The 19th Century Yoruba repatriation to Brazil

                           

Many months ago, a famous building in Lagos, Nigeria, was demolished: the Ilọ́jọ̀ Bar, also known as ‘Casa do Fernandez’. It was a beautiful example of Afro-Brazilian architecture built by returned slaves from Salvador da Bahia. Constructed in 1855 it was ‘under protection’ by the Nigerian Government. When I visited Lagos a few months ago I saw a big banner hanging down from a window, it said something like ‘National Monument’. Protection can be interpreted very widely in Nigeria - the Casa do Fernandez was pulled down over night. Lagosian Journalist Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún published a series of investigative articles in his blog. I was curious and wanted to know more about the history of the repatriated slaves in Yorùbáland and it turned out to be an incredible story.

I was reading a lot on Yorùbá and Orisha culture, but I hardly ever heard about the Nagô, the Afro-Brazilians, and the Lukumí, the Afro-Cubans, who returned back to West Africa. Not to mention Sierra Leone. The idea that the Yorùbá people share one identity is strongly related to the transatlantic experience of the slave trade and the returnees’ influence in the homeland. This story contributes a lot to the classical discussions of what is ‘Original-Yorùbá’ and what a diaspora invention - as not even the word ‘Yorùbá’ is of ‘Yorùbá’ origin itself. I summed up basic facts and suggest reading the books and links quoted below.

The Saro

Two waves of freed slaves reached Lagos and Yorùbáland in the 19th century. One group of them never had left the continent. The British navy intercepted slave ships along the West African coast and set their victims free in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where a Creole culture developed among the ‘Liberated Africans’. German linguist Sigismond Kölle documented more than 200 African languages in Freetown in 1854. After the fall of the Ọ̀yọ́ Empire many Yorùbá were sold into slavery. Those who ended up in Sierra Leone were raised and educated by Anglican Missionaries under the premises of Victorian culture. Many of them later went back to their places of origin, called ‘Saro’ by the Lagosians. Among them was an important figure, Ajayi Crowther, wo wrote the first vocabulary book of Yorùbá language and translated the bible into his native tongue. Many Saro had Western education, some became lawyers, medical doctors and administrative workers for the British colonizers, what caused conflicts among them and the local people. They developed schools and churches and spread the Yorùbá bible among the country. Crowther’s grandson Herbert Macaulay befriended babaláwo and fostered a new Yorùbá consciousness, opposing the colonial policies.

The Aguda – Nagô and Lukumí

Another group of freed African slaves took a longer and more exhausting journey of approximately ten to twelve weeks on a ship, with low quantities of food and water, facing death and disease. They returned from Brazil back to the motherland, especially between 1840 and 1860 after the so-called Malê-slave revolt (1835) in Bahia. The majority came from Brazil, but a few also made it back from Cuba. Most of them were of Yorùbá origin, deported as slaves into the New World. The coastal city of Lagos was one of the main spots of return, along cities in present-day Benin Republic and Togo. King Kosoko of Lagos (1845-1851) is known for plundering the wealth of Brazilian arrivers and executing some of them, though this story could have been made up by the British consul, who wanted to have him replaced. Kosoko sent in 1847 one of his senior chiefs to Brazil, to reassure potential emigrants their security. Solimar Otero in her book ‘Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World’ even quotes an elaborate and beautiful Ifá verse from Olusí, ‘ọmọba’ (prince) of the Popo Saro quarter in Lagos. The ‘ìtàn’ (story) talks about the historic relationship between the king and the diaspora, involving the forces of Orisha like Olókun.

The first British consul Benjamin Campbell counted 130 Afro-Brazilian families in Lagos in 1853. He founded the Committee of Liberated Africans (CLA) which had its members among the returned slaves from Sierra Leone and Brazil. The organization mediated commercial disputes with local Yorùbá people and held ‘night patrols’ in the city. The South American and Caribbean repatriates, called ‘Aguda’ or ‘Amaro’, made up around 10% of the total inhabitants of Lagos in 1880 (3.321 ex-slaves). They held an elite position in the city. They were highly skilled artisans, painters, masons, carpenters, tailors and some of them entertainers, trained in the Portuguese or Spanish colonies. Their competence in the building trades was not only demonstrated in the houses they built for themselves, but also in Lagos’ public structure like the Shitta Bey Mosque, the Central Mosque or the Holy Cross Cathedral. Exploited by the British colonial officials they shaped art and culture and played a key role in the development of the economy and the infrastructure, e.g. in joining the Power and Water division or running farms outside of town. Experienced in the cultivation of sugar, tobacco and coffee the Aguda contributed to the agricultural industry of Lagos. The British colonists, trying to spread their powers among the new protectorate, used them as their middlemen to the indigenous Yorùbá society.

Remarkable is the fact that the Aguda widely sticked to their Brazilian traditions and brought Latin American culture - including Candomblé - to Lagos. They commemorated the annual Bahian feast of ‘Nosso Senhor do Bonfim’, held carnivals (‘Brazilian masquerades’) and introduced creole food crops like cassava. The Aguda people were given land and a whole district developed, built in the style of a Portuguese or Spanish colonial town. Today it is still called Popo Aguda, the area around Campos Square, named after the Cuban migrant Hilario Campos. The first two-story houses were built, which later became a status symbol as they stood taller than the compounds of local kings, who were just about losing their authority to the British. New architectural concepts were introduced to the traditional Yorùbá building practice, like e.g. verandas or a central hallway in the middle of a building, flanked by rooms on either side. New residential patterns evolved, as polygynous marriage was not sanctioned by the Christian belief any longer. Neo-classical decorative flourishes or stucco facades were a clear sign for the Brazilian influence, where a kind of Greek revival embellishment was popular before the time of the repatriation movement. The value the Afro-Brazilian style had at that time on the native Yorùbá culture is also expressed in more traditional forms of art, like Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ mask carvings. Some examples show e.g. carved two-story buildings on top of a mask or curvilinear patterns inspired by the neo-classical and baroque facades. Online you can have a look at an Orò mask in a museum’s collection with Afro-Brazilian ornaments (I am not sure if women should click this link to the Orò mask…). The new forms were highly excepted and adored by the locals. The Brazilian house over the years became the model for the Yorùbá house. Public space was shaped by ideas brought from the transatlantic colonies as well. And the fundament for the art of cement screens and sculpture was led here. Some decades later this Brazilian cement work was brought to a new artistic level by Adebisi Akanji and Susanne Wenger in the Sacred Grove of Ọ̀ṣun Òṣogbo.

For more information,visit www.orishaimage.com/blog/yoruba-repatriation