Cordões and canboulay bands: Black performances in the post-abolition era (rio de janeiro and port-of-spain)

Abstract

This article intends to analyze transnationally black carnival performances of the cordões and canboulay bands in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in the Post-Abolition period. The aim is to understand the collective strategies of black subjects to build autonomy spaces and claim and occupy public spaces in contexts of hegemony of racialized and racist views. This comparative perspective allows us to reflect on Post-Abolition as an historical Atlantic problem, approaching the Caribbean and the South Atlantic. To do so, we will use primary sources of archives in Rio de Janeiro and London, especially police and government documents, at the National Archives, and at the National Archives of Brazil, and newspapers, magazines and memorialists, archived in the British Library and the Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil. We conclude that the creators of the cordões and canboulay bands produced dissident black performances and communicated to broad and varied audiences identities that combined Afro-American practices and expressions of resistance to attacks by public forces, while reinforcing their humanity against stereotypes about being black in the post-abolition of the Americas, whether in colonial context or in an independent republic.