The Malê Revolt and Brazil's "Racial Democracy"

The Malê revolt, otherwise known as the Ramadan revolt, was a slave revolt in Salvador, Bahia during the last 10 days of Ramadan in January of 1835. The rebellion was orchestrated mainly by African Muslim slaves against slave owners and was paramount to the eventual abolition of slavery across Brazil in 1888. The event was the culmination of years of unrest among Brazilian slave communities in Bahia, especially as they were forced into converting to Catholicism by slave owners and saw many other black Africans and mixed-race Brazilians participate in the slave trade. Understanding the tensions fueling the revolt as well as the impacts of the event is critical for gaining a sense of how blackness is treated in Brazil. The Malê revolt was an important step for establishing critical civil rights for Black Brazilians throughout Brazil, but its origins reveal parallels between the suffering of slaves in Salvador and the current condition of Afro-Brazilians as second-class citizens in a society claimed to be a “racial democracy”.

The revolt began on the morning of January 25th, 1835 when nearly six hundred slaves who were conspiring to rebel against their owners were discovered by patrol officers in houses across the city (Reis 2). The rebels quickly came out of their home and began fighting back against patrols with swords and knives, making their way towards the City Hall which housed Pacífico Licutan, a notorious Malê leader, in its basement prison (Reis 2). Although the attempt to free Pacífico was unsuccessful as the City Hall guards opened fire on the revolutionaries, the Malé fighters quickly regrouped and began marching through army barracks, slave plantations, and city streets to “awaken” Salvador’s slaves to join them in their revolt. Before reaching the lower level of the city holding slaves who had been “forewarned” of the rebellion, the Malês and their non-Muslim allies were killed by troops at cavalry barracks on the Água de Meninos beach (Reis 2). The rebellion, while effectively averted, planted fear into the hearts of many of Salvador’s free slave-owning residents. Once the news of the revolt spread to cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian authorities began using abusive tactics against the African population, both free and enslaved, “submitting them to cautious vigilance and often abusive repression” (Reis 3).

Leading up to the revolution, Islam and the worship of Orisha gods among African communities was commonplace in Bahia, and shared religions and cultural practices were critical to uniting the Malês in their historic revolt. The forced proximity of slaves in captivity led to a series of cultural exchanges of Islamic values as well as concepts of ancient African religions. The word “malê” is a Yoruba word that literally translates to “Muslim.” Yoruba, a language native to Nigeria, was the language spoken by many West African slaves who were brought to Brazil by Portuguese settlers, and the Nâgos, the largest ethnic group of African slaves in Bahia, were primarily either Muslim or Orisha worshippers (Reis 3). The unity of African slaves in Brazil due to their shared religious practice was paramount in orchestrating a group rebellion, and led to hundreds of slaves converting to Islam due to its concepts of anti-slavery or worshiping Orishas as a way to maintain their African heritage in a new country (Momodu 1). By the time of the actual revolt, there were already Quran schools and mosques present on multiple plantations around Bahia where slaves would congregate and discuss both their religious and growing unrest over their condition as slaves.

One of the most important tipping points for the revolt to occur was not only the frustration over white Portuguese settlers participating in slavery, but also the fact that many free African Brazilians were facilitating the trade of their own people. This was already common in Africa among African slave traders, but its presence in Brazil radicalized many Yoruba slaves against anyone with African ancestry that was not an ally to the slaves in their fight for freedom. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s Reconsidering Reparations dives deeper into this tension, stating that modern day Nigeria, the center of the Portuguese slave trade that brought slaves to Bahia, was made up of the “kingdoms of Dahomey and Yorubaland” and “Since Dahomey had captured and tightly regulated trade (including human trafficking) to the west, Portuguese and other foreign traders moved eastward, cooperating with the Yoruba state of Oyo to establish a new port for trans-Atlantic slave traffic to the east, to this day referred to by the Portuguese word “Lagos.”’ (Táíwò 2). This created several intra-ethnic wars involving the Yoruba people of modern-day Nigeria, and played a key role in the Yoruba-majority in Salvador expressing a fear of being sold out by fellow Africans who were complicit in the trade of humans. At the same time, however, Táíwò notes that because religion “united Africans from a variety of ethnic backgrounds”, a commitment to maintaining African traditions despite forced migration was enough to unite both free and enslaved Malês who participated in the rebellion. The preservation of culture and the clash between religious principles and the confines of slavery served as essential motivators for the revolt.

After the Malês were defeated, the Brazilian government played an active role in the destruction of these cultural and religious ties to Africa, forcing the Malês in Bahia and slaves throughout the country to suppress their culture and repackage their identities. Soon after the revolt, security forces in Bahia and elsewhere “seized any items associated with Islam, including all documents written in Arabic”, suggesting an intentional erasure of African culture out of fear of another revolution (Harvard Divinity School 1). Even though the revolt helped lead to the legal cessation of slavery in 1850 and the eventual abolition of slavery in Brazil, it also forced slaves into changing their traditions and spiritual practices into what we see as traditionally Brazilian customs despite their African or Afro-Brazilian origin. For example, with the crackdown on Islam and Orishas, religions such as Candomblé were created to integrate Portuguese Catholic ideas into African practices as a way to curb punishment from police and slave owners.

Despite the success of the Male revolt in facilitating abolition across Brazil, an analysis of the current state of Salvador and greater Brazil suggests that the same racial tension and suppression continue to plague the country, now in the form of exploitation. Anadelia A. Romo’s Selling Black Brazil details the change in identity of Salvador from a slave-holding town to a place of black freedom and Afro-Brazilian heritage, despite the little progress made in Brazilian cities like Salvador regarding equal opportunities for Black communities. The author notes that, by portraying Black history as central to the heritage and beauty of Salvador, Bahian elites created “a reference point for diasporic Blackness” that played into Baianidade, an advertised celebration of Black culture historically used to attract tourists to Salvador (Barbosa 1). Yet, at the same time, Salvador and the state of Bahia has statistically been one of the most racially divided areas in the country in terms of economic outcome, education, and general life quality. Reports show that “96.9 percent of people murdered by the Military Police of Bahia in 2019 were Black”, making Bahia “one of the states that kills the highest number of Black Brazilians” and that illiteracy among the Black Brazilian community is double that of whites (Barbosa 1 and Vettorazzo 1). Romo also stresses the fact that conversations regarding the Bahian identity have historically excluded the Black Brazilians that tourism projects profit off of, with white Bahian elites being cultural mediators instead of the majority Afro-Brazilian population. As a result, the increased tourism to Salvador has actually led to more gentrification by white tourists, reinforcing the racialized wealth disparities that were already rampant in the state. Also, while the preservation of Afro-Brazilian culture through the Afro-centric identity of Bahia does reinforce some of the traditions and values fought for by the Malês, this Bahian identity pushed by the state seldom reflects on the history of slavery that brought Afro-Brazilians into their position in society. For example, while there exists a strong campaign by the Brazilian elite to embrace Candomblé in Bahia which contributes to the fascination with Afro-Brazilian history, the religion itself began out of a forced conversion to Catholicism, a byproduct of slavery and oppression that clashes with the supposed racial and cultural harmony displayed to tourists in Salvador (Barbosa 1). This has led to the critique of the state of Bahia as a false celebration of Afro-Brazilian identity, as Romo’s text points to tourism profits and an increased whitening of Salvador as the actual goals of its racially diverse marketing.

This false appeal to racial diversity as a means to portray Brazil as a totally inclusive society echoes the idea of Brazil being a supposed racial democracy, meaning that “there is no prejudice or discrimination against non-whites” (Hasenbalg 1). After the end of slavery in Brazil, this term was used heavily in popular discourse across Brazil to suggest that Brazil’s racial diversity and sizable mixed-race population proves its lack of racism or class separation based on race. However, further analysis of the class differences in towns such as Salvador, paired with a tumultuous history of racial oppression through events such as the Malê revolt, challenge the idea that a racial democracy can exist if white Bahian elites profit off of Black Bahians in Salvador without proper representation or financial support. Another essential critique of racial democracy is how it blames class position for the suffering of minorities in Brazil instead of a racial divide. Salvador/Baianidade serves as one of many examples of how race still pervades class separation, especially when towns such as Salvador are intentionally set up to generate wealth from a historically Afro-Brazilian culture with citizens that do not reap any of the benefits.

These parallels between the abject conditions of the Malês as slaves and the manipulation of the Bahian identity for financial gain highlight a continued racial separation in Brazil and the distortion of African traditions in the pursuit of a supposed harmony between races. Afro-Brazilians in Salvador continue to face the challenge of defending their traditions and identity from exploitation from a post-colonial elite. Even though the actions of the Malês ensured newfound freedoms for Black Brazilians across the country, the Black Brazilians of Salvador remain, in many ways, an economic resource for the elite and a supporting argument for a racial democracy even though they experience compelling inequality. The notion that a place as important for the liberation of Black Brazilians as Bahia is still subject to an implicit misuse of its Black population illustrates the pressing reality of Brazil’s racial divide and how it clashes with claims of Brazil being a nation without racism or discrimination. The events of the Malê revolt not only marked a pivotal turning point in the struggle for liberation among Black Brazilians but also initiated a crucial conversation about the reality of discrimination in a nation grappling with its own identity.