Freed africans, Atlantic commerce and afro-brazilian religion: the history of a letter that never reached its destination

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed analysis of a letter sent from Bahia to the slave port of Ouidah in 1839 by the African Roza Maria da Conceição to the also African Francisca da Silva, the legendary Iyá Nassô, founder of a famous temple of Afro-Brazilian religion, the Casa Branca in Salvador. The trajectory of these two freed women and their husbands, in the context of the passage from the Colony to the Brazilian Empire, allows to identify processes of intergenerational cooperation between African freedmen and of economic rise associated with the Atlantic commerce and the illegal slave trade. It is postulated that slave ownership was a form of political investment in the organization of the “house” or the domestic community, in turn the basis of the “terreiro” or religious congregation, forms of association through which these couples acquired power and reinforced their leadership in the black community. Ultimately, the connection between Roza and Francisca allows one to glimpse how commercial success, social control and religious authority were inextricably entangled.