"To Honor the Ashes of Their Forebears": The Rise and Crisis of African Nations in the Post-Independence State of Buenos Aires, 1820-1860Author(s): Oscar ChamosaSource: The Americas, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Jan., 2003), pp. 347-378Published by: Catholic University of America Press on behalf of Academy of AmericanFranciscan HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1008502Accessed: 19/11/2009 03:51

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The Americas 59:3 January 2003, 347-378 Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History

"TO HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS": THE RISE AND CRISIS OF AFRICAN NATIONS IN

THE POST-INDEPENDENCE STATE OF BUENOS AIRES, 1820-1860*

During most of the nineteenth century, more than fifty organized African nations existed in Buenos Aires with the official name of African Associations. They were also known by the popular names

of tambos, tangos and, later on and more loosely, of candombes.' Beginning in 1822, the provincial government chartered ten African Associations with the goal of encouraging the emancipation of slaves by appealing to mutual aid and self-reliance. Along the way, the African Associations were expected to pay for the education of the recently emancipated freemen, delivering them from illiteracy and turning them into self-governing citizens of the new republic. To the dismay of liberal politicians, the African Associations defied government expectations and chose more autonomous directions. The pur- pose of this article is to analyze the interplay of government officials and candombe leaders in an attempt to reveal the internal organization of such associations. Although Buenos Aires was never a major destination of the African diaspora in the Americas, the rare quality of the records produced by the local police department, in charge of looking after the African nations, sheds light on a phenomenon of hemispheric dimensions.

The African nations in the Americas have become an arena of contention between the two different schools of diasporic studies. While the "creoliza- tion" school emphasizes the New World specificity of black culture, the "African retention" school argues that black culture in the Americas can be

* I am very grateful for the encouraging comments and suggestions made by John Chasteen and

George Reid Andrews to the early versions of this article. I would also like to thank the editorial board and anonymous reviewers of The Americas.

1 The early references to the black associations used the terms "naci6n," "tambo" and "tango." In the late 1820s the world "candombe" was generalized referring indistinguishably to the associations, the

places where the associations meet, and the dance performed in the meetings. In this article I will use the terms candombes, nations, and African Associations interchangeably.

347

348 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

entirely traced back to Africa.2 Part of the difficulty may be defining the African nations themselves. They were neither modem nations nor what scholars recognize as pre-colonial African ethnic groups. By studying the development of the African nations in nineteenth-century Buenos Aires, this article attempts to participate in the ongoing debate about those institutions, understanding the African Nations in the Rio de la Plata as contingent asso- ciations created to deal with conditions unknown in the African countries of origin. In this conception, the nations were a cultural and social novelty and not a transposition of African traditions, but at the same time, the nations actively claimed African ancestry, thereby spiritually connecting their uprooted members with a lost motherland.

During the post-Independence period, the African Associations of Buenos Aires had to negotiate a clash between their traditional forms of sociability and the exigencies of the independent republic. Amidst endemic post-Inde- pendence political instability, most of the original candombes broke apart and new nations were born from the older ones. The original ten African Associations chartered in 1825 started to split, increasing the number of can- dombes to more than fifty by 1835. George Reid Andrews has called atten- tion to this process in his book The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires. Andrews suggests that this process weakened the black associations and the black community as a whole, as African leaders failed to overcome the logic of ethnic division encoded in the system of nations.3 Inverting the terms of that insight, this article will argue that the system of nations per se was not responsible for the splitting. On the contrary, the nation system was itself a mechanism that helped people of diverse backgrounds to socialize in viable communities. To explain the splitting, this article builds on Pilar Gonzalez- Bernaldo's argument that the liberal elite of Buenos Aires sponsored civic associations in order to model the emerging society on the modemrn Western concept of citizenship, discouraging associational forms with roots in the colonial past.4 In the case of the candombes, the Buenos Aires government created a tension between two different forms of sociability that in the end drove those associations into disruption. I would expand this thesis to argue that it was not only the introduction of modemrn forms of sociability but also

2 For a useful, though partisan, synthesis of this debate see Paul Lovejoy, "The African Diaspora: Revisionist Interpretations of Ethnicity, Culture and Religion under Slavery" SWHSAE 2:1 (1997).

3 George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), p.150.

4 Pilar Gonzilez Bernaldo, "La creation d'une nation: Historie politique de les nouvelles apperte- nences culturelles dans la ville de Buenos Aires, 1810-1862" (Ph.D. Diss.: University of Paris I, 1992); Pilar Gonzailez Bernaldo, Civiliti et politique aux origins de la nation argentine (Paris: Publications de la Sorbone, 1999).

OSCAR CHAMOSA 349

the very contentious nature of the politics that conspired against the organi- zational principle of the African nations in the diaspora.

This process of splitting exposed the internal fractures within each asso- ciation. Skirmishes between the president and the treasury on one side, and elders (vocales) on the other side, were the daily bread of candombe admin- istration. Some associations lived in an unremitting unrest that brought them eventually to the brink of destruction. Divisive brinkmanship was common among leaders scuffling with small budgets and empty coffers. Interestingly, in the case of the candombes of Buenos Aires, those conflicts acquired the particularity that internal factions were defined along ethnic lines. Indeed, rather than being monolithic nations, most candombes hosted different African ethnic groups which had adopted a single national denomination to pool resources and find strength in numbers. In some cases, such as that of the Sociedad Congo, up to seven different nations constituted a single can- dombe. In order to understand the forces in operation here, this article will begin by providing background on the African population of Buenos Aires and the context in which those associations emerged. It will continue by ana- lyzing evidence on how government interference affected the system of nations. Finally, it will discuss the role of burial rituals and dance in the can- dombe to give a fuller picture of their activities.

PATTERNS OF AFRICAN SOCIABILITY IN THE DIASPORA

One way to approach a definition of the African nations is to look at their practices. Primarily, the nations in the diaspora met to dance, often on a weekly basis, and paraded publicly in big festivities such as Kings Day on 6 January and Saint John Eve on 23 June.s In some places, the nations over- lapped and interacted with the religious brotherhoods, as it was the case of the Brazilian cities of Ouro Preto, Rio de Janeiro, Permambuco, and Bahia. In Cuba and the Rio de la Plata, the nations acquired a formal status inde- pendently from the religious brotherhoods.6 Local governments chartered the nations to provide social aid to their members and to tighten the surveil- lance over a part of the population perceived as dangerous. In each of those

5 The centrality of these two festivals in the African Diasporic culture is discussed in John Chasteen's forthcoming study on the role of dance in the construction of Latin American nationalities.

6 This article relies on the important and growing scholarship on African nations in the diaspora; see Elizabeth Kiddy, "Ethnic and Racial Identity in the Brotherhoods of the Rosary of Minas Gerais, 1700- 1830," The Americas 56 (1999), pp. 221-252; Mary Karasch "Central African Religious Tradition in Rio de Janeiro" Journal of Latin American Studies 5:2 (1979), pp. 233-253, and Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro 1808-1850 (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1987); Philip A. Howard, Changing History: Afro- Cuban Cabildos in the Nineteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1998).

350 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

cases, the actual functions were not clearly delimited. In practice, both sec- ular and religious African Associations were at once dance troupes, burial societies, mutual aid organizations, and peer groups.

More difficult than describing practice is assessing the ethnic content of the African nations in the New World. To accomplish that task, one must tread the slippery floor of acculturation, African retentions, and precolonial African ethnicities only dimly understood today. Were the diasporic African nations ethnic groups at all? Some have argued that modern African ethnic groups-or "tribes," as sub-national groups are often known in Africa-were born with the expansion of colonial administrations and the later conflictive establishment of independent states.7 What existed in pre-colonial Africa were kingdoms, associations among neighboring villages, and kinship and language groups that shared common cultural principles, artifacts, and prac- tices.8 During the first centuries of the slave trade, European traders and mis- sionaries objectified those cultural commonalities under specific names, pro- jecting their understanding of the pre-modern European nationality and giving to these loose cultural unities the name of nations. Those names, and the stereotypes associated with them, crossed the Atlantic aboard the slaving vessels, went ashore at American ports and plantations, and led to the system of African nations in the Rio de la Plata, Brazil, Cuba, and elsewhere.

Most specialists agree that acculturation occurred everywhere in the African diaspora. Beyond this basic understanding, however, there are sig- nificant differences in emphasis between authors who underscore the African continuities and those who emphasize the creolization resulting from the disruptions of the Middle Passage. These conflicting visions are clearly expressed in discussions of diasporic African nations.

7 Scholars agree that ethnicity in Africa was not as sharply delineated in precolonial times as in the present day. In fact, ethnicity as an absolute is a very recent (not to mention dangerous) development. Terence Ranger, for instance, develops the notion that most of the modern African ethnic groups were invented by the European colonial administrations; see Terence Ranger, "The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa," in Erick Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 211-26; not all scholars subscribe to this thesis, some agree that colonial and post-Independence politics exacerbated ethnic differences but they existed independently from colonial control, Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp.185-217; Sandra E. Greene Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Salve Coast (Portsmouth, NH. and London, Heine- mann and James Currey, 1996).

8 In diasporic studies, it is not unusual to find blanket terms such as West African culture or West Cen- tral African religion. Mintz and Price discuss the possibility of this regional cultural complex conceding that across geographical neighboring groups a certain unity of principles, which they call a "grammar of culture," informs highly differenced cultural artifacts; Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), pp. 10-11.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 351

The creolization school stresses the structural conditions within which the

adaptation of slaves took place. Displaced, outnumbered, and overpowered, African captives seem, in this view, if not blank slates at least poorly erased blackboards where the signs of the older ways blurred with the marks of new experiences and the master's impositions. However, as Richard Price and Sidney Mintz propose, the most immediate form of creolization or cultural exchange did not happen between master and slave but among slaves them- selves.9 For "creolizationists," the African nations were primarily New World novelties, born out of necessity in the interaction among slave com- munity leaders of different African backgrounds.

Those who emphasize African continuities, on the other hand, tend to under- stand the nations as autonomous mechanisms set up to preserve the traditions of the old country. African cultural traits did not simply fade away during the Middle Passage, "retentionists" argue, and slaves were able to remember many of the practices and principles of their societies of origin. African retentionists argue for the resiliency and creative plasticity of African cultures of the New World.'o The best proof for such an assertion is that at the end of the twentieth century, African-derived traditions were not only alive but thriving. Recently, however, the usage of this kind of evidence has become problematic since new studies suggest that the most famous African-derived cultures such as Bahian Candombl6 and Cuban Santerfa are quite modern developments."

While creolizationists stress the need for slaves to adapt, retentionists stress the success of slave resistance. One way to avoid this dichotomy is to understand that the latitude and agency of enslaved Africans varied radically with local conditions. For different reasons, some slave cultures, such as those in parts of Brazil and Cuba, were able to retain more African knowl- edge. In the case of the Rio de la Plata, evidence of those traditions is sketchy, yet the candombes clearly leaned on principles of social, political, and religious organization found elsewhere in the diaspora. African nations of the Rio de la Plata allowed their members to create new bonds based on the memory of their African ancestry, thus showing both creolization, and African retention at work.

9 Mintz and Price, African-American Culture, pp. 40-45. 10 Some examples of authors who subscribe to this school are the above-quoted, chapters 8 and 9, pp.

206-270; finally Michael Gomez distinguishes between the Latin American part of the Diaspora, where Africans were able to retain much of their culture, and North America, where the sustained effort of whites managed to erase many of the original African traditions; see Michael G6mez, Exchanging our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

" See J.Lorand Matory, "The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yoruba Nation," Comparative Studies in Society and History (1999), pp. 72-103.

352 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

THE AFRICAN POPULATION OF BUENOS AIRES AND ITS SYSTEM OF NATIONS

The conditions encountered by African cultures varied greatly from one place to the other in the Americas. One problem that Africans of nineteenth- century Buenos Aires faced was the small size of their communities. The African people who founded the candombes arrived in Buenos Aires before 1813 as part of the regular Atlantic trade and, between 1825 and 1828, as booty seized by Argentine privateers during the war with Brazil. In 1838, some fifteen thousand people of color constituted a quarter of the entire pop- ulation of Buenos Aires.'2 That year was the high point in the demographic history of black Buenos Aires. Argentina had no large population of rural slaves to increase the urban black population by migration to the city, as occurred in Brazil. By 1860, the mestizo and white population of urban Buenos Aires had doubled, while the black population remained static. In the census of 1887, people of color comprised a tiny minority.13 The African-born segment of the black population decreased even more rapidly. By the 1830s, only a quarter to a third of the colored population had been born in Africa.14

The African population of the city was also quite diverse. The names of Buenos Aires candombes comprise a complete showcase of the regions involved in the Atlantic slave trade. From a total of fifty-four associations bearing names of either African ethnic groups or African geographical areas, twenty-five correspond to West-Central Africa, fourteen to West Africa, ten to East Africa, and five remain unidentified. Another group of associations bore non-African names. Some of them were former Brazilian slaves and others were brotherhoods identified with the name of saints. Table 1 shows the predominance of West-Central African nations among the candombes. If true that this prevalence reflects the ethnic composition of the slave popula- tion, then it can be argued that, similarly to the nineteenth-century black Rio de Janeiro described by Mary Karasch, Congolese and Angolan slaves com- posed the majority of the Buenos Aires African population. The fact that the slave trade to Buenos Aires depended on Rio de Janeiro reinforces the impression provided by association names.15

12 Andrews, Afro-Argentines, p. 66; Marta Goldberg. "La poblaci6n negra y mulata de la ciudad de Buenos Aires," Desarrollo Econdmico 16 (1976), pp. 75-99.

13 Andrews, Afro-Argentines, Table 5.1, p. 66. 14 Ibid., p. 69. 15 According to the study by Elena F. de Studer a total of 306 registered slavers arrived to the Rio de

la Plata between 1742 and 1806, 185 (60%) came from Brazil, 43 (14%) directly from West Africa, 15 (4.8%) from West Central Africa, 28 (9%) from East Africa, and 35 (11.4%) from unknown origin, Elena F. de Studer, La trata de negros en el Rio de la Plata durante el siglo XVIII (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1958.), Annex 1.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 353

TABLE 1. AFRICAN ASSOCIATIONS OF BUENOS AIRES (1821-1865) West Central Africa West Africa East Africa Brazil Brotherhoods

Angola Abaya Amuera Bahiana Nta Sra de- Banguela Asante Main Protect Lujiin Basundi Hausa Maravi Brasilera Nta Sra del- Bayombe Borno Mozambique Rosario Cambinda Caribali Muchague San Baltazar Casanche Mina Magi Mucherague San Benito Congo Mina Nag6 Mufianda San Gaspar Augunga Moros Quipara San Pedro Gangela Sabalu Macuaca Fraternal Goyos Tapa Mufiambi Argentina Huombe Umbola Federal Kisama Umbonia Loango Yida Lucango Bayamos Lubolos Lumboma Lumbi Macinga Mondongo Monyolo Mucoba Mucubi Muinich Zeda Zongo

Sources: The primary source for this assessment is the names of the associations as they appear in dif- ferent manuscripts in the Archivo General de la Naci6n quoted in this article. For the origins of the African names I relied in the lists provided by Andrews, Afro-Argentines, Appendix D, p. 233; Mary C Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro 1808-1850 (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1987), pp. 11-28; and John Thornton, Africa and Africans, pp. ix-xxxvi.

Still, the numeric predominance of West Central African names does not allow much speculation regarding the social and cultural organization of the candombes. It cannot be assumed that because one of the candombes bore the name Mina Nag6, purportedly integrated by subjects of the Oyo King- dom in Southwest Nigeria, it was necessarily an organization based on Nag6 cultural principles. Neither was the Sociedad Congo Augunga necessarily an extension of the social, religious, and political organizations existing in Congo in the early nineteenth century. Furthermore, most of names conceal more than they reveal about the original ethnicity of the Africans in the Dias-

354 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

pora. Many of the labels refer either to the slave-trade factories on the coast or to way-stations in the interior. Therefore, candombe practices were almost certainly products of interaction between different groups. The white authorities also played a well-documented part, as we shall see.

Before arriving in the Americas, many Africans had to readjust to an ethni- cally diverse environment. During pre-colonial times, different societies of both West and West-Central Africa had developed associations congregating members of several ethnic origins. One of the best-known examples of those institutions is the kilombo of the Imbangala of seventeenth-century Angola. As Joseph C. Miller shows in Kings and Kinsmen, the kilombo was a masculine initiation ritual that cemented a new loyalty (to the Imbangala warlord) among roaming bands of warriors detached from established lineages and clans.16 Similar overarching institutions had existed in the earlier Mbundu states. These were associations of individuals-again cutting across

lineages-•who shared the same economic specialization, such as hunters, healers, and black- smiths. Following the findings of Miller, Stuart Schwartz traces several sug- gestive parallels between the Imbangala institution and the neo-African king- dom of Palmares of seventeenth-century Permambuco.'7 Schwartz maintains that the similarity between the words kilombo and quilombo-the latter, a Brazilian term for a community of runaway slaves-was no coincidence. Quilombo initiation rituals amalgamated runaways of different ethnic back- grounds much as the Imbangala did.'8 The case indicates that similar processes of ethnic reconstruction were at work on both sides of the Atlantic.

The principle that new ethnic groups could come out of smaller ones was also present in urban diasporic groups. That principle produced a particular form of association. In present day Bahia, the members of an important Can- dombl6 group used the word milonga to explain how their associations were originally formed. Esmeraldo Emet6rio de Santana, a Bahian elder of the Angola Nation and a depositary of the oral tradition, sheds considerable light on how this nation was created:

16 Joseph C. Miller, Kings and Kinsmen: Early Mbundu States in Angola (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 151-75, 267.

17 Stuart B. Schwartz, "Rethinking Palmares: Salve Resistance in Colonial Brazil," in Stuart B. Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp. 103-136 and Robert N. Anderson, "The Quilombo of Palmares: A New Overview of a Maroon State in Seventeenth-Century Brazil," Journal of Latin American Studies 28 (1996), pp. 545-566.

18 The quilombo of Palmares was, however, quite unusual in size and duration. Recent works of Brazilian historians show that, far from being palisaded citadels deep in the forest, most quilombos were integrated to the daily life of towns and cities. Thomas Flory, "Fugitive Slaves and Free Society: The Case of Brazil," Journal of Negro History 64:2 (1979), p. 199-224. See contributions of Flavio dos Santos and Mario Maestri in JoBo Jose Reis and Flavio dos Santos ed., Liberdade por um fio: Historia dos quilombos no Brasil (Sgo Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996).

OSCAR CHAMOSA 355

Angola is a mixture of Cambinda, Mogambique, Munjola, Quicongo. All that is Angola. So it turned into what they themselves call milonga. .. . They mixed, because in the slave quarters they had people of all nations. And whenever possible, they did something to fulfill their [ritual] obligations. Everybody contributed a piece, and they made a kind of patchwork .... There wasn't a single nation to perform those obligations any more. It was a mix- ture, as I said: a milonga.'9

The Candombl6 of the Angola Nation continued the tradition of the Catholic brotherhoods that in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro were usually divided from one another along "national" lines. The naC5es within these brotherhoods were blanket labels that included individuals of different ethnic groups only loosely associated in Africa. Elizabeth Kiddy has found that religious broth- erhoods elsewhere in Brazil were not organized by nation. The Our Lady of Rosary Brotherhood in Mariana, Minas Gerais, contained individuals labeled with more than thirty different African nations from both West and West Central Africa.20 A common religious devotion amalgamated people of different backgrounds although separate identities persisted inside each brotherhood. Small and disperse groups of Africans in Buenos Aires used the same principle to create associations claiming an African ancestry not necessarily common to all members.

The candombes of Buenos Aires constructed their associations in the same

way that the Bahian elder Esmeraldo says his ancestors did. Apparently, many small groups of similar African background lacked resources sufficient to establish their own societies. Urban lots, materials, and maintenance were expensive, and it was necessary to pool resources with members of other groups to establish an independent candombe. The name of the association may sometimes have indicated the ethnic origin of the majority of the founders, other times of some leader able to impose his ethnicity to the rest of the asso- ciation. For whatever reason, the sources clearly indicate that many candombes had minority groups within them. Subordinate groups tried to accumulate enough resources to leave the mother association. Some minorities thus achieved independence and created associations of their own, while others never did so. On some occasions, clashes between elders of different allied lin-

19 The original version reads "At6 porque angola 6 uma mistura de cambinda, mogambique, munjola, quicongo. Tudo isso 6 angola. Entio virou o que eles mesmos chamavam milonga....Misturaram, porque eles, na senzala, tinham de todas as naOes e, quando era possivel, eles faziam qualquer coisa das obri-

gaqOes deles, entio cada um pegava um pedago, faziam uma colcha-de-retalhos... e n~o ficou uma naglo para fazer aquel tipo de obrigaglo. Era a mistura, como ja disse, uma milonga." Esmeraldo Emet6rio de Santana

"Naqlo Angola," in Encontro de Naples de Candombld: Anais do encontro realizado em Sal- vador, 1981 (Salvador da Bahia: Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientales, 1984), pp. 35-36.

20 Elizabeth Kiddy, "Rosary of Minas Gerais, 1700-1830," The Americas 56:2 (1999), p. 235.

356 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

eages, factions, or ethnic groups ended by splitting up candombe members and assets. Animosity frequently remained between former allies. Candombes nor- mally followed a trajectory of rise and decline, as uprooted people pooled their energies behind a project, later to split and go their separate ways. Archival documents offer examples of how the candombes fractured over time. The same documents show, too, how new candombes were born.

POLITICAL HISTORY OF CANDOMBES

All in all, quite a number of candombes were established in the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires between 1822 and the 1860s. They offered uprooted African people a way to recreate kinship relations and rituals dis- organized by the Middle Passage. But they annoyed white neighbors with the thundering sound of the drums playing every weekend. In a city that, as early as 1820, had pretensions to being a regional motor for European civi- lization, African drums were certainly not welcomed. The elders of the black associations fought fiercely to retain their dancing and its percussive accom- paniment. Their fight took a form typical of most political relations at this time and place. Buenos Aires was not a democracy in which groups negoti- ated their share of power and benefits through institutional channels. Rather, it was a highly hierarchical society in which patron-client networks shaped political struggle. When African leaders sought state sanction for their asso- ciations, they had no choice but to enter this web of "reciprocal" favors. Next, we will explore how the African Associations adapted themselves to this system and how they managed to preserve the identities they con- structed in the bosom of the candombes.

The particular outlook that African institutions acquired in Buenos Aires was intrinsically connected to the way the candombes related with local authorities. This relationship unfolded in a particular historical process that will be summarized here from the late colonial period to the aftermath of the fall of Rosas in the 1850s. During the late colonial period, associations like the Cambundas or Congos had all the characteristics of the system of nations. The majority of their members were still enslaved. Their resources were few and, because they lacked political protection, a party of soldiers might burst in and imprison them at any moment. These colonial African nations would start to break apart as their internal lineages accumulated more resources and political protection.21

21 It is highly possible, although difficult to prove, that the communities of blacks that flourished in the outskirts of Buenos Aires during the colonial period were similar to this kind of urban quilombo that existed in Brazil in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Few sources recorded the existence of these

OSCAR CHAMOSA 357

After surviving the colonial period, the African communities in Buenos Aires entered the independence period with gathering vitality. Militias and elections became avenues for black participation in political life, and that participation was rewarded by official protection. During the wars of Inde- pendence, blacks-both African and Argentine-born-were massively drafted into the urban militias. In relative terms, the black militias empow- ered the black population and created a more propitious environment for the development of their African Associations. After the war against Spain ended, the urban militias retained part of their importance, as they became instruments of both the new state and the rival political factions. Militias gave the black population the possibility of a prestigious career and space for male sociability.22 The evidence shows that black leaders took advantage of their participation in the militias to obtain concessions from the state.

Black leaders also obtained concessions by participating in elections. The liberal government of 1821 introduced elections without requirements of lit- eracy or property, and some individual blacks became enfranchised.23 Nev- ertheless, elections in a hierarchical society did not mean political freedom or full citizenship. Instead, they meant patronage and fraud. Such elections preserved social and racial hierarchies, but they also provided some ways for subordinated social sectors to voice their demands. The African leaders learned how to manipulate the system for their own ethnically defined goals.

Initially, liberal administrations that ruled the province of Buenos Aires during the 1820s were unsure about what to do with the African nations. Not surprisingly, the elitist Unitario party, then in power, was ill-disposed toward anything that came from Africa, and, certainly, the candombes were at odds with Unitario liberalism. Minister of Government Bernardino Riva- davia initially allowed the nations to continue their meetings, but decreed

communities. In 1795, the Cabildo officer, don Manuel Warnes, and a handful of city guards irrupted by force into a barrack in the Concepci6n parish to enforce a Cabildo ban on the nations. When Warnes and his subordinates broke into the place, club-and-knife wielding defenders easily put the cabildo party to flight. On that occasion, Warnes reported that slaves and freedmen "gathered there at nights in the number of three hundred to dance indecently." The alderman also affirmed that slaves used the place as a cloak for runaways and bandits that planned their felonies "in order to alleviate the yoke of slavery." Manuel Warnes to Cabildo, 1795, AGN, Cabildo, leg. 10.19.7.2.

22 Andrews, Afro-Argentines, pp. 133-136. 23 Recent scholarship challenges the vision of nineteenth-century elections as mere shows of force,

highlighting popular participation that did not exclude violence and manipulations. See, for the case of Buenos Aires: Graciela Ternavasio "Las elecciones en el Estado de Buenos Aires y la expansi6n de la frontera politica: 1820-1840" in Historia de las elecciones en Iberoamerica, ed. Antonio Annino (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1990) and Hilda Sabato and Elias Palti, "Qui6n votaba en Buenos Aires: Prnictica y teoria del sufragio, 1850-1880," Desarrollo Econdmico 30:119 (1990), pp. 395-424.

358 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

that all nations needed official authorization and a charter issued by the gov- ernment.24 Following Rivadavia's instructions, chief of police Joaquin de Achaval wrote a provisory charter for the Naci6n Congo ratifying for the first time an institution that may have existed semi-clandestinely for long time.25 Yet, that move was not definitive. One year later, Rivadavia decreed the closing of all nations that dared to defy the government by meeting with- out authorization. In February 1823, unhappy with the continued prolifera- tion of such associations, he sent instructions to close even the chartered societies and ordered that their members be assigned to public works if caught dancing. Because the police seemed ineffective, he reissued the order in June.26 A few months later, the government took the definitive decision of transforming the existing nations into pseudo-European mutual aid soci- eties, which it called Asociaciones Africanas.27

The charter established that the African Associations must provide help for their members and control their public behavior. The government deter- mined that African Associations should aid the members bound by slavery to purchase their freedom and to help members in case of illness. In addi- tion, the associations should provide education to the children of members and grant loans to buy tools for artisan members. Finally, the association presidents were instructed to protect public order in the associations' meet- ing places and to transfer to police custody those members convicted of crimes. Thus, Rivadavia preserved the nations with the intention of chang- ing their internal logic and transforming them into European-style institu- tions that would uplift the black population from their condition of slavery, poverty, and illiteracy. However, the candombes of Buenos Aires responded to Rivadavia by making very selective usage of their charter. As mutual aid societies, they never functioned as the government had envisioned. They were not really civic associations at all. Rather, they were communities based on different principles of sociability.28

24 Minister of government to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 31, 1821, AGN, Policia, leg. 10.12.2.4.

25 Reglamento que deben observar los negros de la Naci6n Conga, Buenos Aires, November 30, 1821, AGN, Policia, OS, leg. 10.32.10.1.

26 Minister of government to chief of police, Buenos Aires, June 21, 1825, AGN Policia, Ordenes Superiores (hereafter OS), leg. 10.32.10.5

27 Reglamento que deben seguir las sociedades africanas, Buenos Aires, August 11, 1823, AGN, Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

28 Analizing Rivadavia's reform, Pilar Gonzilez Bernaldo argues that the state intervention inside the candombes created a contradiction between the principles of a typical ancien-regime form of sociabilty and those of the modern civic asociations. Pilar Gonzilez Bernaldo, "La Creation d'une Nation," vol III, p. 844.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 359

Still, the charter had lasting consequences. One of its articles limited the associations' presidential term to three years and established that all adult male members should vote for the president and other board members of the associations. This seemingly democratic clause only exacerbated the inter- nal conflict among lineages. This was not because elections were a novelty for the associations; apparently, nations were ruled by kings and queens who had always been elected.29 But the new law established that elections should be supervised by the local police deputy, thus introducing extemrnal politics into the associations. A second controversial article established that the state would grant each African nation only one permit for an association. This clause forced the separatist lineages to contest various definitions of African ethnicity. More seriously, the breakup of the existing associations became illegal, so rebel lineages needed police protection to achieve their goals. This practice reinforced the patronage relationship between police bosses and African elders.

In fact, the police of the new state of Buenos Aires were not an armed force that impartially served the government's political interests. Assigning to the police not only the security of people and property, but also electoral func- tions, Rivadavia fumrnished the sectional police deputies with the power of local patrons in the fashion of Mexican "jefes politicos." Police officers and justices of peace manipulated the electoral registers and decided the elections. The deputies in the southemrn quarters of the city often employed black people either as voters or as vote stoppers. Therefore, police officers and African elders soon acquired a close knowledge of each other, and this knowledge, in turn, became a factor in the internal mechanics of the associations.

The elders of the associations became attentive to the changes in the gov- ernment to obtain the maximum benefit from themselves. The elections of 1825, for instance, produced a subtle but significant change in the ruling party as Rivadavia left the province for Europe in search of loans and experts for his development plans. Aware of the opportunity, the leaders of the Naci6n Moro rushed to request authorization for their association from the new minister of government.30 At the same time the Minas and the Lubolos got official recognition and the Naci6n Congo signed a new and definitive

29 According to Argentine memoirist Vicente Fidel L6pez, Buenos Aires blacks "created a cluster of free colonies called nations, organized under kings and customs brought from their African homeland." Vicente Fidel L6pez, Manual de Historia Argentina (Buenos Aires: Libreria la Facultad, 1920), pp. 378- 379.

30 Antonio Arana, member of the Naci6n Moro to chief of police, Buenos Aires, June 15, 1825, AGN, Policia, leg. 10.13.9.1.

360 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

charter. In contrast, when Rivadavia returned to power in 1826, the authori- zation requested by the Angola society was delayed without explanation.31

In 1827, Rivadavia's Unitario party lost one of the most tempestuous elections of the early national period, and the Federalist Party managed to install its populist candidate Colonel Manuel Dorrego. Dorrego's foes accused the Federal party of manipulating the elections with the aid of the urban lower classes, and the new government's attitude toward the African Associations bears out the accusation. During the eighteen months that this political experiment lasted, Dorrego's government signed charters for the Hausa, Mozambique, Huombe, Mondongo and Caravali societies. The situ- ation of the Huombes was complicated because the Lubolos contested their request. The police jailed the Huombe leaders for permitting dancing with- out a license. At this point, the Huombe leaders politely reminded the police chief about the Federalist loyalty of the Huombes in the recent election. "We, the individuals who are going to form this society, are all militiamen of the active militia. We are decided supporters of order and constituted authority, as we just gave unequivocal proof of being, by neglecting to vote for the opposite party during the last election."32 Although the writer used a complicated indirect syntax in this sentence, the quotation gives a clear indi- cation of how political favors circulated between the Police Department and the African Associations.

The original nations accumulated internal tensions and gradually split into smaller units. As more members gained manumission, and therefore began to keep all their earnings, there were more resources available to buy new plots and build new houses. The leaders of the various lineages that had established the original nations looked forward to breaking with their erst- while allies and organizing their own communities. Once money and people were gathered, they needed a powerful patron in the government. The rela- tions established between Federalist police officers and African elders bore fruit for the minority lineages in the decade of 1830, which saw new breakups among African Associations.

Dorrego was killed in December 1828, when a military coup headed by General Juan Lavalle restored Unitario rule in the province and executed the popular constitutional governor. During this new Unitario term, no new can- dombe was chartered. The killing of governor Dorrego provoked a general

31 Antonio Romero and Sebastian Arip6n, members of the Angola Society to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 20, 1827, AGN Policia, leg. 10.14.5.4.

32 Members of the Naci6n Huombd to the chief of police, Buenos Aires, May 8, 1828, AGN, Policia, OS, leg. 10.32.11.3.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 361

and spontaneous uprising of country folk-the legendary gauchos - who put the city under siege. After resisting for six months, General Lavalle negoti- ated new elections with the rich and educated captain of the gauchos: Gen- eral Juan Manuel de Rosas. With the countryside behind him, Rosas estab- lished a foothold in the city by co-opting the rudderless following of Dorrego, which included the urban black population. As expected, the fed- eral faction won the election for the provincial legislature, which proclaimed General Rosas constitutional governor of the province in December 1829.

Rosas resumed Dorrego's policy regarding the African Associations. The nations Mucumbi, Brasilera, Maravi, Mufiambani, Buera Barang6, Nag6, and Mahi, all quickly gained official recognition.33 On the other hand, inter- nal dissentions in the associations sometimes met severe punishment. In January 1832, the police closed a candombe of a faction of the Naci6n Cam- bunda for operating without a license and jailed its president.34 Seven days later, a botched election in the Naci6n Songo ended with all the leadership in prison.35 The Naci6n Calumbo, which had detached from the Naci6n Congo, was forced by the police to rejoin the mother organization.36 Rosas's populism cultivated the African Associations but certainly did not give them complete freedom of action.37

Rosas's police alternated harassment with leniency, but not necessarily in a coordinated manner. At work were individual patron-client relationships between the leaders of the African nations and local police chiefs. Antonio Cagigas, for instance, leader of the opposition faction of the Cambundas, used the intercession of a friend of the police chief to legalize his "baile de tambor."38 When the candombe was closed and Cagigas jailed, the police offi-

33 Chief of police to minister of government, Buenos Aires, May 8, 1830 AGN, Policia, leg. 10.15.6.7.; Manuel Perea, member of the Naci6n Brasilera to chief of police, Buenos Aires, May 14, 1830, AGN, Policia, leg. 10.15.6.7; members of the Naci6n Maravi to chief of police, Buenos Aires, July 10, 1830, Manuel Nez, member of the Naci6n Mufiambani to chief of police, Buenos Aires Nov. 8, 1830, AGN, Policia, leg. 10.15.6.7.

34 Fourth section deputy to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 23, 1832, AGN Policia, Ministe- rio de Gobierno (hereafter MG), leg. 10.33.1.7

35 Deputy of the fourth section to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 30, 1832, AGN, Policia MG, leg. 10.33.1.7.

36 Members of Calumbo Society to minister of government, Buenos Aires, May 30, 1831, AGN, Policia MG, leg. 10.15.9.4.

37 The story of the relationship between the black population and Rosas is mostly based on biased propaganda of the regime's foes. According to those sources, a cynical Rosas abused the political naivete of blacks and used them to threaten the unruly white elite. British historian John Lynch repeats this model first crafted by the Argentine racist author Jos6 Maria Ramos Mejia; see John Lynch, Argen- tine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas 1829-1852 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 123-24; and Jos6 Maria Ramos Mejia, Rosas y su tiempo, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1903), vol 1, p. 330.

38 Unidentified sender to chief of police, July 5, 1832, AGN, Policia, leg. 10.32.11.8.

362 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

cer noted that it was Cagigas's second arrest for this reason. Cagigas's protec- tor had not been powerful enough. The Naci6n Congo-or rather, the faction in charge of the association-was more fortunate. Jos6 Eugenio de Elfas, judge of the criminal court, ordered the closing of the Naci6n Congo because of its internal strife. The sentence confirmed a previous order and admonished the chief of police for having failed to enact it.39 Obviously, somebody had been protecting the Naci6n Congo, or it never could have resisted the judicial order as long as it did. Similarly, the Naci6n Muchagua detached itself from the Naci6n Mozambique in 1830 and operated in a new place until 1834, when a deputy ordered it closed it for lacking authorization. That means that the Muchaguas operated for at least four years without permission. The local police knew their districts well, and a group of people playing drums at night was difficult to hide. If the Muchaguas met for four years without a permit, it was because their leaders enjoyed police protection. Such protection was a local matter, however. None of these documents bore the signature of Rosas, who relied on his subordinates to deal with the black associations.

A memorandum of the Examining Commission for the African Societies of 1834 offers a clear example of how African leaders and police officers related to each other. In 1823, the decree that legalized the activities of the nations already contemplated the creation of such a commission. However, the government called it only in 1834 to solve questions raised by the on- going process of splitting. Jose Solano, the chair of the commission, recom- mended against the practice of authorizing the African Associations to split.40 He criticized the permit obtained by the Basundi society to detach itself from the Naci6n Congo because it had caused internal groups of five other associations to follow the same path. Solano suggested not only that the authorization of the Basundi was a mistake but also that it had required the complicity of someone within the police department. To flesh out his point, Solano reported the case of Sebastiin Romero, former president of the Angola Society. According to the commissioner, Romero had defrauded the society of 1,000 pesos during the time he was its president and violated the charter by staying in office two and half years beyond the regular term. Sued by the opposing faction, Romero and others in his faction stayed in jail a few days, but the police released them quickly. Solano insinuated that bribery had accelerated that process. That, no doubt, is what the Angola elder meant when, just released, he showed up at the meeting place and defiantly shouted

39 Judge Jos6 Eugenio de Elias to chief of police, Buenos Aires, April 23, 1831, AGN, Policia OS 10-33-1-5.

40 Jos6 Solano, chair of Comisi6n Examinadora de Sociedades Africanas, to chief of police, Buenos Aires, November 26, 1834, AGN, Policia, leg. 10.33.2.2 p.1.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 363

to his opponents: "Long live money! Long live peso bills!"'41 Solano charged the previous administration with involvement in those cases. According to his account, black leaders became accustomed to getting their way through shady deals and would continue to operate in this way if the department did not send a clear message to them.

Perhaps Solano was wrong to reduce the relationship between the police department and African Societies to a question of money. At the moment when he was investigating that relationship, the Federalist Party was involved in an internal dispute between liberal and conservative factions. Both factions of the Federalist Party needed votes, clubs, and knives for election days. Both factions also needed support from the black militias to make any credible attempt to control the city. That they competed for the loyalty of the black leaders would be no surprise.

The evidence suggests that the African leaders were highly pragmatic in dealing with the political power of the police officers. They offered their loyalty to local bosses who could assure protection to their associations. If the police officers took advantage of ethnic divisions among Africans to recruit clients, the African elders, for their part, used factional division within the government to advance their own interests. When Rosas dis- placed the liberal faction and assumed dictatorial powers in 1835, several African groups achieved autonomy from their former candombes. From the governor's office, Rosas blessed and attentively surveyed the patronage net- work spread throughout the city's poorer quarters and the countryside. The police records of the second Rosas government (1835-1852), however, show that the attitudes, vocabulary, and resolutions of the precinct police officers followed the same pattern as during the previous administration.42 Further- more, the situation of the reigning factions in the candombes worsened after 1843. Beginning in that year, the government mobilized the majority of the black male population in the city and sent them to besiege Montevideo. Only women remained to contribute to the associations, and soon they took direct control, ruling even over the few men that remained.43

41 Ibid., 2.

42 Martin Larramendi, secretary of the Naci6n Mozambique to first officer of police department, Buenos Aires, July 22, 1845; Members of Sociedad Loango to first officer of police department, Buenos Aires, September 16, 1846; Juan Mesa, president of Naci6n Munyolo, to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 27, 1847; Members of the Sociedad Benguela to judge ordinary, Buenos Aires, February 12, 1849; Rafael Ramos, member of the Naci6n Bayombe to chief of police, Buenos Aires, January 12, 1848; AGN, Policia, Sociedades Africanas (hereafter SA), leg. 10.31.11.5.

43 Juana Maria Ramos member of Naci6n Bayombe to chief of police, Buenos Aires, August 23, 1848; Juan Jos6 de la Brasa y Victoriano Azcuenaga, members of the Sociedad Banguela to judge ordi- nary, Buenos Aires, February 12, 1849; Juana Sanchez, mother of the Naci6n Maravi to chief of police,

364 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

The African Associations weathered the hardships of war and outlasted the rule of Rosas. Then, in spite of their former loyalty to Rosas, they adapted rap- idly to post-Rosas conditions. As members of the army that besieged Monte- video, the black militias followed Rosas's rebellious commander, General Justo Jos6 de Urquiza, when he turned against his former protector. In 1852, the army of Urquiza defeated Rosas at the gates of the city, with black soldiers fighting on both sides. Those who sided with Urquiza took advantage of the victory and displaced the leaders that had run the societies during the nine years of the Montevideo siege.44 And they soon began to negotiate with the local police officers imposed by the foes of Rosas. During the two decades that followed the fall of Rosas, African leaders and sectional police officers worked within the same patronage patterns inaugurated in the mid 1820s.

Despite the comings and goings of governments, the elders of the can- dombes pursued, and often attained, their goals. Patronage-clientele rela- tions between elders and police officers lasted so long only because they were mutually beneficial. The ethnic leaders counted on police protection to get around restrictive rules. The police, on the other hand, counted on the support of a black political clientele. The idea of patronage was, after all, hardly foreign to African forms of community organization. In fact, the rit- uals whereby Rosas, in his day, had attended the candombe performances- and received the candombe presidents in his private residence-clearly resemble rituals of homage between village elders and kings in Africa.

Many African Associations split along ethnic lines, but others lasted for many years, even decades, with opposing internal lineages. Joaquin Arriola, for instance, ran the Naci6n Benguela for thirty years before the opposing faction sued him in 1864.45 Antonio Vega, father of the Naci6n Congo, lost the control of his society to Juan Perich6n in 1843, but Vega did not leave the society until 1854, two years after the death of Perich6n. Many other societies presented grievances against their presidents only after years of allegedly "fraudulent" administration. The dances and funerals of the asso- ciations were sometimes real battlegrounds, where sworn enemies engaged in verbal-or even physical-confrontations. Why did the members meet weekly to dance with people they seemingly detested?

Buenos Aires, January 19, 1857; Antonio Pueyrredon, member of the Sociedad Africana Argentina Fed- eral to chief of police, Buenos Aires, November 14, 1847, AGN Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

44 Pedro Pablo Lovera, member of the Sociedad Loango Unido to chief of police, Buenos Aires, Feb- ruary 10, 1854; Members of the Sociedad Bayombe to chief of police, Buenos Aires, August 11, 1852, AGN Policia, AS, leg. 10.31.11.5.

45 Members of the Sociedad Benguela to chief of police, Buenos Aires, February 24, 1864, AGN Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 365

CANDOMBE INTERNAL DYNAMICS

The answer is that to ally with other groups, despite inevitable frictions, was a workable solution to the problem of scarce resources. The Naci6n Huombe is a case in point. In 1828, the Naci6n Huombe tried to convince the police that they were an autonomous nation, differentiated from the Naci6n Lubolo.46 They had belonged to this society with the category of 'agregados,' a term that stands for "guest" and suggests the idea that the Lubolos Society incorporated the Huomb6s group retaining the condition of outsiders. Now they were asking for a license to gather in their own place. The Naci6n Huombe's letter to the chief of police explains that the Huombes had long wanted to establish a society of their own. They had been too few in number to do so at first, however, and, lacking enough money to acquire their own place, they danced with another nation.47 When they grew in number (the list attached to the letter included forty-one males and forty-one females) and managed to buy a property, they no longer needed their union with the Lubo- los. The poor material conditions of the Lubolo house may have convinced many people to follow the Huombes.48 The legal separation was remarkably slow because the president of the Naci6n Lubolo filed a counteraction against the separation, stating that the so-called Huombes were, in fact, Lubolos. Therefore, the police searched the Huombes' meeting place and arrested all the members of the association.49 The government soon released the Huombes and legally granted their separation from the Lubolos.5so

Another story illustrates the pooling of scarce resources. The Naci6n Cambunda established an association in the late eighteenth century and accumulated enough money to buy urban plots valued at 5,050 pesos in 1826. To amass that sum of money, the Cambunda probably needed the assistance of other people. As with the Huombes, a conflict of interest

46 Karasch does not assert the exact origin of the Gomb6s she finds in Rio de Janeiro. She proposes northern Congo as the possible homeland of this group. She clearly identifies the Lubolos' or Rebolos' geographic origin, on the other hand, with the area of the mid southern Cuanza River in Angola. See Karasch, Slave Life in Rio, p. 374. Thornton mentions two kingdoms with the name of Ngombe in the strip that separated the Kongo kingdom from the Portuguese enclave of Angola. Thornton, Africa and Africans, pp. xxx-xxxi.

47 Members of the Naci6n Huomb6 to chief of police, Buenos Aires, May 8, 1828, Archivo General de la Naci6n (Hereafter AGN) Policia, OS, leg. 10.32.11.3.

48 The society headquarters on Independencia Street were valued at 302 pesos. That was two and half times less than the average value of the nations' places existing in 1826 (excluding the property of the Cambunda Society, valued at 5,050 pesos). See Ricardo Rodriguez Molas, La mtisica y la danza, p. 17.

49 Chief of Police to Minister of Government, Buenos Aires, May 21, 1828, AGN Policia, OS, leg. 10.32.11.3.

50 Minister of Government to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, July 21, 1928 AGN Policia, OS, leg. 10.14.9.1.

366 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

exploded in 1827 when a group of "real Cambundas" impugned the election of a new president because his party was integrated with non-Cambundas.5 The internal conflict finally provoked the loss of all the society's assets to pay legal expenditures. In this case, it is clear that the same strategy that helped to pool resources for an impressive clubhouse became, eventually, the reason for the group's instability.

The forces that kept rival leaders together in a candombe are not easily discernible. The association offered an instrument to create new solidarity networks, but it hardly precluded conflict. An analysis of the social mechan- ics of Angolan villages may offer an analogy to how the candombes oper- ated. Miller explains that the ngundu or villages of the Mbundu-speaking people of northwest Angola, were also subject to periodical splitting. In each ngundu, all members of the community linked by matrilineal kinship shared the village land and natural resources. The ngundu also adopted members of other lineages as guests. The senior member of the older generation headed the village officialdom, seconded by his elder nephews. If more than one of the nephews aspired to run their own ngundus, they broke away only after the death of their uncle. Sometimes the new lineages split the former ngundu property; other times, the independent groups left the former village to establish themselves on new lands.52

Men called "padre de nacidn" in Buenos Aires documents behaved simi- larly to the elders of Mbundu communities. The example of the Naci6n Congo clearly demonstrates that such alliances were integrated by different lineages, most often fictive rather than biological, but strong enough to be fairly durable. Each lineage was headed by an elder-like Perich6n and Vega-who received the name padre de naci6n. Other individuals with titles such as juez de plaza, and stndico, occupied the seats of societies' governing boards. Ideally, the composition of each board would proportionally repre- sent the factions that composed the nation. Most associations did not have a single uncontested leader. On the contrary, they periodically elected a new president who emerged from negotiation among the elders. If this negotiation failed, the defeated faction might leave the association and found a new one. Alliances between the heads of factions could break down at any moment.

To split away or not was a question of strategy. In formulating their strat- egy, faction leaders would have to consider at least three different factors. First, did they have a following sizable enough to support the association

5' Chief of Police to Minister of Government, Buenos Aires, October 20, 1827, AGN Policia, leg. 10.14.5.6.

52 Miller, Kings and Kinsmen, pp. 45-46.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 367

economically? Second, was a meeting place available for the new head- quarters? Finally, would they have protection from the police department? If the answer to all these questions was affirmative, the only thing preventing a lineage "father" from creating his own community was an attachment to the meeting place of the existing nation.

The Naci6n Congo of Buenos Aires provides a particularly well-docu- mented example of how associations were integrated with different factions that claim separated ethnicity. In 1857, Antonio Vega, general secretary and "father" of the African Congo Society, remembered that the Congo and Loango people were two equal nations that freely consented to gather forces to create a society in 1809.53 After fifteen years of peaceful fraternization they decided to discontinue the project and follow different paths. The real troubles started later, when, according to Vega, newcomers entered the asso- ciation and ruined it. According to Vega's testimony, it appears that the new- comers were not Congolese, but a bunch of squatters that infiltrated the soci- ety with the intention of seizing its assets.

Checking the story of the Congo Society against the archival records, it turns out that Antonio Vega oversimplified the case. When Vega told this story to the government, his personal agenda was to assure that after his death the members of the Naci6n Congo would use the common property as a foundation for the memory of the dead members. Although the aim seemed in tune with the original objectives of the association, that would have implied dislodging the rest of the members of the society or forcing them to pay rents to the descendants of the founders. The only way to overturn the ruling faction was to convince the authorities that the leaders who were run- ning the Congo Society were non-Congolese. As Vega put it: "None of them have the right to be called Congo, children of the founders."54 Thus, Vega subscribed to what may be called "the foundational thesis"- that only the people who signed the title for the plot of land enjoyed full membership. When the Society admitted new members, they acquired full rights to elect authorities and to use the facilities. However, Vega believed that the new- comers were not members of the nation in a complete sense. Unfortunately for him, the government officers thought differently.

The Naci6n Congo of Buenos Aires was certainly a mixture of individu- als with different ethnic backgrounds. In Africa, Loango and Congo consti- tuted extensive and quite separate areas, each with its own history of politi-

53 Antonio Vega to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 21, 1857, AGN, Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5, Naci6n Congo, p. 1.

54 Ibid., p. 2.

368 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

cal unity and dispersion. The Loango people of Buenos Aires had provi- sionally become a minority group within the Congo nation but then, in alliance with the Goyos, detached themselves from the Congos.55 After the separation of the Loangos from the Congo Society, other groups within the Congos longed for their independence. For instance, in 1834, the Basunti (or Musundi) seceded from the Congo Society. The conflict became so notori- ous that the police department opened a special investigation. Mr. Jos6 Solano, the man commissioned to investigate the turmoil, advised against the policy of splitting. Presenting the case of the Basundi, Solano explains "These Negroes are Congos, as it is easy to prove with the testimony of all those authors that have written about the geography of that part of Africa. All the Negroes of Buenos Aires know that. Even the defendants do not deny it."56 Solano had gathered some useful (although dated) information about the Basundi. Nsundi, it seems, had been a province of the Kongo kingdom in the seventeenth century, and the Basundi (people from Nsundi) spoke a local variety of Kikongo. In any case, the Basundi of Buenos Aires wanted their independence enough to prevail, establishing their autonomy and maintaining it for almost thirty years.

The 1835 break up did not end the internal turmoil for the Naci6n Congo. With the departure of the Loango, the Goyo and the Basundi, there still remained many different ethnic groups-or groups in formation-inside the Congo Society. The Congo House at 335 Independence Street was not exactly a joyful rendezvous for old pals. In 1837, Antonio Vega attempted to take control of the society supported by the Augunga group, only to meet resistance from an internal opposition alliance integrated by the Muinich, the Bayombe, the Mancinga and the Calumbo.57 These groups followed the leadership of Juan Perich6n, Vega's lifetime archenemy. Vega held onto the presidency, leaving many people unhappy, while the Bayombe and the Mancinga left the society to create autonomous associations in 1839.58

55 The Goyos were presumably members of the Ngoyo kingdom, one of the small buffer polities that separated the Loango from the Kongo kingdom at the estuary of the Zaire River. Thornton, Africa and Africans, p. xxviii. After the fall of Rosas in 1852, the Loango society broke down, and the Loango club- house passed into Goyo's hands. Surprisingly, the so-called Naci6n Goyo had dislodged the originally dominant Naci6n Loango from their land. In 1856, Goyos and Loangos negotiated a rapprochement and created a new association with the name of Loango Unido, which, nevertheless, reproduced the internal conflicts of the antecessor. The police officer called to mediate the conflict considered that the best option was to dissolve the Loango Unido for good to avoid further in-fighting. Deputy of 60 Section to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, July 27, 1857, A.G.N. Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

56 JOS6 Solano, chair of Comisi6n Examinadora de Sociedades Africanas, to chief of police, Buenos Aires, November 26, 1834, AGN, Policia, leg. 10.33.2.2, p.1.

57 Partes de la Ciudad, 1837, Buenos Aires, AGN, Policia, leg. 10.33.3.4, pp. 101-103. 58 Members of the Sociedad Bayombe to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 15, 1852 A.G.N,

Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.1.5, Sociedad Bayombe, p. 13.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 369

Meanwhile, Juan Perich6n preferred to stay with the Congos, waiting for better times. Finally, Perich6n got his chance when the ranks of Vega's Augungas were decimated, most probably because of the draft of 1843. From then on, Perich6n ran the Naci6n Congo himself, until he died simul- taneously with the end of Rosas regime, in 1852. Perich6n's death did not change the internal balance of forces, however. His faction, headed by Pablo Castro, managed to keep Vega far from the presidency. The new mishap con- vinced Vega and his followers that it was time to leave the Naci6n Congo that they had created in 1809. So they created a new association named Sociedad Congo Augunga Libre and moved out of the house on Indepen- dence Street (without abandoning their claim to it, however). After Vega died in 1860, his aged and tiny clientele, the Augungas, continued to advance their claim on the old meeting place, apparently without success.

According to Vega's line of thinking, the foundational act constituted the nation. Therefore only those who signed the initial charter were considered full members. This thesis was similarly brandished by one of the factions involved in an internal rift of the Naci6n Huombe in 1855. The faction in question intended to remove the president, Anselmo Freytas, alleging that neither he nor his following were "legitimate Huombes." The sectional Deputy, who intervened in name of the chief of police, supported the fac- tion's position, ousting Freytas from office and proceeding to call for a new election. The officer informed his superiors that he had confirmed the alle- gations and discovered that all the members of the board were non-Huombe "foreigners." (Unfortunately, the police officer did not reveal the method he used to determine the ethnicity of Freytas' faction.) Freytas claimed that he had been fairly elected but never tried to dispute the accusation that he was not a Huombe. Nevertheless, the Huombe majority did not use the police judgment to expel Freytas and his "foreigners" from the association. They clearly did not equate ethnicity and membership in their candombe.59

A third example of the dynamics of seniority, lineage, and ethnicity occurs in the case of the Maravi association. The Maravi nation had func- tioned as a licensed society since the decade of 1820s, but the government of Rosas had drafted all the male members into the military in 1842, leaving the association inoperative. So, in 1855, some women of the association, headed by the organization's "mother," Juana Stinchez, took possession of the Maravi property and reopened regular activities, incorporating individu-

59 Anselmo Freytas, president of the Naci6n Huombe to Chief of Police, December 1, 1855, Martin Aguero, member of the Naci6n Huombe to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, December 4, 1855; Deputy of 5th Section to Chief of Police, December 19, 1855, Anselmo Freytas, member of Naci6n Huombe to Chief of Police, January 5, 1856, AGN Policia, SA, 10.31.1.5, Naci6n Huombe.

370 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

als of different nationalities. These non-Maravis were crucial to rebuilding the dilapidated property of the Maravis. Two years later, however, a handful of survivors of the original Maravi Society sued Juana S~inchez for usurpa- tion. The police chief decided to call a voting assembly to include both the founders and the 'usurpers.' The founders' party (with some help from a few defectors from the 'usurping' party) defeated Sinchez's candidate. Accord-

ing to the deputy who supervised the election, Sinchez then vowed to break up the association and create a new one with the name of Benguela.60

Although most candombes suffered strong disruptive forces, they some- how contained those forces, in many cases preserving the unity of people of disparate origins. Ritual was the cornerstone of that unity. The candombe dynamic, whether expressed in ethnic terms or not, pervaded the life of the African Associations--expelling and attracting people, creating new identi- ties and dissolving the existing ones. Beyond the labels that identified the alliances were the lineage leaders--mostly men, but occasionally women- who set up or dissolved alliances. Each had a following that, whatever hap- pened, remained loyal. What bound the Africans of Buenos Aires together despite all these frictions? The answer advanced here is simple: the constant practice of candombe rituals.

RITUALS AND SERVICES

The backbone of each candombe was a simple set of rituals rooted in African cosmological notions, but not completely contradictory to some ele- ments of folk Catholicism. At the heart of these rituals was the ancestor wor- ship that pervaded religious practices of most African groups subjected to the Atlantic slave trade. African traditional religions were as variegated and ever changing as other aspects of African culture, but the memory of fore- bears was a recurring theme from Senegambia to Angola.61 Juana Elbein dos Santos explains that in Yoruban traditional thought, the ancestors and the living must maintain close ritual ties, thereby enabling the continuing cycle of birth, death and rebirth. 62 Similarly, Simon Bockie describes worship in

60 Deputy of 70 section to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, April 20, 1858 AGN Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5, Sociedad Maravi.

61 Although the very name of "traditional" African religion has come under question, scholars still have not found a better term to replace it. Nevertheless, authors now assert that these traditional religions were affected by change. One theory proposes that increasing contact with the European and Islamic traders fostered a shift from the cult of ancestors and lower gods or spirits of nature to a more stratified hierarchy of gods ruled by the creator god; see Jan Platvoet, "The Religions of Africa," in Jan Platvoet, ed., The Study of Religions in Africa: Past, Present and Prospects (Cambridge: Cambridge Roots and Branches, 1996), p. 56.

62 Juana Elbein Dos Santos, Os Nagd e a morte: Pade, asdst e o culto Egun na Bahia (Petr6polis, RJ.: Editora Vozes, 1975), p. 220.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 371

Bakongo traditional religion as creating a "total spiritual community of the living and the dead."63 According to Miller, the eighteenth-century Mbundu believed that to belong to a community meant to belong to a long-lasting chain of deceased relatives who remained attached to the village as spiritual protectors. Communication with ancestors was urgent, personal, and fre- quent. The spirit of the lineage ancestor communicated with the living mem- bers of the lineage by means of possession rituals.64 In ancestor worship, theology intermingled with the social and political structure of the commu- nities. Reciprocal ties between living and dead reinforced the authority of the lineage's elders at the expense of wives, junior males, and slaves.65

Death demanded similar ritual attention among Catholics, as well. For early nineteenth-century Catholics, a "good death" meant to die at home sur- rounded by all available relatives, friends, lay brothers, priests, and nuns whose prayers were summoned to protect the soul from the ominous demons that were believed to surround the dying in the final hour.66 Once a person passed away, a fine burial, with a large procession and a splendid mass, pro- vided an auspicious departure toward eternal life. Further memorial masses and prayers mitigated the number of days in purgatory, where souls were purged of their earthly misdeeds. The dead and the living appeared unified as members of "the communion of the saints," a mystical society of mutual reciprocity. According to this belief, the living performed rituals and prayers on earth to alleviate the hardships of the souls in purgatory. Meanwhile, the "saints" (those already lodged in the kingdom of God) interceded on behalf of the living.67

Clearly, the Catholic idea of active communication between the living and the dead closely resembled many African conceptions existing during

63 Simon Bockie, Death and the Invisible Powers, The World of Kongo Belief (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

64 Miller, Kings and Kinsmen, p. 254. 65 According to Wyatt McGaffery, the cult of the ancestors in nineteenth-century Kongo was closely

related to the communal organization of Kongo society. MacGaffery also quotes Igor Kopytoff's opin- ion that the cult of death and ancestor worship among other Bantu speaking groups were nothing less than "cults of the elders or elders worship." Wyatt MacGaffery, Religion and Society in Central Africa: The Bakongo of Lower Zaire (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 64-65.

66 The best monograph regarding this topic is Jolo Jos6 Reis, A Morte d umafesta: Ritos fdnebres e revolta popular no Brasil do sdculo XIX (Sio Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995) -English translation in press. The studies of conceptions of death in the Western World are headed by the insightful works of Philippe Aries, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), and The Hour of Our Death (New York: Knopf, 1981); See also Jos6 Mattoso, O reino dos mortos na idade media peninsular (Lisboa: Edigoes Jolo Sgi da Costa, 1996).

67 Jacques Chiffoleau, "La religion flamboyante -1320-1520," in Jacques Le Goff and Ren6 R6mond eds., Histoire de la France religieuse (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1988), pp. 164-7.

372 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

the time of the Atlantic slave trade. In many senses, the Catholic idea of a "good death" matched African conceptions closely. Besides, many Kikongo and Mbundu speaking people shipped to the New World were already famil- iar with some aspect of Catholic doctrine and rituals.68 In the diaspora, Africans were always very concerned with burial and the afterlife. For that reason, and no other, did a European institution such as the Catholic lay brotherhood (with major funerary responsibilities) become so popular among Africans in the Americas.69

Their lineages severed by slavery, Africans in the diaspora created not only new lineages but also new ancestors. In the candombes, the ancestors were the founding members of the associations and, by extension, so were all the dead members of the group. As years went by, the founders died and the remaining elders asserted themselves as guardians of the ancestors' memory. The testimony of Antonio Vega in his battle for the Naci6n Congo's meeting house illustrates this conception. The father of the Naci6n Congo explained: "Among the founders of the Naci6n Congo only I, Antonio Vega, remain. The rest of them have died, but their descendants still claim the rights that they must uphold as the rights of their forebears: to preserve this house with the name of Congo Society as an endowment to honor every year the ashes of their Fathers."'7 In the same testimony, Vega remembered the early years of the nineteenth century as happy times for the Naci6n Congo, when the duties of providing a funeral and memorial mass for the members were properly fulfilled. Similarly, Martin Agtiero, leader of the dissident fac- tion of the Naci6n Huomb6, asked the chief of police to call elections "to elect a member of our nation, so he will reunite us, religiously advance the interests of the nation, and reestablish the honor, the honor, Sir, that our

68 In his latest book Thornton strongly supports the hypothesis that Bakongo and Catholic concep- tions of death overlapped, which explains why the most important religious holiday among the seven- teenth-century Bakongo was Halloween-All Saints' Day, see John Thornton The Kongolese Sain Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 (Cambridge, University of Cambridge Press, 1998), pp. 30-31

69 In cities of three continents many African brotherhoods were bestowed to the cult of Our Lady of Rosary (including the black brotherhoods of Lisbon, Lagos, Luanda, Slo Salvador of Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires); see Jos6 Ramos Tinhorio, Os negros em Portugal: uma presenpa silenciosa (Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 1988), Manuel Nunes Gabriel, Padroes da F6: Igrejas antigas de Angola (Luanda: Edigio da Arquidiocese de Luanda, 1981); see also John Thornton "On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and Americas," The Americas 44 (1988).

70 "La lista que a Vs presento, de este ntimero solo a quedado yo, Antonio Vega. Los demis han fal- lecido, mas sus descendientes como duefios reclaman sus derechos que les corresponde sostener como derechos de sus finados Padres, conservar esta casa con el nombre Sociedad Congo, para que con sus productos recordar cada afio las cenizas de sus Padres." Antonio Vega, secretary of Naci6n Congo to chief of police, Buenos Aires, October 21, 1857, AGN Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5

OSCAR CHAMOSA 373

ancestors bequeathed to us.""71 Ideally, at least, the older members of the associations considered themselves more able to represent the honor of the founding fathers than the newcomers. For that reason, in 1847, a dissident faction of the Naci6n Munyola sued the president and treasurer of that soci- ety because they did not apply the rent obtained from the houses of the nation to memorial masses for the dead members of the society.72

If the African Associations worked to sustain ancestral links through ritual, it is not surprising that the financial life of the associations turned pri- marily on funeral obligations. For instance, the Musundi Society spent vir- tually half of its money on funerals and memorial masses in 1857.73 In that year, (the only one with complete records) the society took in 4,510 pesos and paid out 6,012 pesos. The Musundi spent this money as follows: forty- eight percent for funerals and memorial masses; thirty-three percent for improvements to the meeting house; twelve percent for liquor and yerba mate; and six percent for other supplies (including 100 pesos for the presi- dent's silver-tipped baton). Meanwhile, the Society generated incomes in the following manner: eighty-three percent from alms collected during mem- bers' funerals, twelve percent from renting out a house, and five percent from member contributions. According to the expenses registered in the Musundi account books, the cost of a memorial mass could buy five hun- dred bricks. The cost of a primary funeral mass might be more than double that. This was a heavy monetary burden for poor freedmen and slaves, but they bore it willingly. This source clearly demonstrates that most of the income and expenditures were devoted to funerary obligations.

The memory of the dead was also present in the construction of the African Associations' meeting houses. Each clubhouse contained a special room reserved for the cult of the association's deceased members. The

inventory of Mozambique Society properties, for example, includes a "cuarto de dnimas," or "souls' room."74 The inventory's wording suggests that this was a common and expected architectural element of such houses.75

71 Martin Aguero, member of the Naci6n Huombe to Chief of Police, December 4, 1855, AGN Policia SA 10.31.1.5, Naci6n Huombe.

72 Juan Mesa, president of the Naci6n Munyola, to chief of police, Buenos Aires, September 27, 1847, AGN Policia, AS, leg. 10.31.11.5.

73 "Cuenta de la vuelta de gastos y entradas que presenta el presidente de la Naci6n Basundi, Don Manuel Ortiz del afio 1857. Buenos Aires, AGN Policia, AS, leg. 10.31.11.5.

74 Martin Larramendi, secretary of the Naci6n Mozambique to chief of police, Buenos Aires, July 22, 1845, AGN Policia, AS, leg. 10.31.11.5.

75 "La casa edificada en un cuarto de tierra y edificado en el cinco cuartos incluso el de inimas" Ibidem.

374 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

The Musundi account book contains an entry for candles bought for the souls' room. In a document of the Houmbe society the main building of the compound is called the "capilla" (chapel)--a term possibly synonymous with "cuarto de inimas."76 Although the sources do not explain what went on in the souls' rooms, these may have been the rooms that Juana Manzo described in a 1865 newspaper article as the place where societies per- formed funeral services.77 The construction of souls' rooms exemplifies the central identification of the associations with funerary rituals.

If these rituals had acquired a Catholic appearance, they nevertheless also preserved a non-Western feel. In the newspaper article of 1865, Manzo (a white reformer) called the attention of the enlightened public to those "bits of idolatrous and servile Africa on our republican and Christian soil."78 To illus- trate African backwardness, Manzo described a typical funeral in a can- dombe. As Manzo put it: "there the devotion to the Rosary is followed by the monotonous choral singing of the mourners, funeral dances, weeping, and (what is really hilarious) scenes of drunkenness, fighting, and jealousy."79 The description provides a sense of the complicated ritual pattern of an African burial in Buenos Aires. The mention of dance, singing, and libations demonstrates that the candombe preserved the memory of African rituals.

Death ritual and community intermingled in the African Nations, as sug- gested in the references to memorial masses and funerals in the written sources. Those rituals constituted the centripetal force of the troubled can- dombes, establishing a permanent contact with dead founders of the associ- ation, the true ancestors of these recreated African communities in the Rio de la Plata. Similarly, the music had a strong coalescent effect as a vehicle of memory. If funerals represented a solemn recognition of the importance of death, weekend dances were a celebration of life.

Dances attracted regular members, including those less interested in the community of saints, on a weekly basis. In 1825, when the government was

76 Martin Aguero, member of the Naci6n Huombe to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, December 4, 1855, AGN Policia SA 10.31.1.5, Naci6n Huombe.

77 Juana Manzo "Los Hombres de Color" La Tribuna, September 16, 1865, p.1. c.6. 78 Juana Manzo was an educator, historian and journalist, and aid of Domingo Sarmiento in the edu-

cational reforms undertaken in Buenos Aires after 1852. The original quotation reads: "Nada hemos hecho por los blancos pobres desde medio siglo, ni menos por los hombres de color dejando incrustados tranquilamente en nuestro suelo republicano y cristiano esos pedazos del Africa servil e id6latra."

79 "Curioso espect~iculo es un velorio de negros en su sitio.... Donde el devoto rosario siguen el canto mon6tono entonado en coro por los dolidos veladores, las danzas f-inebres, los llantos, y que es mis c6mico, escenas de beberage, peleas, celos, y otra porci6n de incidentes; Juana Manzo "Los Hombres de Color" p. 1.c.6.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 375

trying to ban the dances in the associations, the chief of police expressed his opinion that if the government banned the dances, few members of the asso- ciations would pay the fees established in the charter, precluding them from fulfilling their "philanthropic" goals.80 Later the police punished particular associations by closing their meeting places for dancing on particular days.81 Without dance, the associations would have been only religious brotherhoods.

Dance was not at all in contradiction to the memorial function of the burial ritual. Indeed, candombe dance and music were perceived as a form of memory of the old country. Unfortunately we have no contemporary descriptions of the candombe dance in Buenos Aires, but the few existing descriptions of a dance with that name in neighboring Montevideo show what we can broadly define it as ritual.82 Whether the candombe of Monte- video and that of Buenos Aires were the same is impossible to know, but the candombe of Buenos Aires, like its Montevidean cousin, was a drum-based dance performed by men and women both in groups and couples.83 Can- dombe was completely different from mainstream social dances. Repeating a well-known pattern throughout the diaspora, white portefios, particularly the Unitario elite, deemed the candombes backward and immoral. To coun-

80 Chief of police to minister of government, Buenos Aires June 15, 1825, AGN Policia, leg. 10.13.9.1.

81 Lucas Le6n, president of the Sociedad Mufiemba to chief of police, Buenos Aires, March 14, 1861, AGN Policia, SA, leg. 10.31.11.5.

82 The few descriptions of the choreography of this dancing demonstrate its ritual character. The French naturalist Alcides D'Orbigny who visited the Rio de la Plata in the early 1820s described a cere- mony he witnessed in Montevideo in these terms: "Every nation in its way performed a representative dance of its country. There, I saw a succession of war dances, simulacrums of agriculture work, and the most lascivious movements. More than six hundred Negroes seemed to recover their nationality in the midst of an imaginary country." Alcides D'Orbigny, Viaje a la America meridional realizado de 1826 a 1833 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Futuro, 1945), 3:65; Ortiz Oderigo gathered other testimonies, also from Montevideo of a dance called candombe. According to the Ortiz Oderigo, the candombe of Montevideo was a kind of dramatic dance in which several characters played definite roles. First, it was the turn of the escobero to demonstrate his mastery with the baton-much like Elegua in the Afro-Cuban tradition. Then the gramillero, or doctor, entered tottering on his walking stick and carrying a small bag with medicinal herbs. The dance also unfolded in several stages. It started with two parallel lines of people- one of men, the other of women-singing choruses in African languages, advancing to bump each other with their stomachs, then retreating. In a second stage, the dancers broke lines and danced in couples. After this step, the drum rhythm gathered momentum and the scene became confused as all let their bodies move at will. At that point, the candombe reached its peak and dancers stopped, exhausted, at the commanding voice of the master of ceremonies. Nestor Ortiz Oderigo, Calunga: Croquis del candombe (Buenos Aires, Eeduba, 1969), p. 24; other amateur folklorists provided several descriptions of African dances in the Rio de la Plata, unfortunately they rarely revealed their sources; see Vicente Rossi, Cosas de negros (Buenos Aires: Editorial Rio de la Plata, 1926), pp. 33-35; Jos6 Luis Lanuza, Morenada (Buenos Aires: Shapire, 1967), pp. 43-52.

83 Perhaps the best description of a candombe is an 1845 oil of Martin Boneo that shows a perform- ance of candombe in the house of the Congo Nation. A group of dancers and drummers appear standing in a ring while a couple of dancers performs in the center.

376 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

terbalance this impression, the members of the Naci6n Moro wrote in their proposal to the chief of police that soon the nations would include "dances of this land," implying that candombes were dances from "the other land."84 From the standpoint of the present it is impossible to establish whether the candombe was an African dance or not. Clearly, however, candombe practi- tioners perceived their dances as such. In 1827, after visiting some can- dombes and interviewing their members, the Province's General Attorney reported: "--according to the blacks those songs date to the times of their Paganism that they wanted to perpetuate for generations."85

Funerals, memorial services, and dances were the three basic activities of the African Associations. They were the real elements of cohesion in com- munities created from a variegated array of individuals with different ethnic backgrounds, languages, lineages, and interests. Rituals provided ground upon which to forge new identities based on the memory of African tradi- tions as well as on the memory of the founders of the new communities. Rit- uals operated simultaneously on two different levels. While the memorial masses and funerals maintained communication between living and dead, the dance reinforced the ties among the living. The dance was also a kind of bond with the ancestors, since dancing honored the African traditions. Occa- sionally, the ancestors' spirits may have visited the bodies of the dancers invited by the toques of drums, the exclamations, and the alcohol. These rit- uals forestalled the disruptive tendencies of complex communities in which different factions contended for internal symbols of power by using the external leverage of their patrons.

CONCLUSION

The history of the African Associations of Buenos Aires provides a rare opportunity to look at the internal mechanics of diasporic institutions cre- ated by Africans. These associations established by free and slave Africans in almost every place of the diaspora were the cornerstone of a neo-African culture in the Americas. Inside the associations, Africans and people of African descent preserved the practices of the old country. At the same time, prompted by the inspiration of an African worldview, they invented new practices. A strong new culture grew in captivity from the interaction of tra- ditions and invention. It is not surprising that these associations and the cul-

84 Antonio Arana, member of Naci6n Moro, to Chief of Police, Buenos Aires, May 25, 1825, AGN Policia, 10.13.9.1.

s5 Jos6 Eugenio Elias, General Procurator, to Governor of Province of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, May 13, 1827. AGN OS 10-14-5-4.

OSCAR CHAMOSA 377

ture created by them have become the subject of study in disciplines such as history, anthropology, folklore, musicology, and religious studies. The Brazilian and Cuban cases have received more attention, because of their larger historical importance and their vigorous contemporary manifesta- tions. The nineteenth-century candombes of Buenos Aires, on the other hand, were the expression of a small African enclave, probably not more than 15,000 people. But they were no less active or committed to tradition than their counterparts in Brazil and Cuba. Furthermore, the uncommonly good quality of the written sources on disaporic African sociability in Buenos Aires merits the attention of scholars.

Among the different authors who previously examined these sources, George Reid Andrews has produced the most nuanced and academically rig- orous interpretation. Andrews sees in the African Associations a kind of com- munity organization that potentially might have empowered the African people of Buenos Aires. However, according to Andrews, the tendency of the African Associations to split precluded the achievement of better results. The present article has argued that the African Associations of Buenos Aires ful- filled the role for which they were designed by their own leaders: to construct new lineages and honor their ancestors. Africans never thought of associa- tions as a means of collective social mobility. In creating associations, they were simply adapting African institutions to a new context and constructing new identities for individuals uprooted by the Middle Passage. Individuals of different African origins found in those communities a restoration of familiar patterns of social relations. The ties of blood or kinship destroyed by enslave- ment were not easy to replace. The only way to create new communities was by weaving alliances between individuals or groups of different origin. The Angolans in Bahia denominated these interethnic alliances with the Kim- bundu word milonga. As demonstrated in this article, the African Associa- tions that blossomed in physical and legal margins of the late colonial Buenos Aires followed the system-of-nations principle of interethnic mixing.

Although the independent government provided a legal framework for the African Associations and pushed them toward European conceptions of sociability, the internal forms of organization--as well as their objectives and activities-remained largely untouched. However, the interaction of the African Associations with the state during years of agitated partisan politics triggered the breakup and rearrangement of the original nations. The elders of the associations established contacts and bartered favors with the local police deputies in exchange for protection for their groups. The fluidity of those mechanisms explains why the original associations easily split into parts. Opposing lineages shared the same associations for years, waiting for

378 "To HONOR THE ASHES OF THEIR FOREBEARS"

the opportunity to break away or to overthrow their competitors. To achieve this theoretically illegal goal, the African elders needed powerful patrons. Far from destroying the African Associations, the patronage system was used by lineage leaders to deal with the unavoidable internal contradictions of the system of nations.

In spite of internal conflicts, the African Associations managed to main- tain their sense of community. The ultimate goal of the African Associations was to fulfill ritual obligations to their forebears. The rituals of burial and mourning (and, indirectly, the rituals of dance) aimed to fulfill those duties. The funerals in which dead members became ancestors were liminal moments in the association rituals. Memorial masses during the year served to interact constantly with the world of the ancestors. Association dances, on the other hand, were practical and constant recreations of African traditions: a duty, rather than an entertainment. Both rituals represented traditional obli- gations to the dead that made sense of the lives of the living.

The candombes should be considered as totalities in which working, dancing, mourning, aiding, praying, and even fighting were different facets of the same reality. The cited testimony of Esmeraldo Santana, elder of the Candombl6 de Nago Angola of Bahia, captures the essence of that experi- ence so well that it bears repeating:

And whenever possible, they did something to fulfill their obligations. Every- body contributed a piece, and they made a kind of patchwork. One cooked this, another cut that-because they have limited time to do their stuff. The same thing with the songs. One said, I know this song; another, I know that one. Everybody sang, and the santo liked that. There wasn't a single nation to perform those obligations any more. It was a mixture, as I said: a milonga.86

Cooking and singing were part of communal duties in the task of survival. As in a patchwork, every individual contributed with his or her efforts, with his or her pieces of memory. The duties were simply to preserve the memory of the African ways, to please the ancestors, to augment the spirit, and to survive.

University of North Carolina OSCAR CHAMOSA Chapel Hill, North Carolina

86 "E quando era possivel, eles faziam qualquer coisa das obragaq5es deles, entio cada um pegava um pedago, faziam uma colcha-de-retalhos, um cozinhava isso, outro cortava aquilo, outro pegava, porque eles tinham tempo limitado para tale faziam. A mesma coisa fez-se no cintico. Um, "eu sei tal cantiga'" outro, "eu sei tal'" e todos cantavam, e entio o santo aceitava, e nio ficou somente uma naqio para fazer aquele tipo de obrigagio, Era a mistura, como ja disse, a milonga." Esmeraldo Emet~rio de Santana "Naqio Angola," in Encontro de NaC&es de Candombld: Anais do encontro realizado em Sal- vador, 1981 (Salvador da Bahia, Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientales, 1984), pp. 35-36.