Brazil, high-stakes election and the Yoruba diaspora in the Americas, By Osmund Agbo
Brazil, high-stakes election and the Yoruba diaspora in the Americas, By Osmund Agbo
Brazil Elections 2022 Campaigns. Photo Credit :NPR.
This month's election, considered Brazil's most important in decades, is in part due to the stress test that one of the world's largest democracies is currently facing, threatening its health same. It also comes at a time when around 33 million of the country's 217 million people suffer from hunger and extreme poverty.
When on Sunday, September 22, 2019, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan, in an interview with Daily Trust and on the sidelines of the Brazilian Consulate's Ife Artifacts Exhibition , said that there were more Yoruba in Brazil than in Nigeria, many believed that Her Royal Majesty was grossly exaggerating the fact and stretching the truth far beyond her elastic limit. But in any case, it is undeniable that the Orisha and other aspects of traditional Yoruba cultures and religion continue to define the everyday identity of many Afro-descendants in the former Portuguese colony and beyond. Today you will find many followers of the Yoruba religion in Brazil, where it is called Candomblé, or in the former Spanish colonies of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where it is called Santería.
Once upon a time, the ancient empire of Oyo was a mighty kingdom comprising the Yoruba states that today lie in southwestern Nigeria. It was attached to the Kingdom of Dahomey, of what is today the southern part of the central Republic of Benin. Although the Oyo kingdom of the time was much more powerful and its army compelled Dahomey to pay tribute to it from the 1730s until 1819, both were both great kingdoms and important regional powers that had an organized domestic economy based on conquest and slave labor. The late Nigerian historian and former Head of the History Department at Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Isaac Akinjogbin, once referred to the couple as an "Aja-Yoruba community".
Ouidah, a city in the south of what is now the Republic of Benin, is known for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. The Oyo Empire relied on the port of Ouidah, which was under the control of the Kingdom of Dahomey, to access European trade. In Ouidah alone, more than a million Africans were exported out of the continent before trade closed in the 1860s. By the end of the 18th century, the Oyo empire came to depend heavily on selling slaves to Europeans for subsistence. When trade finally ended, its revenues dried up and power steadily declined, Oyo finally fell to the superior forces of the Fulani Empire in 1835. at the gate of no return, represented by a memorial arch , still exists today as a monument to that inglorious era.
According to a 2010 census, there are 14 million black people in Brazil. Interestingly, only around 10% of black Brazilians identify as being of African descent (Afrodescendente), while the majority claim to be of “Brazilian descent”, whatever that means. But, by far, one of the most famous Afro-Brazilians in history today is Edson Arantes do Nascimento, popularly known around the world simply as Pelé.
Brazil Elections 2022 Campaigns. Photo Credit :NPR.
This month's election, considered Brazil's most important in decades, is in part due to the stress test that one of the world's largest democracies is currently facing, threatening its health same. It also comes at a time when around 33 million of the country's 217 million people suffer from hunger and extreme poverty.
When on Sunday, September 22, 2019, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan, in an interview with Daily Trust and on the sidelines of the Brazilian Consulate's Ife Artifacts Exhibition , said that there were more Yoruba in Brazil than in Nigeria, many believed that Her Royal Majesty was grossly exaggerating the fact and stretching the truth far beyond her elastic limit. But in any case, it is undeniable that the Orisha and other aspects of traditional Yoruba cultures and religion continue to define the everyday identity of many Afro-descendants in the former Portuguese colony and beyond. Today you will find many followers of the Yoruba religion in Brazil, where it is called Candomblé, or in the former Spanish colonies of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where it is called Santería.
Once upon a time, the ancient empire of Oyo was a mighty kingdom comprising the Yoruba states that today lie in southwestern Nigeria. It was attached to the Kingdom of Dahomey, of what is today the southern part of the central Republic of Benin. Although the Oyo kingdom of the time was much more powerful and its army compelled Dahomey to pay tribute to it from the 1730s until 1819, both were both great kingdoms and important regional powers that had an organized domestic economy based on conquest and slave labor. The late Nigerian historian and former Head of the History Department at Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Isaac Akinjogbin, once referred to the couple as an "Aja-Yoruba community".
Ouidah, a city in the south of what is now the Republic of Benin, is known for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. The Oyo Empire relied on the port of Ouidah, which was under the control of the Kingdom of Dahomey, to access European trade. In Ouidah alone, more than a million Africans were exported out of the continent before trade closed in the 1860s. By the end of the 18th century, the Oyo empire came to depend heavily on selling slaves to Europeans for subsistence. When trade finally ended, its revenues dried up and power steadily declined, Oyo finally fell to the superior forces of the Fulani Empire in 1835. at the gate of no return, represented by a memorial arch , still exists today as a monument to that inglorious era.
According to a 2010 census, there are 14 million black people in Brazil. Interestingly, only around 10% of black Brazilians identify as being of African descent (Afrodescendente), while the majority claim to be of “Brazilian descent”, whatever that means. But, by far, one of the most famous Afro-Brazilians in history today is Edson Arantes do Nascimento, popularly known around the world simply as Pelé.
Brazil Elections 2022 Campaigns. Photo Credit :NPR.
