Two Brazils

 “Sorry, but I don’t speak Portuguese!”

I uttered to my plane seatmate attempting conversation out of fear that I’d embarrass myself with bad grammar and inadequate vocabulary. Thus I began my voyage to Brazil to participate in a David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies program. Seemingly a bit taken aback by my response, the older woman furrowed her brow, paused for a moment, and then explained that she didn’t speak English. After a semi-awkward silence, I shook off my nerves, hardened my resolve, and said in the best Portuguese I could that while I wasn’t very good, I did indeed know a little Portuguese, so we could still attempt a conversation. To my elation, she understood! We ended up talking for almost half the flight about everything from food to pets to the best spots to visit in São Paulo. She even gave me her cookies and let me try some of her tea. Although there were times when we didn’t fully understand one another, our mutual kindness and curiosity towards one another kept the conversation going. I didn’t know it at the time, but that incredible yearning to discover one another —one so strong it could smash cultural and language barriers—embodied by our conversation would foreshadow much of the experience in Brazil. Yet in a way, the plane ride foreshadowed another part of my experience.

As I boarded and walked down the aisle towards my seat, I couldn’t help but note an observation my experience as an African American growing up in Mississippi had trained me to make: I was the only Black person on the plane. In that instant, it became painfully clear to me which Brazilians had the means to travel internationally and which did not. The socioeconomic implications of what I observed were stark – in a nation where a majority of people identify as Black or mixed race, whites were still the ones who controlled the wealth. There was a sense of tragic irony in the fact that the people who had created the cultural fixtures Brazil is most known for—samba (and by extension its somewhat more bourgeoise cousin bossa nova), capoeira, and a Pele-spawned football prowess—were still so marginalized.

I was excited and yet fearful to participate in MLAB (Mentoring and Language Acquisition Brazil), a DRCLAS program in which Harvard students mentor Brazilian high schoolers in English as well as in strategies for achieving academic success in high school, college and beyond.

MLAB mentors.

I felt very included always, and yet I was always conscious about the stark racial issues that still haunt Brazil. MLAB’s curriculum made no effort to shy away from these problems. I learned that despite Brazil’s reputation as “racial democracy” in which people of all ethnic backgrounds are treated fairly, issues pertaining to race and color-based discrimination remain salient to this day. Contrary to claims that it has always been a leader in the arena of race relations, Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery and after doing so, those in power quickly sought ways to control and eventually eliminate the newly freed Afro-Brazilians. Instead of isolating the Black population as the United States had done with segregation, Brazil took the opposite approach through the implementation of the branqueamento policy, which sought to gradually whiten Black Brazilians by encouraging them to only reproduce with white Brazilians. At the same time, Brazil’s government encouraged millions of Europeans to immigrate, diluting the Black population even further. Proponents of the idea hoped that Afro-Brazilians would gradually be absorbed into the wider population and eventually cease to exist altogether. In sum, blackness and its accompanying connotations of slavery and poverty were seen as shameful problems warranting concealment and extirpation.

During my trip, I myself encountered vestiges of this thinking during a late-night conversation with one of our Afro-Brazilian hostel hosts. After watching an American horror film, we began to discuss the difference between the United States and Brazil and inadvertently landed on the subject of race relations. She mentioned that black Brazilians are often reluctant to admit their connections to their enslaved ancestors and was curious to know if Black Americans felt the same way. My response that African Americans (at least in my lived experience) accept and embrace their history and that I myself descend from enslaved people was met with an audible gasp. While she of course had no ill intent, I saw in her response a symptom of a society which, much like the United States, still sees an inherent shame in the Black experience.

Yet, despite the examples of racialized stigma I learned about and even encountered, Brazil also managed to show me that there was hope for change. Over the course of the program, I saw many examples of Afro-Brazilian heritage being celebrated, such as the capoeira studio we visited and the Museu Afro Brasil, which documented Brazil’s Black history as well as cultural elements such as the Afro-Brazilian religion candomblé. I also got to see an incredible exhibit on the national struggle for Black liberation in the Memorial da Resistência. Interestingly, based on Brazil’s color-rooted system of racial classification, most of these events’ curators would have been considered white, serving as an encouraging sign that the country at large is beginning to show more appreciation for its African heritage.

At the Afro-Brazilian Museum.

During my travels, I, in a sense, saw two Brazils. One welcomed me with open arms and expressed an admiration of my native language and culture. The other Brazil subtly hinted that it was still learning how to embrace people like me in the same way the first one did. However, Brazil also showed me that like the United States, it is increasingly willing to look its past in the eye and value the parts of itself which are Congolese just as much as those that are Portuguese. Although there’s still a long way to go towards the dream of making the nation a true racial democracy, if the cultural commitment towards progress I observed is any indication, Brazil can indeed achieve a reality consistent with its ideals.

A capoeira class (an Afro-Brazilian martial art/dance style).