From ethnicity to race and gender: transformations of black lay sodalities in Salvador, Brazil

Black lay sodalities functioned as a very special type of voluntary association for enslaved women and men of African descent in Brazil during the slavery regime.(1) Every African-born slave was obliged to be baptized as a Roman Catholic before or upon arrival in Brazil.(2) Conversion to Christianity immediately gave enslaved Africans equal spiritual rights with the prosperous white laity in the eyes of God; it allowed them to marry in church, to attend mass, and to receive confirmation in the faith by visiting bishops. They were also free to participate in various religious celebrations in honor of Christian saints. Most importantly, such newly converted Christians were entitled to acquire a membership in lay sodalities, which guaranteed a decent Christian funeral and the saying of masses for the deceased. Despite the spiritual equality which all enslaved Africans and their decedents shared with the white laity, in reality the latter never accepted the former into their white lay sodalities as their fellow members. Therefore, lay sodalities were inevitably divided by race. Many white sodalities, especially the prestigious Santa Casa da Misercordia (Holy House of Mercy), which itself owned a number of slaves, limited membership to whites.(3) Mulattoes (pardos) established their sodalities which also excluded persons of African birth and Brazilian-born blacks (crioulos), while accepting white members.(4) This is because many mulattoes were born free and comprised a different social stratum from the slave population and also because mulatto slaves had a great advantage over their crioulo counterparts in the practice of manumission.(5) Therefore blacks, being denied the membership to all white and mulatto sodalities, had to establish lay sodalities of their own with their priorities and agendas. Throughout the colonial period, black lay sodalities proliferated in areas where a myriad of Africans were intensively imported as slave labor, especially in Bahia, Pernambuco, and Minas Gerais. In a black sodality most members were enslaved individuals who were not only desperately poor but also themselves were human commodities owned by others. Therefore black sodalities were naturally badly off and did not own their independent churches or even chapels; white sodalities with their own chapels sometimes allowed black sodalities to build altars for their patron saints and hold ceremonies in honor of their saints.

This article is intended to suggest a new orientation for the scrutiny of black lay sodalities in Brazil. By focusing on the city of Salvador, this essay first examines the significance of ethnicity in the formation and development of black lay sodalities for the enslaved population during the colonial period. Then my focus shifts to two newly established free-born black sodalities during the nineteenth century, one of which later transformed itself into a new type of mutual-aid association named the Protective Society of the Needy (Sociedade Protetora dos Desvalidos). My special emphasis is placed on the meanings of race and gender in these new black lay sodalities.

Black lay sodalities in colonial and early nineteenth-century Brazil have already attracted a considerable amount of scholarly attention. These preceding studies have successfully demonstrated black lay sodalities' unique roles and functions as voluntary associations for African-born slaves, and have placed a special emphasis on ethnicity and group sodality expressed in their memberships and governing bodies.(6) Yet so far very little has been known about black voluntary associations which continued to function after the mid-nineteenth century. Several historians have asserted that black sodalities virtually "disappeared" from the sociocultural scenery in Brazil during the nineteenth century when the general laity's active participation in sodalities declined rapidly because of the secularization process of Luso-Brazilian culture; during the nineteenth century the Church itself became a less decisive factor, with the diminishing importance of lay sodalities whose origins lie in medieval Europe.(7) But one may wonder if this indeed brought an end to all black lay sodalities in Brazil; some black sodalities may have survived even until today, albeit in a somewhat modified form. And if they have, how? This article seeks to answer these questions.

Ethnicity in the Formation and Development of Black Lay Sodalities

The city of Salvador, Bahia (capital of Brazil, 1549-1763) developed as a major Atlantic port city for the export of sugar and tobacco to the European market and for the import of slaves from Africa. The first African slaves were imported em masse to the port of Salvador around the beginning of the 1570s and enslaved Africans were directly brought into the port of Salvador until 1831, when the slave trade was banned in Brazil. The major slave source for Salvador (and Bahia) was Angola which was to be replaced by the Gold Coast of West Africa by the end of the seventeenth century. Throughout the colonial period, more than 40 per cent of the whole population in Salvador were enslaved and the slave population was predominantly African-born until around the mid-nineteenth century.(8) Such enslaved people of African birth obviously sought the formation of lay sodalities for their own needs; in 1789 the presence of at least seventeen black sodalities was recorded in Salvador.(9) Unlike other voluntary associations for the enslaved population, such as juntas (unions) for making loans, all black lay sodalities were officially recognized by the larger society; every lay sodality, either black, mulatto, or white, established in Portuguese America was required to have its statutes approved by the archbishop and by the Portuguese Crown. No matter how strongly African-born slaves had initially reacted against forced conversion to Christianity, they soon found it beneficial to belong to lay sodalities for their daily survival in slave society.