From South to North: The Brazilian Black Movement and the Circulation of Political References in the Early Twentieth Century

• In Event: Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas (Diasporic Politics)

Abstract

In Brazil, it is still common to hear in the media, and in academia itself, the assertion that the present-day black movement is merely a small-scale copy of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. To be sure, what we understand today as the contemporary black movement in Brazil has, since its formation in the 1970s, received, interpreted, and made use of the information, ideas, and references produced in the black diaspora. This is especially true with respect to the struggles for civil rights in the United States and for independence in African countries, especially in those that had been colonized by Portugal. The process of diasporic circulation was not only commonplace in the Americas, it also was not a one-way street from the U.S. to Latin America. Instead, and as I will argue in this paper, what we find is a movement of political references in the struggle against racism in the Americas that flowed also from South to North. In this sense, the aim of this article is to discuss some contributions of the Brazilian black movement for such circulation of references and ideas to the struggle against racism in black diaspora, especially in the first half of the twentieth century.

Author

• Amilcar A Pereira, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro