Nago and Mina: The Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil

 

Nago and Mina

he

Joao Jose Reis and

Yoruba Diaspora in Brazil eatriz

allotti Mamigonian

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The extension and volume of the Brazilian slave trade, and the special con nection between Bahia and the Bight of Benin ma de Bra Brazil, zil, along with Cuba home to one of the largest concentrations ofYomba-speaking peoples in the Americas. This chapter addresses the distribution of the Yomba diaspora throughout Brazil, focusing primarily on Bahia and Rio de Janeiro in the nine

teenth century. In those two areas, because of the particular conditions of the slave syste system m an d the different ethnic composition of their African African populati on, Yoruba identity took took distinct distin ct forms forms und er the local terms Nag()'' (mainl y in Bahia) Bahia) and Mina (in south southern ern Brazil). Brazil). The slave trade to Brazil, which spanned from the mid-1500s to the 1850s, brought approximately three and a half million enslaved Africans to the Por tuguese territories in South America that became, after 1822, independent Brazil Although Central and Eastern Africa contributed more than three quar quarters ters ofthis total, the trade from West West Africa Africa constituted constitute d an importa imp ortant nt branch bra nch of the Brazilian Br azilian slav slavee trade. Whil e most slave trading was conducted from the ports in and around the Portuguese colony of Angola, merchants in Bahia establ tablishe ished d in the eighteent h cen hny a direct exchange with the Bight of Benin that would change the profile of the slave population in the colony. The forced migration ofYomba-speaking peoples to Brazil can be traced to th thee sl slav avee trade trade conducte d in the Mina Coast durin g the first first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, and mainly to business with the Bight of Benin from the 1770s through the 1850s. During the latter period Bah ian merchants con solidated their existing network in the region and concentrated their trade east ofOu idah in the ports of Porto Novo, Badagry, and Onim (later, Lago Lagos). s). They defied a ban on the Portuguese slave trade north of the equator imposed by 77