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France 24
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Brazil's anti-racism education initiatives are picking up pace
In the courtyard of the Yuri Gagarin school in Bomsucesso, in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, loudspeakers at full blast cannot hide the cries of happiness from the 300 or so pupils gathered in the pouring rain to see a concert by MC and teacher Allan Pevirguladez, who is revered as a rock star. Pevirguladez leads the children in singing songs celebrating Brazil in all its diversity. 'My hair is very pretty, it's Black power. And Joao's is very pretty too, blond and straight. Vitoria's is so sweet, it's in chocolate braids,' sings a chorus of Black and mixed-race children between 5 and 12. Anti-racist hits at the playground Musica Popular Brasileira Infantil Antirracista – or MPBIA, as it is known – has become a phenomenon on social media. Created by Pevirguladez two years ago to combat racism from an early age, it was while teaching his pupils that he came up with the idea of a song about Brazil's ethnic diversity. Enthralled by the project, the city of Rio de Janeiro gave him permission to tour the schools that requested him to perform, but without paying him. He says his "carefree" songs "make it much easier for children to understand very serious themes and concepts". "I have parents who call me or write to me every week to say thank you, 'Thank you for doing this for our children, we never experienced anything like it ourselves'." A rousing success that was unthinkable just 20 years ago. As a young teacher in 1996, Luciano Braga asked his primary school pupils to draw themselves. The result: slender nostrils, blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. He was shocked. Although most of the children were Black, they had all drawn themselves as being White. Braga realised that young Brazilians had no Afro-Brazilian artistic or cultural references at school. Given relatively free rein in his profession, he decided to teach them Afro-Brazilian painting and music by introducing them to the tambor drum, the predominant instrument in Brazil. 'As soon as my colleagues heard the drumming rhythms in the school, they went straight to the management to protest. They accused me of inciting children to convert to Umbanda or Candomble, religions with African roots, as if I wanted to pervert them. But it's their history, our culture.' For Braga, the state school may be secular, but most of the teachers there are evangelical or Catholic and see Afro-Brazilian religions as a "demonic" influence on young minds. He says this is proof of the widespread ignorance of teaching staff, who remain 'contaminated by the Judeo-Christian history of the European colonists'. A first textbook on the history of Afro-Brazilians When the law to officially include Afro-Brazilian history and culture in the school curriculum was passed in 2003, Braga saw it as a glimmer of hope. But law doesn't necessarily translate into action in Brazil. Since no textbook gave space to Black writers, poets and artists, Braga took up his pen and in 2010 wrote the first "Manual of African and Afro-Brazilian History", which is still widely used in the public school system in the state of Sao Paulo. 'It was important to teach these young people their own history, and that of their grandparents, so that it wasn't just dealt with through suffering but also with a positive approach, so that they would be proud to say, 'My great-great-grandmother was a slave' instead of being ashamed,' says Braga. However, 22 years have gone by since the law was passed and public schools, governed by municipalities, are still under no obligation to apply it. According to a survey carried out in 2024 by the Instituto Geledes & Alana, only 29 percent of state schools in more than 1,800 municipalities had a programme for teaching the country's Black history. Another 53% had a few scarce measures in place but 18% had none at all. In private schools, the figure was even lower. 'Seeing yourself in books, recognising yourself in paintings or films, hearing yourself in songs, is the only way to combat racism from an early age,' Braga says. According to the latest survey entitled "Perception of racism in Brazil" and carried out by the Brazilian Intelligence and Strategic Research Centre, 38% of Black Brazilians questioned claimed to have been victims of racism at school or university. Towards an anti-racism seal Zara Figueiredo, Brazil's secretary for education, diversity and inclusion, hopes this will now change. She has made this law a personal battle, and a decree to implement it was finally signed on May 14. 'In Brazil, we have what is known as federative autonomy. We cannot control what is taught in municipal or state schools, but we can encourage them by funding concrete projects such as the opening of 50,000 new teaching posts, the creation of an anti-racism seal to reward good schools, and the hiring of 1,500 implementation officers to help schools apply the anti-racism protocol." In her view, it is now a matter of 'making up for 10 years of educational backwardness'. Despite the actions taken by the federal government in the past, which "have not had much effect so far'. While waiting to reap the rewards of 2 billion reals (over €300 million) in investment, teaching children from an early age through singing is working. Though he is exhausted by going back and forth between the school where he teaches in the centre of Rio and his concerts between 12-2pm at schools around the region, there is no stopping Pevirguladez. His Instagram profile includes a waiting list of some 400 schools. After publishing three books, he is releasing a new album at the end of May and will give his first concert in Duque de Caxias, a city on the northern outskirts of Rio where most of the residents are Black. With 400 fans, children and parents expected to attend, it appears Brazil's anti-racist initiatives are finally taking off.
The Guardian
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We feel the pain but there is also joy': the healing power of diasporic connection
Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. In capoeira – an art form whose origins were carried across the Black Atlantic by enslaved people, but which developed and grew into a cultural form of resistance in Brazil – we sometimes wish each other axé (pronounced 'ah-shay'). In doing so, we would be bestowing on our interlocutor life force, vitality or just positive energy in the capoeira roda (circle where capoeira is played) or in life. The term is also used in Candomblé and Umbanda, syncretic afro-Brazilian religions with African roots. For me it also symbolises the ability to harness ancestral knowledge and energy to enrich the jogo (game of capoeira), embodying and paying tribute to those who kept the art form alive. When I lived in Salvador for several months in the early 2000s, I would use the phrase a lot. It resonated with me; it unified me with my family of fellow capoeiras, whose identities found expression in the physical, musical and spiritual aspects of the art. We may have grown up on different laterals of the Black Atlantic, but we could meet and connect with our shared ancestry through the transcendent power of capoeira. I hadn't encountered the term in any other context, until I travelled to Savannah, Georgia, in the Sea Islands or Low country region of the US in September 2023. This was my first visit as programme director of the Legacies of Enslavement programme, an opening step in understanding how the Guardian could atone for its founders' involvement in transatlantic enslavement. We were participating in a Slaves in the City walking tour of Savannah, led by Sistah Patt Gunn, a Gullah Geechee elder and purveyor of an abundance of 'axé'. I was overwhelmed to hear the word used during a theatrical reenactment that formed part of the tour. Looking back, I am not sure why I was so surprised. 'Àṣẹ' is a Yoruba term that can be used and understood in various contexts including to refer to divine power/energy and its manifestation, spirituality and light. It travelled with us, wherever we were enslaved. Across the Americas and Caribbean, where you will still find it in various iterations. I had found a valuable fragment, an ancestral connection, to a place I had never been to before, via my own attachment to Brazil. —------ Savannah, Georgia, US. A city that receives 17 million visitors a year, who soak in its southern charm and historic sites. Few of these visitors seek out the unhidden histories of the enslaved people transported along the Savannah River, or those skilled blacksmiths who built the Freemasons' Hall and adorned its surrounding ironwork with Adinkra symbols, or understand the true significance of the oldest town square where enslaved people were bartered and sold, which has no markers of this history. This is what I learned about on Sistah Patt's tour. And when I asked her, she explained that Gullah Geechee people use the term 'axé' to mean 'all will be well'. —--- The Black Atlantic. This work has really awakened in me a sense of how much connections across the diaspora, and back to the mother continent, mean to those of us who want to repair the structural, psychological and moral harm that chattel slavery represents. There are intricate, interlocking ties between people of African descent reaching over, under and through the Atlantic Ocean, but also continuing beyond, and arcing around the world again. The programme is traversing these intra- and interconnections. Moving from the Sea Islands of the US, it is engaging with descendant communities in Jamaica, in Manchester in the UK and also carrying out further research on Brazil to uncover more about the cotton trading connections of Guardian founders there. New cultures, politics, religions and countries have been created through the trafficking and enslavement of our ancestors. We feel the pain. But there is also joy to be found. It has been clear from the hundreds of conversations we have had – at community level, with civil society organisations, campaigners and institutions – that centring this joy, reforging those ancestral connections, piecing together the ritualistic, linguistic, culinary, spiritual fragments of our forced displacement is part of repair. And perhaps particularly so for those of us living diasporically in non-Black-majority countries. This is by no means the only common theme that has emerged. A desire to be able to create generational wealth is another critical one, which in itself is existential. The objectives of the programme are to atone for the Guardian's history, but also to share information and to raise consciousness of the realities and legacies of transatlantic enslavement. Two years after the programme was launched, we are still working through an engagement process to understand how the Guardian can make amends for its history, from the perspective of descendant communities. Then we must meet the challenge of identifying how the programme can respond. So far, on the theme of diasporic connections, we have launched the Long Wave newsletter as a specific way to share news and stories about people of African descent globally. We have written about topics such as carnival and the hair industry, and covered cultural highlights across the Black diaspora. From the feedback we have received, it is clear that you value feeling connected and introduced to a wider community. We have also announced a partnership with the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester to launch an exhibition in early 2027 on the city's ties to cotton and enslavement. An important part of that will be highlighting the contributions of the Gullah Geechee people of the Sea Islands region in the US, and enslaved people in Brazil to creating the wealth that transformed Greater Manchester through cotton manufacturing. And involving Manchester's Black African and Caribbean populations, and their own histories, in shaping the exhibition. And we have the opportunity and privilege to seek to go further. To locate and venerate those valuable fragments of our shared heritage. To hold them up to the light. And as a capoeira, I would like us to make a roda, a circle nestled on top of the triangle. And let it be filled with axé.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Yahoo
Feted at Carnival, Afro-Brazilian faiths face hate in daily life
In a busy workshop, Leandro Vieira oversees preparations for Rio de Janeiro's dazzling Carnival parade, where his samba school will celebrate the spiritual richness of Candomble, one of the main Afro-Brazilian faiths. Elsewhere, an Umbanda priestess named Mother Fernanda -- the practitioner of another Afro-Brazilian religion -- tearfully assesses damage to her vandalized temple, where sacred items were destroyed and equipment stolen. The perpetrators left a Bible on the ground, alongside the remains of an image of Oxum, the goddess of love. Oxum and other African deities, known as "orixas," will be honored by most of the 12 samba schools competing from Sunday to Tuesday in the famed Carnival parade, with celebrants relaying a story through the use of towering floats, drummers and dancers. Thousands of spectators will cheer on the myths and rituals that emerged with the arrival of five million African slaves trafficked to Brazil -- a reaction far removed from the reality these religions face in daily Brazilian life. The parade is "sold to the world as a mark of Brazilian culture, but (the country) discriminates against religions of African origin," Vieira, the 41-year-old artistic director of the Imperatriz Leopoldinense school, told AFP. This paradox "shows that Brazilian society misunderstands the aesthetic, artistic, social and narrative contribution of black culture." - 'We are being silenced' - "People accept Carnival, Carnival is beautiful, but we suffer a lot of prejudice," said the Umbanda priestess Fernanda Marques Franco dos Anjos, a 42-year-old lawyer. "Our daily reality is this: we are being silenced, destroyed." In Brazil, attacks on religious freedom increased by 81 percent between 2023 and 2024, according to official data, confirming a trend in recent years. Attacks tripled against followers of Umbanda and Candomble, whose faiths are often wrongly associated with witchcraft or Satanic practices. They face insults and mockery, intimidation, physical attacks and property damage, according to the independent Observatory of Religious Freedoms (OLR). In a 2023 report presented to the UN, the observatory documented cases of temples being burned down, priests threatened and faithful adherents who lost their jobs. "You can't (display your faith) on LinkedIn," or "wear a protection necklace" on Instagram, because "that often costs you your job," said Isabella Menezes Antas, 41, the "mother" of the Umbanda Academy temple in downtown Rio that has also suffered attacks. - Intolerance rooted in racism - "Violence has always been practiced against religions of an African origin," said Christina Vital, a professor of Sociology at Fluminense Federal University. "Their artistic and cultural importance is recognized, but this is not enough to overcome the reasons that structure racism and intolerance," Vital added. Maria Eduarda Oliveira, a 24-year-old hairdresser, recalls being called a "macumbera monkey" by a boy at school -- a derogatory term referring to someone who follows Afro-Brazilian rituals. "That shook me, but because I was very educated about (defending) my blackness and my history, I was able to move on," she said on Ipanema beach while making an offering to Iemanja, the goddess of the sea. The stigma even hit Brazilian funk star Anitta, who lost 300,000 followers on social media after showing her devotion to Candomble. - 'Our ancestors survived slavery' - Academic and OLR member Ivanir dos Santos attributes the persecution to the "political growth of evangelical groups" and "Christian fundamentalist groups," which have sought to "suffocate" African spiritual heritage in Brazil. Evangelicals now represent almost a third of Brazil's population of over 200 million people, with Evangelical lawmakers and senators comprising one of the biggest and most powerful lobbies in the National Congress. In favelas and other poor neighborhoods, priests and followers of Afro-Brazilian faiths often suffer persecution from the criminal factions that rule over these areas -- banning them in favor of Christianity, according to the OLR. "People must respect the right of each person to follow their religion," Minister of Racial Equality, Anielle Franco, said recently. She has set up an anonymous reporting service and programs to combat religious intolerance. According to the latest census data in 2010, nearly 600,000 Brazilians identify as followers of religions of African origin. "Our ancestors survived slavery. Even with this violence, we will continue to survive," said dos Santos. ll/app/fb/jgc
