How Did Afro-Brazilian Culture Change In Afro-Brazilian Culture

Moreover, other post-abolition ideologies in Brazil asserted that Indian and African races suffered from a number of defects- barbarianism, immorality, and impurity. Nina Rodrigues, the intellectual pioneer of this school of thought asserted that racial “purity” could be preserved through a system of whitening of the population. Blackness in particular, was inherently unclean, and a gradual darkening of the Brazilian population would lead away from the desirable “progress” of whitening (Butler, 1998). Consequently, the Brazilian State systemically alienated them from the free labor market and instead European immigrants took their places.
Only in the 1930s does miscegenation transform itself from being Brazil’s ultimate disgrace into being
Through government initiatives and the media, elites elevated certain Afro-Brazilian practices as “authentic” and national traditions and in doing so provided a public cultural and political forum for Afro-Brazilians involved in those practices. The martial art capoeira was decriminalized by the Penal Code in 1890 and officially made a national sport in 1937. Samba changed from a repressed dance to a sound for exportation and received official endowments in 1935. Feijoada became the national dish, uniting, according to theory, the white of the rice, the yellow of oranges and the brown of the beans. Moreover, Getulio Vargas introduced new civic holidays: Labor Day, Vargas’ birthday and Race Day, to show the tolerance of this society. In 1938, Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida was chosen as the patron saint of Brazil (Hanchard, 1999). Half white, half black, the new saint was as mestizo as the Brazilians. On a panoramic level, the main idea was that a free exchange of cultural traces between groups existed in Brazil. Culture was harmonious and the society was too. However, this was a designed community, designed by the state and forced onto its
Only those Afro-Brazilian traditions deemed non-threatening by elite intellectuals became accepted, and Afro-Brazilian culture never attained the prestige of European cultural traditions in Brazil. Thus, while the acceptance of Afro-Brazilian culture during the Vargas era some benefits to Afro-Brazilians, it still allowed them to remain marginalized into the modern