It’s Carnaval Monday night in Salvador, Bahia—Brazil’s “Black Rome.” Dressed in yellow, red, black, and white, a huge crowd of ordinary people, artists, and politicians are gathered in the Liberdade neighborhood. Under the balcony of the Candomblé temple Ilê Axé Jitolu, they attend a brief religious ceremony that opens the procession of the Carnaval group Ilê Aiyê.

Africa is not a country. Yet, if there is a country in the Americas where we can find Africa, it’s Brazil. As part of this long overdue recognition of Brazil’s African past, for the first time this November 20, 2024, Brazil commemorated the National Black Consciousness Day as a federal holiday.

Today, this official recognition of Brazil’s long-lasting African heritage symbolized by November 20 matters more than ever, as anti-Black racism remains a growing malign tumor in the country.

Although the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 establishes that racism is a crime, the number of reported cases of racism in Brazil increased by 127 percent in 2023. In Brazil, offenses of racism and racial insults are both non-bailable.

More shockingly, in 2023, nearly 70 percent of Brazil’s 850,000 prison population is Black, the highest number in 20 years. Blacks also make up more than 70 percent of the victims of violent, intentional homicides.

Today more than 50 percent of Brazil’s population of nearly 216 million people identify as Black (preto) or brown (pardo). Although Brazil witnessed a more recent immigration from African countries, such as Angola and Senegal, most new Black migrants during the past 20 years came from Haiti. While this voluntary wave of African and Black migrants is recent, Brazil’s connection with Africa is largely linked to the long history of the Atlantic slave trade. Nearly six million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to Brazil during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. The country was also the last in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888. 

From the streets of Porto Alegre in Brazil’s deep south to the busy markets of Salvador, the northeast capital city of the state Bahia, the traces of this longest-lasting African presence in Brazil remain visible in foodways, music, dance, martial arts, material culture, and visual arts.

But despite this significant African heritage, the greatest majority of Brazil’s Black population has remained socially and economically excluded. Racism has ancient roots in Brazil, under the disguise of racial democracy, which promotes the idea of a racially mixed country free from racism. Nothing could be further than the truth. Back in the colonial era and still today, anti-Black racism is on full display in Brazil.

Although systemic exclusion and entrenched racism persist, the enduring legacy of Black African culture is present in Brazil’s religious and cultural practices. This is particularly evident in Catholic churches, where images of Black saints are often visible. Take the example of Saint Elesbaan (or Elesbão in Portuguese), one of the most important of these Black saints, who was worshipped in the Ethiopian and Coptic churches. Elesbão, an actual historical figure, was originally named Kaleb, the king of Aksum, a kingdom encompassing modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea, during the sixth century CE.

Other Black saints include Ephigenia, a legendary beautiful princess from Ethiopia, whose story emerged in the first century CE. Enslaved Africans and their descendants also worshipped enslaved Black saints, such as Benedict of Palermo and Saint Anthony of Noto (or Saint Anthony of Cartegeró), whose devotion appeared in Sicily and then in the Iberian Peninsula during the sixteenth century.

Black saints and African deities are closely related in Brazil. When Africans and their descendants joined Catholic confraternities and embraced multiple Black Catholic saints, they connected these saints to the gods they worshipped in their homelands. In this context, Black Catholicism was not dissociated from West African religions such as Vodun and Orisha, which also embrace multiple gods.

Although until the middle of the 20th century Brazilian police often repressed the public practice of Afro-Brazilian religions and martial arts, such as capoeira, West African and West Central African religions remained alive in Brazil. 

African religious heritage is alive in Candomblé and Umbanda ceremonies. With roots in West Africa and West Central Africa, these Afro-Brazilian religions also incorporate elements of Catholicism and indigenous cosmologies. And this heritage is not hidden in private temples. From north to south, millions of Black and white Brazilians wearing white clothes go to the beach on New Year’s Day and on February 2nd, to celebrate and make offerings to the sea goddess Iemanjá, who in the Yoruba pantheon is known as Yemoja. As during the opening ceremony of Ilê Aiyê’s procession, African-based religions are also on display during Carnaval parades, in which Brazil’s longest-lasting African heritage also emerges in its various forms through music and dance.

Africa has also been a central theme in Brazilian Carnaval. Already in the 19th century, Bahia’s Carnaval groups incorporated the terms “Africa” and “Africans” to their names. They also embraced themes associated with a variety of African topics in their yearly parades. These efforts to keep these connections with Africa continued throughout the 20th century, including during the civil-military dictatorship that took control of the country from 1964 to 1985.

The now internationally famous Carnaval group Ilê Aiyê, which celebrates five decades of existence in 2024, is one great example of the continuous work to bring to light the role of Africa in shaping Brazil, an effort led by Black artists and activists. Even Carnaval Black groups (known as blocos afro) have often promoted Africa as a homogenous, idealized, and even exotic continent associated with colorful clothes and dances led by the rhythm of drums; by reclaiming the continent in their own terms, Brazilian Black activists asserted their fight against racism in the public space. Fifty years ago, this was a major achievement even in a Black state like Bahia, where the white minority elite was hostile to displays of Blackness such as natural Black hair, dreadlocks, headscarves, and colorful clothes. Through its performances during Carnaval and many other educational activities during the year, Ilê Aiyê became a landmark in the fight against racism in Bahia.

Black Brazilian social actors and organizations fought back, calling for the official recognition of Africa’s and Africans’ roles in the construction of the country. Understanding the Atlantic slave trade as a human atrocity, they linked Brazil’s enduring racial inequalities with its painful history of slavery.

At the end of the military dictatorship, Afro-Brazilian social actors and politicians increasingly pushed for the enactment of legislation to officially recognize Brazil’s African history. In 1983, the late Black politician Abdias do Nascimento proposed a bill to the National Congress to make November 20 a national holiday to commemorate Black Consciousness Day. November 20 was no ordinary date—it is the day when Zumbi, the leader of Palmares quilombo, the largest and longest-lasting runaway slave community was assassinated in 1695. Nascimento’s bill did not even make its way to the floor. But in 1995, the year marking the tricentennial of Zumbi’s assassination was widely commemorated across the country.

In the next years, Brazilian Black activists increasingly called to replace the commemoration of May 13, the day that Princess Isabel signed the Golden Law that abolished slavery in 1888, with November 20. In 2003, federal law number 10,639 made mandatory in public and private primary and secondary education schools the teaching of Afro-Brazilian history and culture, including the history of Africa and Africans, the struggle of Black people in Brazil, Black Brazilian culture, and Black people in the formation of the nation, in order to rescue the contribution of Black people in the social, economic, and political areas relevant to the history of Brazil. The law also established November 20 as National Black Consciousness Day in the school calendar, and in the following years, the date became an official holiday in 400 Brazilian cities.

Although the legislation has not been fully enforced, Brazil, with its Black majority, is far ahead of all other countries in the Americas in its official recognition of how enslaved Africans have shaped the nation. Today, the entire month of November is designated as National Black Consciousness Month. In December 2023, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sanctioned a law establishing November 20 as a national holiday in Brazil.

Undoubtedly, Brazil is coming to terms with its debt to the African continent. Yet the poverty rate among Black Brazilians remains double that among the population identified as white. Despite the symbolic initiatives, such as the federal holiday of November 20, these measures remain largely insufficient to address the country’s deep racial inequalities.