Brazilian and African sources for the study
of cultural transferences from Brazil to Africa
323Brazilians,^41 and who is currently working in Zaire. From within an essentially
anthropological matrix Braga and the current director of CEAO, Guilherme
de Sousa Castro, and his wife leda Pessoa de Sousa Castro did research in
western Nigeria on Brazilian influences in the Yoruba language and on Yoruba
influences in Brazilian Portuguese. Additional linguistic work was done in
Bahia in 1970 by Ebun Ogunsanya, a Yoruba student at Radcliffe College,
Harvard, whose senior thesis concerned Yoruba retentions in Brazilian Portu-
guese. Recently the former Cultural Attaché of the Nigerian Embassy in
Brasilia, Abiola Joseph has also conducted linguistic research into the Yoruba
spoken in candomblé ceremonies throughout Brazil.
Jose Honorio Rodrigues using essentially secondary sources from Brazil,
in his two-volume work Africa and Brazil provides a general outline of Brazil's
historical relationship towards the African continent. The present author
taking his departure from Verger tended to focus his doctoral research on
Benin, Togo and Lagos, Nigeria and the returned Afro-Brazilian slaves, while
the Brazilian couple Carneiro da Cunha, who are presenting a paper at this
conference, have focused their interest on the Brazilian returnees to Nigeria.
Brazilian historical influence in Ghana has been the subject of a brief research
trip of the author to that country in 1975.
Wayne Selcher's publications in the field of international relations have
attempted to analyse Brazilian political and diplomatic interest in Africa, its
relationship to Portuguese-speaking Africa beginning in the 1950s and with
his latest articles and manuscripts bringing attention to the latest approxima-
tion attempts on the part of Itamarati to win support in Black Africa.^42 Also
developing from his earlier interests in Brazilian race relations, specifically in
Bahia, the Ghanaian social scientist Anani Dzidzienyo widened his scope of
interest with a series of articles on Brazilian diplomatic approximation attempts
in Africa during 1972. Dzidzienyo has gone on to analyse the at times confused
role and response of the Afro-Latin to his own Latin-American culture and
towards Africa. Professor Dzidzienyo is presenting a paper at this conference
on that topic. Pierre-Michel Fontaine, a political scientist from Haiti, in his
work for Unesco has analysed the relationship between Brazil, Africa and multi-
national corporations, continuing with this research now at Cornell University.
Professor Roy Glasgow, currently Federal University of Fluminense, Rio, and
also Boston University, has also writen on Brazil's approximation towards
Africa during the period 1971-72.^43
In discussing possibilities for further and future research I would like
to mention a doctoral dissertation study of Professor Monica Schüler, com-
pleted for the University of Wisconsin. The study concerns the migration of
West Africans to Jamaica as labourers during the early part of the twentieth
century. There were significant parallels between the West Indian/African
economic-cultural interchange, and that of Brazil and West Africa during the