Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro and Eliane Canedo
Research and contributions: Cristiane Titoneli
Little Africa
A Brazilian singer, songwriter and artist, Heitor dos Prazeres (1898-1996) portrayed the bohemian lifestyle and culture of the hills of Rio and their poverty-stricken communities. It was he who first described the Rio Docklands as Pequena África – Little Africa, home to African-Brazilian traditions and the cradle of samba in Rio.
Countless arguments have swirled around the territorial boundaries of Little Africa. However, there is widespread agreement that the main redoubts of African culture in Rio de Janeiro between the XVIII and XX centuries were clustered mainly in the Saúde and Gamboa districts, particularly after large-scale urban upgrade projects during the XX century excised the more northerly but important Cidade Nova region from this huge accumulation of African heritage assets.
On the one hand, these two districts still retain striking aspects of African-Brazilian culture, packed with stories about rites and rituals rooted in Africa, the origins of samba, and the carefree lives of its songwriters, filling their fellow cariocas with pride. On the other, they still record disturbing memories that spotlight the tragedies of the African Diaspora.
After slavery was abolished in 1888, waves of formerly enslaved people moved from Bahia State to what was then the nation’s capital. However, the city offered no alternative livelihoods to these newly freed slaves. This is why the earliest migrants settled where housing was cheapest and unskilled labor was in demand: around the Port wharf. They initially squatted in areas between the Praça Mauá plaza and the São Cristóvão district, with the first samba singalongs gathering in the area around the Praça Onze plaza.
Cheap eateries known as casas de zungu attracted workers who not only ate their meals – like stewed chicken gizzard angu and other delicacies – there, but also socialized and celebrated in groups through music, celebrations and an assortment of rites, including candomblé rituals. Notable figures among the women were white-robed priestesses known as tias baianas, like Tia Bebiana, Tia Perciliana and Tia Obá. The best known was Tia Ciata, living in Rua Visconde de Inhaúma, near the Praça Onze square. These ‘aunties’ achieved significant social status within their communities, not only for the roles they played in preserving African-Brazilian religions, but more particularly for the networks they set up to welcome Black Brazilians and newcomers. Poet Manuel Bandeira sang:
King John VI planted four rows of imperial palms
such ground-hugging little houses where so often, my God
I was a civil servant married to an ugly wife
and I died of pulmonary tuberculosis.
Many palm trees committed suicide
because they did not live on a blue-tinged pinnacle.
It was here that they whimpered
the first sad choros song in carioca carnivals
Sambas da Tia Ciata 16
Despite harsh repression, the casas de zungu managed to survive, keeping African culture alive. The terreiro yards where the tias performed their candomblé rituals worshipped the pantheon of African deities known as orixás, with candomblé celebrations and singalong choro sessions. This was where the first street samba groups sprang up: the ranchos and cordões still typical of street carnival in Rio. They even absorbed more rural rhythms introduced by newly-freed migrants from Bahia State and the Paraíba valley who belonged to the Yoruba, Bantu and Sudanese nations.
Later on, these neighborhood samba sessions attracted famous samba songwriters whose names are part of this heritage – like Pixinguinha, João da Baiana, Donga, Hilário Jovino and Heitor dos Prazeres, and many others – thus perpetuating a musical effervescence that sprang from tribal rhythms. This area also became a religious hotspot, a favorite place for offerings that reflected the strong presence of candomblé beliefs rooted in Africa. The terreiro ritual yard headed by priest and pai de santo João Alabá de Omulu was considered the seminal candomblé site in Little Africa.
Alongside the New Blacks Institute (IPN – Instituto dos Pretos Novos) was the Afoxé Filhos de Gandhi samba group, a contemporary of the Afoxé Baiano, which is the oldest active samba group in Rio; some old Angolan capoeira masters like Mestre Graúna; casual samba singalongs clustering around the Pedra do Sal rock; the Vizinha Faladeira samba school (one of the oldest in the city, but out of action for many years); street carnival groups, and entire strings of cultural expressions that were not connected, often lacking visibility and encouragement, even from local residents.
Several factors changed the course of history here. Noteworthy among them was the strengthening of the New Blacks Institute and the archaeological site as material witnesses to the history of slavery in this region; claims for the acknowledgement of land ownership by a group of survivors from the quilombo runaway slave community at Pedra do Sal; and the discovery of (well-preserved) ruins of part of the Cais do Valongo quay during excavations in 2010. From 2005 to 2010, links were built up among these many different agents, who definitively established Little Africa as a landmark in their portfolios, not as a return to the past, but rather updating this past in the present