Research On Abdias Do Nascimento And Augusto Boal

Abdias do Nascimento and Augusto Boal

It was not until the nineteen thirties that the Brazilian population acknowledged the existence of discrimination against Afro-Brazilians (3). Universally Abdias do Nascimento and Augusto Boal have been two protagonists of the struggle against apartheid and political injustice. Both of these protagonists, Boal and Nascimento structured plays focused on the struggles for racial and political equality not just for Afro-Brazilians, but for all people of African decent. In this research report I will compare and contrast political views and theatrical methods of Nascimento and Boal, to determine which of these protagonists was effective or ineffective in the struggle against apartheid in Brazil.

Abdias do Nascimento is a Brazilian African American artist, actor, and politician. Nascimento was born in the town of Franca, Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1914. From 1929-1930 Nascimento participated early in Brazil's equivalent of the civil rights movement, the Brazilian Black Front. He led the organization of the Afro-Campineiro Congress, a meeting of Brazilian blacks to protest discrimination in the city of Campinas in 1938. In 1944 after returning to Rio de Janeiro, Nascimento founded the Black Experimental Theatre which was the first Afro-Brazilian organization to connect the struggle for civil and human rights with the recovery of African culture. The Black Experimental Theatre offered literacy, culture and theater courses for Afro-Brazilians, which opened and paved a way for black actors in Brazilian theater. The Black Experimental Theatre also influenced the creation of dramatic literature based on African and Afro- Brazilian culture. From 1945-1946 Nascimento played a key role in organizing the Afro- Brazilian Democratic Committee. Nascimento also he edited the newspaper Quilombo from 1949-51 which covered race issues and other subjects regarding the societal and racial issues of Brazil. In 1968 Nascimento founded the Museum of Black Art in Rio de Janeiro, which held its inaugural exhibit at the Museum of Image and Sound. He became a leader in Brazil's black movement, and was forced into exile by the military regime for 13 years. During his exile from 1968-1981 Nascimento developed his artwork on Afro-Brazilian religious and cultural themes exhibiting in the United States, in galleries, museums, and universities such as Yale University, Howard University and the Museum of Afro-American Artists' Association. In 1982, after 14 years of working in universities in the United States, Nascimento returned to Brazil and was elected to the Federal Chamber of Deputies. There Nascimento focused on supporting legislation to address racial problems within the community. In 1983 after the military dictatorship was dissolved in Brazil, Nascimento took office as the first Afro-Brazilian Congressman to defend his community's cause in the Brazilian national legislature. In Parliament, Nascimento introduced proposals for effective anti-discrimination legislation and presented the first bills for affirmative action which would give the Afro-Brazilian population job opportunities that otherwise would not have been available. While serving on the Foreign Relations Committee, Nascimento led congress in proposing anti-apartheid measures in support of South Africa and the Nambian independence movement. In 1991 Nascimento became the first Afro-Brazilian Senator to dedicate his mandate to promote the African-Brazilian people which led to his appointment as head of the newly created Secretariat for the Defense and Promotion of Afro-Brazilian Peoples, in which he served till 1994. Currently Abdias do Nascimento is working as a Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

The Black Experimental Theatre (Teatro Experimental do Negro) created by Nascimento and Alberto Guerreiro Ramos was primarily to expose Afro-Brazilian actors to the fine arts of Brazil while improving their self-worth. Through this new institution Afro-Brazilians were educated about how imperialist nations such as the United States have spread their culture to nations who were reluctant. Students were also taught that social science should commit itself to nation building. From Ramos's perspective because of the miscegenation that exists within the Brazilian community he believed that all Brazilians were black although Caucasian Brazilians contradicted him. Furthermore, Ramos's adulation of interracial mixing among Brazilians both mulatto and mixed was in from his perspective a form of negritude that all of his countrymen possessed.

A doctrine called Quilombo created by Abdias Nascimento was an ideology that permeated the Black Brazilian movement of the 1980s combining cultural radicalism with political radicalism conveying two principles connected to the afro-centric emersion of the black Brazilians. According to Nascimento in Beyond Racism Embracing an Independent Future, "In the case of racial inequality in Brazil, as compared with the United States and South Africa, the outstanding singularity is the absence of racial segregation by law and the accompanying national culture of "racial democracy" that has acted as a smokescreen to mask very stark racial inequities. (4)" The first principle was Afro-centrism sole purpose was to motivate and connect afro-Brazilians to an international black nation which were continents with black populations such as Africa. The purpose was to heighten the afro-centric awareness of black Brazilians. Through Nascimento's second influence which was through Marxism he used revolutionary vocabulary to insight a sense of unity among blacks in the Brazilian culture. Nascimentos use of revolutionary analogies that echoed the 1960's movement for social and political change was to convey to all black Brazilians that their time of emancipation was at hand and that united they could make a difference voicing their opinions of the social ills that plaque their country. Nascimento's idea of emancipation of black Brazilians was based of an exploited people. Nacimento also compared the struggle for afro-Brazilians to that of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa of which the native inhabitants of the country are oppressed by racist foreigners (Anglo-Saxons) who are the minority. . According to Nascimento in Beyond Racism Embracing an Independent Future, "Such contrasts cannot be understood without taking into account their racial dimension: the "barren lives" of Brazil are overwhelmingly non-White. While the roots of inequality have much in common with those in other developing countries,

There are singularities that shape and influence their contours and the perspectives for policies designed to address them. (4)" In his comparison Abdias made reference to the similarities of the segregation,