The Story of Rufino: Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic PDF
Preview The Story of Rufino: Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic
The Story of Rufino The Story of Rufino Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic JOÃO JOSÉ REIS, FLÁVIO DOS SANTOS GOMES and MARCUS J. M. DE CARVALHO TRANSLATED BY H. SABRINA GLEDHILL 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. This book is a translation of O alufá Rufino: Tráfico, escravidão e liberdade no Atlântico Negro (c. 1822– c. 1853) © 2010 João José Reis, Flávio dos Santos Gomes, and Marcus J. M. de Carvalho. São Paolo: Companhia das Letras, 2010. © English translation © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978– 0– 19– 022436– 3 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America The translation of this work was published with the financial support of the National Library Foundation | Ministry of Citizenship. Obra publicada com o apoio da Fundação Biblioteca Nacional | Ministério da Cidadania. CONTENTS Preface vii PART I 1. Rufino’s Africa 3 2. Enslaved in Bahia 9 3. Enslaved in Porto Alegre 20 4. Farroupilha and Freedom 34 5. Freedman in Rio de Janeiro 40 6. Rio de Janeiro, a City in Fear 51 PART II 7. Rufino Joins the Slave Trade 63 8. Luanda, Slave- Trading Capital of Angola 75 9. Readying the Ermelinda 82 10. Rufino’s Employers 96 11. Passengers, Shippers, and Cargo 109 12. The Ermelinda Goes to Sea 118 13. The Equipment Act 126 vi Contents 14. Sierra Leone 138 15. Among Akus and African Muslims 153 16. The Trial of the Ermelinda 162 17. Dirty Tricks 174 18. Back to Sea 180 PART III 19. Counting the Costs 189 20. Rufino’s Recife 196 21. A Man of Faith and Sorcery 206 22. Tense Times in Rufino’s Recife 217 23. A Free Man 222 24. The Malês of Recife and a Doctrinal Dispute 229 Epilogue 241 Acknowledgments 245 Notes 247 Sources and Works Cited 283 Name Index 299 Subject Index 303 PREFACE The written history of Africans in Brazil during slavery times is largely based on police records. The central character of this book is no exception. On September 2, 1853, Rufino José Maria was arrested in his home on 78, Rua da Senzala Velha (Old Slave Quarter Street), in the parish of São Frei Pedro Gonçalves in Recife, the capital of the northeastern province (now state) of Pernambuco. He was a freedman of the Nagô ethnic nation, as the Yoruba- speaking Africans, who cur- rently inhabit southwestern Nigeria and the eastern part of the neighboring Republic of Benin, were called in Brazil. The Nagôs became known throughout Brazil for organizing a number of rebellions in the province (now state) of Bahia in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Salvador, the capital of Bahia, Nagô Muslims known as Malês– from the Yoruba ìmàle– led the famous slave revolt of January 1835 and probably participated in prior uprisings and conspiracies as well, there having been at least thirty of them between 1807 and 1835. Rufino was also Muslim and as such, bore the name Abuncare (possibly derived from Abdul Karim), which he brought from his homeland. Rufino’s arrest in 1853 took place amid a tense atmosphere of rumors, accusations, and repression related to a slave conspiracy involving several planta- tions on the outskirts of Recife. Many African homes were searched, and on two occasions, so were the streets and taverns in the city center. However, the only suspicious items the police discovered in Rufino’s home were a large number of Arabic manuscripts— the same type of materials seized from the African rebels in Bahia nearly twenty years earlier. In 1835, the so- called Malê writings became notorious throughout Brazil thanks to newspaper reports, since they were portrayed as being the most intriguing and mysterious and therefore dan- gerous aspect of the rebellion. However, the story Rufino told the police was far from being a rebel’s tale. It was primarily that of an urbane, peace-l oving Muslim, albeit a devout one with a rich life experience replete with adventures and misadventures on the Atlantic trade routes. vii viii Preface There are two complementary reports on Rufino’s life, both based on his police interrogation. One of them is the official transcript of his interrogation, drafted by a police clerk, which contains the signatures of three witnesses to the investi- gation. Rufino himself signed the document as well, in Arabic. Unfortunately, we have only been able to find a copy that does not contain his signature.1 The other report is a long article written by a witness to the interrogation published a few weeks later in the Jornal do Commercio, a newspaper based in Rio de Janeiro, the largest city and capital of Brazil, the seat of the imperial court. The unsigned article ends with the observation, “Private letter.” It describes the circumstances in which the writer obtained the information, as he seems to have had free access to the back rooms of police power in Recife: “Out of curiosity, I went to see the black man who had to be interrogated, and finding some sin- gular things in his responses, primarily when he said that being a priest in this land is a trade, I am enclosing some notes about that Muslim priest, which can be read as a curiosity. I owe these notes to the pen of another curious soul who was there with me.” That other “curious soul” could also have been one of the witnesses. Therefore, there is an explicit partnership in the production of the document that basically recounts Rufino’s life, sometimes repeating the official statement taken down by the police clerk and sometimes adding new information. The report published in the Jornal do Commercio was written by someone with an anticlerical mindset who was inclined toward religious tolerance. He defended Rufino’s right to practice his religion legally and freely, which nevertheless meant limiting it to household worship—a s was the case with Rufino—a ccording to the constitution then in force in the country. It is a basically favorable report about the African freedman that recommended his immediate release.2 These two documents not only provide a wealth of information about Rufino but also set out a trail of clues that enabled us to follow his footsteps from the time he left Africa until his arrest nearly thirty years later. Unfortunately, the pres- ence of this particular African was not documented in all the places (or archives) we scoured as we followed his trail. As is generally the case with biographies of people of Rufino’s social rank, direct information about him frequently evaded us. We often got very close to him, to the point of seeing his shadow in a corner of the archives, but we came across other characters who, in their eagerness to stand out, seemed to want to steal the spotlight from the African. Many of them were men of wealth and power: slave owners, slave traders, bosses, officials, and journalists. This book also tells their stories, particularly of individuals involved in the transatlantic slave trade during the period when it was already illegal. Thus, we have managed to gain an understanding of Rufino’s circumstances and experiences through the people who crossed his path. We have also been able Preface ix to reconstruct the turbulent world in which he lived and traveled and which he helped create in several corners of the Atlantic. This is not a typical book about African slavery in Brazil. It involves that di- mension, among others, but in these pages the reader will primarily find a nar- rative of Atlantic history. Rufino’s life takes us on a journey that begins in Ọ̀yọ́, the African kingdom where he was born; goes on to Salvador, where he first arrived in Brazil as a slave; then to Porto Alegre, in the southernmost part of the country, where he was taken by his young master, sold, and later purchased his manumission. As a freedman he moved to Rio de Janeiro, the port where he shipped out as a sailor on a slaver bound for Luanda, the main entrepôt of the Angolan slave trade, ending up in Sierra Leone, the British colony he would visit on two occasions, and finally settling down in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco province, where he chose to live and work as a diviner, healer, and Muslim teacher. Aside from these locales, Rufino also spent time aboard slave ships on the Atlantic. Therefore, this book is largely a history of the slave trade, its economy, organization, and business strategies; its trading posts, ships, the various figures involved; its atrocities and the campaign to suppress it when the African freedman was engaged in the infamous commerce in human flesh. Thus, this is more than one man’s biography; it is a social history of the slave trade and slavery in the Atlantic basin guided by the experiences of Rufino José Maria, also known by his Muslim name, Abuncare.3
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