institutions of colonial society, such as the Jesuit seminar. As a result, a tiny, white elite dominated the
political and cultural life of what many observers perceived as being an almost African city.
Although not the size of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador in the early nineteenth century was still one of the major
Atlantic cities with an impressive slave population. Population figures prior to the first national census of
1872 are not entirely reliable, but João Reis estimated the population of the city at 65,500 for the
year 1835.^4 The 27,500 slaves represented 42 per cent of that total. Less than a third of the city’s
inhabitants, or 28.2 per cent, were considered white, whilst the free ‘coloured’ population amounted to 22.7
per cent and the free Africans to 7.1 per cent. Since Africans constituted the majority of the slave population
(63 per cent), as much as one third of Salvador’s population was African during the first decades of the
nineteenth century. The numerous African languages heard in the streets of the city invariably impressed
foreign observers. Slave traders deported their human cargo from two major areas: West Africa and Kongo/
Angola. (In the older literature slaves from these areas are often referred to as ‘Sudanese’ and ‘Bantu’.)^5
Historians distinguish several cycles, during which slave imports from one particular region predominated:
Senegambia in the late sixteenth century, Kongo/Angola in the seventeenth century and the Mina Coast and
the Bight of Benin in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet even during the last cycle, Bantu
slaves from Congo and Angola still constituted about a third of all Africans in Bahia.^6
Slave life in the city of Bahia was to a large extent similar to that in Rio de Janeiro already and discussed
in Chapter 3. The urban condition implied a greater heterogeneity of individual situations. Some slaves held
relatively comfortable positions as domestics in the smart residences of the upper town Vitória parish.
Mucamas were in intimate contact with masters, and so were others whose job consisted in making their
owner’s life as pleasant as possible. Skilled slaves executed qualified work for their artisan masters in
workshops spread around the city. The large majority, however, slaved in harsher jobs. Slaves ‘for hire’
(escravos de ganho or ganhadores) were employed in all the menial tasks despised by slaveholders with
contempt for manual labour, and most especially in porterage. Escravos de ganho and freedmen waited for
customers at specific street corners, called cantos, often organized along ethnic lines (see Figure 4.2).^7
The example of the cantos reveals that slavery or freedom was not the only relevant polarity in the social
construction of identity. The conditions of urban slavery and the concentration of so many Africans in a
relatively small area made it possible for slaves and freedmen from similar ethnic backgrounds to gather
together and reproduce some important aspects of their African heritage, regardless of their condition. This
however did not occur without important adaptations and adjustments. If slave culture, in both its sacred and
profane dimensions, was, to a large extent, segmented along ethnic lines, boundaries were far from rigid. As
we have seen in Chapter 2, three major neo-African ‘nations’ emerged in Salvador, which amalgamated
smaller groups sharing similar cultural or linguistic backgrounds: Angola, Jeje and Nagô. Some further
subdivisions survived, which reflected original African provenance or political allegiances. Thus Ijexá,
Ketu, and Ijebú—all identified as Nagô—initially related to specific Yoruba kingdoms. As the slave and
free black population became increasingly creolized during the nineteenth century, these political and ethnic
identities became primarily liturgical and cultural ones.
Religion was the area of social life around which popular culture coalesced. The celebration of patron
saints represented the most visible aspect of popular religion and culture in Salvador and the Recôncavo
since at least the nineteenth century. Each festival took place in and around the parish church dedicated to a
saint. In Salvador the annual cycle of festivities was opened on 4 December with the celebrations for Santa
Barbara in the commercial Baixa dos Sapateiros, followed by those for Nossa Senhora da Conceição da
Praia on 8 December and Santa Luzia do Pilar, on 13 December, both located near the waterfront in the port
area. After the Christmas period, the festivals of Boa Viagem, on 1 January, and especially Bomfim, on the
second Thursday in January, attracted a wide audience from all over the city. The celebrations in the fisher
96 THE CAPOEIRA SCENE IN BAHIA