Manuel Raimundo Querino (1851-1923)

27/02/2008

Amado, Bahia and Pedro Archanjo

Footsteps | Salvador, Brazil
Echoes of Amado in the Dark and the Light
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: February 24, 2008
For visitors keen to experience the tropical mysteries of Salvador da Bahia, the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado went so far as to suggest an itinerary in his novel, “Tereza Batista: Home From the Wars.”

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This NY Times travel article also mentions "Tent of Miracles", whose protagonist, Pedro Archanjo, was inspired by Manuel Querino.

26/02/2008

Black "sellouts"?

An interesting debate on "sellouts"

Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School, left, debates John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute over whether anyone should be labeled a traitor to his or her race.

22/02/2008

Talk on Manuel Querino in New Orleans

Brasa IX, this year’s edition of the Brazilian Studies Association’s annual conference, will be held in New Orleans from March 27-29. I will be giving a talk on the 29th, titled Manuel Querino (1851-1923) - Brazil’s First Black Vindicationist as part of the panel on Racial and Ethnic Representations in 19^th-Century Brazil

You can download my paper “Manuel Querino - Um Pioneiro e Seu Tempo” here (the link is GledhillSabrina.doc)

18/02/2008

Are we so different?

The American Anthropological Association has published a fascinating website on Understanding Race. There are some particularly interesting links on its page on "Lived Experience" - "Global Census" and "Who Is White?"

07/01/2008

"Mulattoes" in the NAACP and Supreme Court

According to Carl Degler:

It is not accidental that many of the great leaders of Negro organizations in the United States have been mulattoes, men like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Whitney Young, Walter White, John Hope, Adam Clayton Powell, and Roy Wilkins. In Brazil such men would have been sorely tempted to ignore their connection with other blacks and use the mulatto escape hatch for their individual advancement. Indeed one might say that the great potential leaders of blacks in Brazil have all escaped through the hatch, to their own improvement, but to the loss of Negroes in general (Neither Black nor White, 1971 edition, p. 183).

Thurgood Marshall poses with the two principal officers of the NAACP: Walter White, the national secretary, center, and Roy Wilkins, the assistant national secretary.

(Courtesy of Library of Congress)
Source: http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/3-organized/mr-civil-rights.html

Another prominent "Black/White" Brazilian politician

Octávio Mangabeira (1886-1960) was governor of Bahia from 1947 to 1951, and a member of the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters (elected in 1930, but only recognised as such in 1934, because he was exiled during the political upheavals sparked by Getúlio Vargas). He was elected Senator in 1958 and died while in office. Considered Black by African-Americans during his time, he would at most be considered a light-skinned mulatto, but his political and literary prestige made him White in Brazil.

A "whitened" portrait of Floriano Peixoto

President Marshal Peixoto seems to have had a "nose job" in this portrait. Certainly, all traces of African ancestry have been removed (see photo in the entry titled "Black or White - or neither?").

About Manuel Querino

ln a racial climate that was at best condescending and at worst genocidal toward blacks, Manuel Querino helped pioneer the study of the Afro-Brazilians and their culture.

This blog is dedicated to the life, work and causes of this African-Brazilian scholar. The importance of his pioneering efforts in the study of Afro-Brazilian culture can only be understood in the perspective of the environment of pseudoscientific racism in which all intellectuals lived in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Brazil.

By recognizing the contributions of Africans and their descendants to Brazil's national identity and culture, even a Brazilian "race," Querino displayed phenomenal independence of scholarship and mind. He defied the influence of European pseudoscientific racism in a country whose economy was partially based on racial slavery until 1888. Like most Brazilian intellectuals, Querino was seeking to provide a scientific or historical basis for a founding myth of Brazilian nationality and culture: in searching for the characteristic that gave their country and people their unique identity, he chose the fait accompli and undeniable fact of widespread cultural and biological miscegenation.

Quotations

> "Here it was the work of blacks that sustained the nobility and prosperity of Brazil for centuries, without fail; it was as a result of their work that we have scientific institutions, letters, arts, commerce, industry, etc. Therefore, they have played an outstanding role as a factor in Brazilian civilization.” - Manuel Querino
> "Brazil has two great glories: the bounty of its soil and the talent of the mestiço." - Manuel Querino
> "The generosity of the human spirit can overcome all adversity. Through compassion and caring, we create...hope." - Nelson Mandela
> "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice." - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
> "Until the lion writes his own story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." - African proverb
> "It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others.... One ever feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." - W.E.B. DuBois
> "From a genetic perspective, all humans are Africans, either residing in Africa or in recent exile." - Svante Pääbo (Swedish biologist specialized in evolutionary genetics)
> "There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life." - Booker T. Washington
> "We have to recognize that the price of equality in pluralism, like the price of liberty, is eternal vigilance." - Carl N. Degler

Querinophiles and Querinologists

Several scholars have focussed on Querino in works published and produced in Brazil and the US over the past few decades, including Jorge Calmon, Pedro Calmon, E. Bradford Burns, Jaime Nascimento, Jaime Sodré, Maria das Graças Andrade Leal, David Brookshaw, Emanoel Araújo, Luiz Alberto Ribeiro Freire, Eliane Nunes, Kim Butler, Vivaldo da Costa Lima, Antonio Sergio Alfredo Guimarães and Waldeloir Rego. The greatest "Querinophile" of all was Jorge Amado, who drew inspiration from Querino's life and works when creating Pedro Archanjo, the protagonist of Tent of Miracles.

Background

My interest in Manuel Querino began when I was studying for my MA in Latin American Studies at UCLA in the early 1980s. After reading Jorge Amado's Tent of Miracles, I learned that the protagonist was largely inspired by Querino's life and works. My MA advisor, the late E. Bradford Burns, shared my interest in Querino and urged me to write his biography. It has taken me a long time to get around to it - I moved to Brazil shortly after graduating in 1986 and spent 28 years there making a living as a translator and raising a family before returning to the UK. In addition to researching Querino's life and Brazilian race relations in general, my PhD in Ethnic Studies at CEAO/UFBA focussed on the intellectual history of the African diaspora through two figures: Manuel R. Querino and Booker T. Washington. I recently published a version of my thesis in Portuguese and am working on the English edition. Suggestions and/or critiques of this blog will be warmly and gratefully welcomed.

-- Sabrina Gledhill