are fading away. Gilberto Freyre, speaking of the tremendous influence the Negro and the mulatto have had upon Brazilian music, art, literature, exploration and settlement, mechanical arts, cooking, and culture in general, says, “In contemporary Brazil, almost no one, save an occasional snob, tries to conceal from foreigners the importance of the African element. During and immediately after the movement for political independence in Brazil and during the romantic ‘Indianist’ phase, in poetry, the novel, and art, there was a glorification of Indian blood. Nowadays if there is no actual boasting about their African blood on the part of certain illustrious mesticoes—and the great majority of Brazilians are mesticoes—there does not exist the shame in admitting it which was as current as late as ten or fifteen years ago. It was then common for distinguished mesticoes. who were dark in color and obviously Negroid to proclaim themselves the descendants of Indians and display their pride in being caboclos… .
“Culture in Brazil has ceased to be tamely colonial. It has abandoned its attitude of passive subordination to European models, and has become autonomous. And this movement of cultural autonomy in modern Brazil is based to a great extent on recognition of the fact that important elements in our racial evolution derive not merely from exploitation of native or indigenous factors