Epilogue

Rufino’s story suggests the range of possibilities and obstacles faced by African freed persons in Brazil. Although he was not a social rebel, he represented a cultural affront to Brazilian slavocracy: he could read and write, spoke several languages, held a cosmopolitan view of the world, and practiced Islam. He was a ladino African, a man who had understood the workings of the slave society. He could have returned to Africa but chose to live in Brazil, where he had a son and followers. As a freedman, Rufino tried to reconstruct a life that was interrupted when he was captured and deported to Brazil.

A Free Man

Rufino’s interrogation shows he also drew attention because he raised the memories of the 1835 Muslim rebellion in Bahia and of the “Divine Teacher” episode in Recife in 1846. The latter involved a black man who led a messianic movement of free and enslaved black Christians, whom he taught how to read and write using subversive verses that threatened a Haitian-style slave revolution unless freedom was granted peacefully. Since Rufino could read, write, and indoctrinate, the press referred to him as the Divine Teacher II, though he was a Muslim. After two weeks in jail, Rufino was released free of charges. His story was told by the press all over Brazil.

Sierra Leone

After being captured by the Royal Navy brig Water Witch, the Ermelinda is taken to Sierra Leone, a British colony, the history of which is narrated from its foundation by philanthroposts, including the leading abolitionist Granville Sharp, in the late eighteenth century up until Rufino landed there in December 1841. British cruisers deposited scores of liberated Africans there40,000 in the 1830s alone. As a result, Sierra Leone’s population included people of different faiths and ethnicities from all over the western coast of Africa and Mozambique. Anti–slave trade Mixed Commissions were installed in Freetown, where the trial of the Ermelinda was carried out for two months.

The Ermelinda Goes to Sea

The Ermelinda sails from Recife to Luanda in June, 1841, with Rufino on board. Due to a leak, the voyage is interrupted for repairs in Salvador, where Rufino had spent most of his life as a slave in Brazil. Travel to Luanda is resumed, but the ship is seized by a Royal Navy brig off the coast of that city on the grounds that it was allegedly equipped for the slave trade. The brig’s commander, Lieutenant Henry James Matson, was very active in these Atlantic waters. He would later declare to the British Parliament that he had captured at least forty slave ships during his career, and had met several well-known African slave dealers, such as Arsénio de Carpio in Luanda.

Rufino’s Employers

Rufino’s employers are the focus of this chapter. The Ermelinda’s owner was José Francisco de Azevedo Lisboa, a slave trader also known by the nickname Azevedinho (little Azevedo). He was well-known to the British authorities for his extensive slave trading activities in Angola, West Africa, Bahia, and Pernambuco in the 1830s and 1840s. He was the equivalent of the CEO of a large slave trading firm based in Recife that brought together some of the wealthiest local merchants, such as Angelo Francisco Carneiro, later Viscount of Loures, and had formed a vast network of connections with slave dealers all over Brazil. According to an investigation by the British, this organization smuggled massive numbers of slaves to Brazilian shores.

Rio de Janeiro, a City in Fear

Rufino arrives in Rio de Janeiro between the last months of 1835 and the first days of 1836, one year after the great Muslim slave rebellion in Salvador. As a result, African Muslims became a main targets of police authorities in Rio de Janeiro, for some of the rebels had been sold, if slaves, or migrated, if freedpersons, to the capital of the Brazilian empire. Throughout the 1830s there were rumors and fear of slave rebellions. Marronage in the suburbs, slave flights, and resistance were rampant. The city and its hinterland were under heavy police surveillance. West Africans, like Rufino, were closely watched.

Enslaved in Porto Alegre

In 1831, Rufino’s young master, an army cadet, took him to the province of Rio Grande do Sul, where he was sold to a merchant from the capital city of Porto Alegre. When his new master went bankrupt, Rufino was auctioned and bought by the police chief of the province. He worked as a cook at home and probably as a hire-out worker in the streets as well. Rio Grande received scores of slaves imported from Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. By 1819, 30 percent of Porto Alegre’s population were slaves. As the city grew, daily conflicts between slaves and the police and maroon activity became a major problem.

Rufino’s Africa

Rufino was born in the ancient kingdom of Ò̩yó̩, one of the most powerful states in West Africa in the early nineteenth century. The expansion of Islam in the area, coupled with internal strife, led to a series of wars involving different ethnic groups. In 1817, a slave revolt in the heart of Ò̩yó̩ weakened its leadership to a point of no return. The victims of the conflicts that followed crowded the slave ships bound for Brazil. Years later, Rufino told the police that he came from a Yoruba Muslim family, who named him Abuncare. He was enslaved by Muslim Hausa warriors, a great number of whom were escaped slaves who ravaged the region where he lived. Rufino was sold on the coast and sent to Bahia in the early 1820s.

The Malês of Recife and a Doctrinal Dispute

The Turkish imam Abd al-Raman al-Bagdádi visited and preached to Muslim communities in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Recife in 1865. For him, African Muslims he met had a rudimentary understanding of their religion and a lifestyle that was far removed from its principles. The use in Recife of unorthodox divination methods by Muslim preachers caught his attention. They were similar to Rufino’s religious practices, whom he may have met in person. Muslim presence in Recife was solid, as indicated by a debate among Africans of different religions published during several days in a local newspaper.

Tense Times in Rufino’s Recife

Rufino lived in Recife during a period of social unrest, namely the 1848 liberal rebellion and the 1852 revolt of free blacks provoked by rumors of a government plan to enslave them. In April 1853, a new wave of rumors spread the news that slaves had been freed but their masters did not inform them. In August 1853, several slaves and freed people were arrested and confessed the existence of a plot in three different counties, including Recife. Most suspect slaves were punished by their own masters, but the police condemned three of them to up to 600 lashes. Rufino’s house was raided and Muslim papers found, leading the police to believe they were plans for the revolt.