"Dia da Consciência Negra"

Alles dicht, baan gesloten, weer een vrije dag in Rio voor heel veel mensen. Toch nog op de baan getraind door mijn goede contacten met de bewaker uit Bahia. Twee jaar in Brazilie en deze dag altijd gemist.... Op de 20e November is er, op de dag dat Zumbi dos Palmares (1655–1695), de laatste leider van ‘Quilombo dos Palmares’, overleed een nationale vrije dag: de dag van het zwarte bewustzijn. In april is er een vrije dag die de afschaffing van de slavernij markeert maar deze dag appelleert aan de wortels van Braziliaanse geschiedenis. De gigantische mengelmoes van rassen, lichamelijke kenmerken en kleuren is ongeëvenaard. Brazilie is een smeltkroes van alles. Met de komst van de Afrikaanse slaven, eind van 1500 begin 1600, begon een nieuw deel in de geschiedenis van dit land. De oorspronkelijke bewoners hebben denk ik minder invloed gehad dan de donkere mannen en vrouwen die door oa de Nederlanders en Portugezen werden verscheept. Door de slavernij, gedurende ruim 300 jaar, konden grote stukken land worden gecultiveerd, grondstoffen en mineralen worden gewonnen en groeide de bosarbeid. Met de afschaffing van de slavernij kwam ook de vermenging van rassen in een stroomversnelling. Nog steeds zijn er bevolkingsgroepen die zo op het oog gisteren uit Ivoorkust kwamen. Grote donkere mannen en vrouwen die voornamelijk in Bahia wonen. Natuurlijk zou je bijna zeggen, natuurlijk is e rook een : Indianen Dag ( Native Day; in Portuguese known as Dia do Índio). Door president Getulio Vargas bij wet ingesteld in in 1943 ( and recalls the day (April 19) in 1940, in which several indigenous leaderships of the Americas decided to attend the First Inter-American Indian Congress, held in Mexico.) Extra info van Wikipedia geplukt: Fossil records found in Minas Gerais show evidence that the area now called Brazil has been inhabited for at least 8,000 years by indigenous people.[1] The dating of the origins of the first inhabitants, who were called "Indians" (índios) by the Portuguese, are still a matter of dispute among archaeologists. The current most widely accepted view of anthropologists, linguists and geneticists is that they were part of the first wave of migrant hunters who came into the Americas from Asia, either by land, across the Bering Strait, or by coastal sea routes along the Pacific, or both. The Andes and the mountain ranges of northern South America created a rather sharp cultural boundary between the settled agrarian civilizations of the west coast and the semi-nomadic tribes of the east, who never developed written records or permanent monumental architecture. For this reason, very little is known about the history of Brazil before 1500. Archaeological remains (mainly pottery) indicate a complex pattern of regional cultural developments, internal migrations, and occasional large state-like federations. At the time of European discovery, the territory of current day Brazil had as many as 2,000 tribes. The indigenous peoples were traditionally mostly semi-nomadic tribes who subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering, and migrant agriculture. When the Portuguese arrived in 1500, the Natives were living mainly on the coast and along the banks of major rivers. Initially, the Europeans saw the natives as noble savages, and miscegenation of the population began right away The word "Brazil" comes from brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology "red like an ember", formed from Latin brasa ("ember") and the suffix -il (from -iculum or -ilium).[19][20][21] As brazilwood produces a deep red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. Through the 16th century, massive amounts of brazilwood were harvested by indigenous peoples (mostly Tupi) along the Brazilian coast, who sold the timber to European traders (mostly Portuguese, but also French) in return for assorted European consumer goods.[22] The official name of the land, in original Portuguese records, was the "Land of the Holy Cross" (Terra da Santa Cruz), but European sailors and merchants commonly called it simply the "Land of Brazil" (Terra do Brasil) on account of the brazilwood trade. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official name. Early sailors sometimes also called it the "Land of Parrots" (Terra di Papaga). In the Guarani language, an official language of Paraguay, Brazil is called "Pindorama". This was the name the natives gave to the region, meaning "land of the palm trees".