Connections between Boca do Mato and Cidade Macuti: territorialization, social hygiene discourse and marginalization

Abstract

Starting with a past connected by shared social experiences of colonization and enslavement in Latin America and in Mozambique, the aim of the article is to reflect on the historic processes faced by two specific communities – Boca do Mato, in Rio de Janeiro, and Cidade Macuti, in the Island of Mozambique. We highlight the common aspects related to the occupation of these spaces from the beginning of the nineteenth century by escaped or freed slaves, known as quilombos (Serra dos Pretos Forros) or mussitos (Ilha de Moçambique), which are the fruit of the territorialization process, also perceived in other parts of Latin America, such as the cumbes, in Venezuela, and the Palanques, in Colombia; as well as the architecture of the houses which draw on African techniques, such as the use of land, wood, and plant fibers as coverage. Regarding the representations of populations and their cultural manifestations, we analyze some cases of persecution and depreciation of religious and cultural practices, such as religious cults of African origin and the so-called batuques, resulting from the production of cultural imaginations linked to the process of colonial territorialization. The second axis is a reflection on a process marked by public health actions and hygienist discourse in relation to the epidemics that devastated these spaces between the mid nineteenth and the early twentieth century, which were linked to the “modernizing projects” of the cities. In this section, we analyze how yellow fever in Rio de Janeiro and the bubonic plague on the Island of Mozambique, as well as public health policies linked to a racial ideology, impacted the populations of Boca do Mato and Cidade Macuti. In relation to the rest of Latin America, a possible connection is made with the spread in the mid-1850s of the so-called "temperature fever" from Brazil to Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Both resulted in the racial marginalization and social exclusion of black/African inhabitants of these communities.