Table Of ContentThe Story of Rufino
The Story of Rufino
Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic
JOÃO JOSÉ REIS, FLÁVIO DOS SANTOS GOMES
and
MARCUS J. M. DE CARVALHO
TRANSLATED BY H. SABRINA GLEDHILL
1
1
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This book is a translation of
O alufá Rufino: Tráfico, escravidão e liberdade no Atlântico Negro (c. 1822– c. 1853) © 2010 João José Reis,
Flávio dos Santos Gomes, and Marcus J. M. de Carvalho. São Paolo: Companhia das Letras, 2010.
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
PART I
1. Rufino’s Africa 3
2. Enslaved in Bahia 9
3. Enslaved in Porto Alegre 20
4. Farroupilha and Freedom 34
5. Freedman in Rio de Janeiro 40
6. Rio de Janeiro, a City in Fear 51
PART II
7. Rufino Joins the Slave Trade 63
8. Luanda, Slave- Trading Capital of Angola 75
9. Readying the Ermelinda 82
10. Rufino’s Employers 96
11. Passengers, Shippers, and Cargo 109
12. The Ermelinda Goes to Sea 118
13. The Equipment Act 126
vi Contents
14. Sierra Leone 138
15. Among Akus and African Muslims 153
16. The Trial of the Ermelinda 162
17. Dirty Tricks 174
18. Back to Sea 180
PART III
19. Counting the Costs 189
20. Rufino’s Recife 196
21. A Man of Faith and Sorcery 206
22. Tense Times in Rufino’s Recife 217
23. A Free Man 222
24. The Malês of Recife and a Doctrinal Dispute 229
Epilogue 241
Acknowledgments 245
Notes 247
Sources and Works Cited 283
Name Index 299
Subject Index 303
PREFACE
The written history of Africans in Brazil during slavery times is largely based on
police records. The central character of this book is no exception. On September
2, 1853, Rufino José Maria was arrested in his home on 78, Rua da Senzala Velha
(Old Slave Quarter Street), in the parish of São Frei Pedro Gonçalves in Recife,
the capital of the northeastern province (now state) of Pernambuco. He was a
freedman of the Nagô ethnic nation, as the Yoruba- speaking Africans, who cur-
rently inhabit southwestern Nigeria and the eastern part of the neighboring
Republic of Benin, were called in Brazil. The Nagôs became known throughout
Brazil for organizing a number of rebellions in the province (now state) of Bahia
in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Salvador, the capital of Bahia, Nagô
Muslims known as Malês– from the Yoruba ìmàle– led the famous slave revolt of
January 1835 and probably participated in prior uprisings and conspiracies as
well, there having been at least thirty of them between 1807 and 1835. Rufino
was also Muslim and as such, bore the name Abuncare (possibly derived from
Abdul Karim), which he brought from his homeland.
Rufino’s arrest in 1853 took place amid a tense atmosphere of rumors,
accusations, and repression related to a slave conspiracy involving several planta-
tions on the outskirts of Recife. Many African homes were searched, and on two
occasions, so were the streets and taverns in the city center. However, the only
suspicious items the police discovered in Rufino’s home were a large number
of Arabic manuscripts— the same type of materials seized from the African
rebels in Bahia nearly twenty years earlier. In 1835, the so- called Malê writings
became notorious throughout Brazil thanks to newspaper reports, since they
were portrayed as being the most intriguing and mysterious and therefore dan-
gerous aspect of the rebellion. However, the story Rufino told the police was
far from being a rebel’s tale. It was primarily that of an urbane, peace-l oving
Muslim, albeit a devout one with a rich life experience replete with adventures
and misadventures on the Atlantic trade routes.
vii
viii Preface
There are two complementary reports on Rufino’s life, both based on his police
interrogation. One of them is the official transcript of his interrogation, drafted
by a police clerk, which contains the signatures of three witnesses to the investi-
gation. Rufino himself signed the document as well, in Arabic. Unfortunately, we
have only been able to find a copy that does not contain his signature.1
The other report is a long article written by a witness to the interrogation
published a few weeks later in the Jornal do Commercio, a newspaper based in
Rio de Janeiro, the largest city and capital of Brazil, the seat of the imperial court.
The unsigned article ends with the observation, “Private letter.” It describes the
circumstances in which the writer obtained the information, as he seems to have
had free access to the back rooms of police power in Recife: “Out of curiosity,
I went to see the black man who had to be interrogated, and finding some sin-
gular things in his responses, primarily when he said that being a priest in this
land is a trade, I am enclosing some notes about that Muslim priest, which can
be read as a curiosity. I owe these notes to the pen of another curious soul who
was there with me.” That other “curious soul” could also have been one of the
witnesses.
Therefore, there is an explicit partnership in the production of the document
that basically recounts Rufino’s life, sometimes repeating the official statement
taken down by the police clerk and sometimes adding new information. The
report published in the Jornal do Commercio was written by someone with an
anticlerical mindset who was inclined toward religious tolerance. He defended
Rufino’s right to practice his religion legally and freely, which nevertheless meant
limiting it to household worship—a s was the case with Rufino—a ccording to
the constitution then in force in the country. It is a basically favorable report
about the African freedman that recommended his immediate release.2
These two documents not only provide a wealth of information about Rufino
but also set out a trail of clues that enabled us to follow his footsteps from the
time he left Africa until his arrest nearly thirty years later. Unfortunately, the pres-
ence of this particular African was not documented in all the places (or archives)
we scoured as we followed his trail. As is generally the case with biographies of
people of Rufino’s social rank, direct information about him frequently evaded
us. We often got very close to him, to the point of seeing his shadow in a corner
of the archives, but we came across other characters who, in their eagerness to
stand out, seemed to want to steal the spotlight from the African. Many of them
were men of wealth and power: slave owners, slave traders, bosses, officials, and
journalists. This book also tells their stories, particularly of individuals involved
in the transatlantic slave trade during the period when it was already illegal.
Thus, we have managed to gain an understanding of Rufino’s circumstances and
experiences through the people who crossed his path. We have also been able
Preface ix
to reconstruct the turbulent world in which he lived and traveled and which he
helped create in several corners of the Atlantic.
This is not a typical book about African slavery in Brazil. It involves that di-
mension, among others, but in these pages the reader will primarily find a nar-
rative of Atlantic history. Rufino’s life takes us on a journey that begins in Ọ̀yọ́,
the African kingdom where he was born; goes on to Salvador, where he first
arrived in Brazil as a slave; then to Porto Alegre, in the southernmost part of
the country, where he was taken by his young master, sold, and later purchased
his manumission. As a freedman he moved to Rio de Janeiro, the port where
he shipped out as a sailor on a slaver bound for Luanda, the main entrepôt
of the Angolan slave trade, ending up in Sierra Leone, the British colony he
would visit on two occasions, and finally settling down in Recife, the capital of
Pernambuco province, where he chose to live and work as a diviner, healer, and
Muslim teacher. Aside from these locales, Rufino also spent time aboard slave
ships on the Atlantic. Therefore, this book is largely a history of the slave trade,
its economy, organization, and business strategies; its trading posts, ships, the
various figures involved; its atrocities and the campaign to suppress it when the
African freedman was engaged in the infamous commerce in human flesh. Thus,
this is more than one man’s biography; it is a social history of the slave trade and
slavery in the Atlantic basin guided by the experiences of Rufino José Maria, also
known by his Muslim name, Abuncare.3
