In a few days, we shall send you a copy of the research plan for the Brazilian survey which was established by Klineberg and Coelho. We would appreciate your comments and especially your criticisms. After all, you are the âgreat old manâ in this field.1
â¦
I shall be more than glad to look over the plan for the Brazilian survey which you care to send me. I am delighted that Coelho has taken on so well. I was sure that you would enjoy knowing him and having him work with you.2
âµ
In the preceding chapter we saw why and how Brazil and Bahia were important in the life and careers of our four scholars. Now we shall see how they paved the way for the future generation of scholars â and, to a lesser extent, black activists â engaged with the transnational making of Afro-Brazilian studies, from the late 1940s. We shall also see that many of the ideas, theories and contacts they developed in Bahia would later affect and be part of Afro-American studies and even African studies developed in the US, since all of them moved on to African studies later in their career. Still, the impact of each on them on Afro-Brazilian studies would not be the same.
One of the main differences between the four is that Frances and Melville maintained frequent correspondence with Brazil until the late fifties. Even though Turner and Frazier remained interested in Brazil, they ceased their correspondence with Brazilian scholars after sending their (short) report and published papers to Dona Heloisa Torres of the Museu Nacional. The plentiful correspondence between Herskovits and Brazilian academics illustrates the conditions for intellectual production in Brazil in the forties and fifties, which
Melvilleâs correspondence with Brazil and Brazilians can be divided up into three categories: the politicians mentioned above and intellectual politicians he had corresponded with to ease his trip to Brazil, mainly in Bahia; correspondence with many renowned Brazilian intellectuals â foremost, Freyre and Ramos, Dante de Laytano, Vianna Moog and Thales de Azevedo â and with foreign scholars concerned with Brazil, such as Bastide, Métraux and Verger; the letters concerning his great commitment towards young scholars for whom he had helped to secure a grant and, in most cases, was supervising, like José and Gizella Valladares, Octavio da Costa Eduardo, Ruy Coelho and René Ribeiro. The tone and style of the first category are polite and respectful; the letters to the second group, with the possible exception of those to Freyre, are usually top-down as they reveal a difference in academic standing and the fact that the Brazilians still lacked formal training in anthropology.
In many ways, Herskovits became the patron of Brazilian anthropology because he created conditions for the first Brazilian doctoral students in anthropology to study in the US (Sansone 2019). For example, from the Rockefeller Foundation he obtained a grant for Da Costa Eduardo (whose sponsors were Cyro Berlinck and Donald Pierson), Ruy Coelho3 and José Valladares (whose sponsor was Aristidis Novis, Secretary of Education of the State of Bahia), who was also supported by a combination of Northwestern funds, ACLS, the Ford Foundation-sponsored Institute of International Education (IIE) and the Carnegie Corporation (CCNY). Melville put them in touch with each other all the time. It was, in fact, a network â in many ways, a family network in which sentiments and affections played a crucial role. The correspondence with his PhD students was less that between equals and is typical of the style and tone of the (eternal) supervisor: friendly, paternal and inquiring.
Moreover, as Ramassote indicates (2017) in his study of the correspondence between MJH and Eduardo, his supervision also meant that his students had to work through the âarsenal of concepts moulded by him such as acculturation, cultural focus, cultural resilience and reinterpretationâ (2017:237). At the Rockefeller Archive Center, there are essential documents relating to Octavio da Costa Eduardo,the first Brazilian to obtain a PhD in anthropology. There are also numerous references to other Brazilian or Brazil-based intellectuals (among them, Gizella and José Valladares in Salvador, Ruy Coelho, René Ribeiro in Recife, Curt Nimuendaju and the powerful Dona Heloisa Torres, director of the Museu Nacional in Rio) who applied for grants with assistance from Herskovits or whose applications were evaluated by him. These findings, resulting from research at the RAC, the CCNY archive at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Columbia, and the Schomburg Center, complement my research in other archives, in the US, France (especially the UNESCO Archives) and Brazil. Other colleagues have carefully analysed the correspondence with Arthur Ramos and Octavio da Costa Eduardo â respectively, Antonio Sergio Guimarães (2002) and Sergio Ferretti and Rodrigo Ramassote (2017). In the following, I touch briefly on letters to and from Arthur Ramos and Eduardo before focusing on the others.
1 âThe Professional Bahianoâ: Herskovits Internationalising Brazilian Scholars5
Mel and Ramos started corresponding in December 1935. Mel reacted enthusiastically to the publications he had received from Ramos: he could recognize in the pictures of the Candomblé altar several objects almost identical
⦠have wondered if it might not be worthwhile to pay some attention to other than the religious aspects of Brazilian Negro culture. I realize that isolating African elements in such phases of New World Negro behaviour is more difficult than it is in religious life. However, I found both in Haiti and Guiana, as students of mine have recently found in the Virgin Islands, Martinique and Jamaica, that there are many phases of the economic and social life which are as African as their religious beliefs.6
Later in 1936, Ramos introduced Ãdison Carneiroâs work to MJH as the work of his disciple. Books were exchanged regularly. Among them were Suriname Folklore, Life in a Haitian Valley, Dahomey, Acculturation, Economic Life of Primitive People and the paper âThe Significance of West Africa for Negro Researchâ for O Negro Brasileiro, Estudos Afro-Brasileiros I and II and the paper âAs Culturas Negras no Novo Mundoâ. Both scholars pledged to promote one another in the US and Brazil. Ramos lent MJH several images from his O Negro Brasileiro for a new publication in French.7 MJH also asked Ramos to provide questions relevant to Brazilians for his student William Bascom, who was going to Oyo and Ife for research.8 On August 17, 1937, Ramos sent Mel a list of ten questions about the Yoruba for Bascom, who he called âyour discipleâ. The questions are revealing of Ramosâ curiosity and preference for Yoruba over elements of what was then called Bantu cultural survivals:
What is the percentage of people who speak Yoruba in Nigeria?
Has Yoruba remained pure or deformed by cultural contact (with other neighbouring languages)?
What is the extent of the written literature (e.g., in Lagos)? Are there any reading books in the Nagô language?
To what extent have religious cultures remained pure up to the present day?
Have the Yoruba myths been preserved in oral tradition to the present day?
Is it possible to assess whether there has been secondary contamination in religion and folklore due to commercial activities? Do the famous tales of the tortoise cycle (awon) have a totemic origin?
Is Brazil still in the memories of the black people in Nigeria?
If so, does it survive in oral tradition?
I would like to have information about collections of tales, proverbs, and epigrams that survive today between the blacks of Nigeria.9
Soon Ramos would start asking for support from MJH: âI would like to spend one year close to your work, but alas, our cultural institution provides no funds for long travelsâ.10 MJH would try to have this arranged for Ramos and would eventually succeed. In turn, on April 11, 1939, MJH wrote to Ramos about a student of his, Joseph Greenberg, then in Northern Nigeria, who had plans to research the Male sect or what was left of it in Bahia. In January 1940, MJH inquired of Ramos about Landesâ behaviour in the field.11
By the end of March 1940, Ramos and Mel shared the same wrong impressions regarding Landesâ work in Bahia and her report for the Carnegie-Myrdal project. Ramos was asked by Carnegie to review Landesâ report, entitled âThe Ethos of the Negro of the New Worldâ. After pointing to long rows of (significant) mistakes and inaccurate interpretations, Ramosâ review was caustic:
The work of Dr. Ruth Landes is affected by errors resulting from observing wrongly, sweeping statements, false conclusions concerning the magic and religious life of the Negro in Brazil. It is a pity that certain conclusions, such as over matriarchy and the control of religion by women in Bahia, and ritual homosexualism among Brazilian blacks are already circulating in the academic world and are even announced as part and parcel of future publications in technical journals. When published as the result of long-lasting observation and âfieldworkâ, these statements can cause trouble and confusion for the honest and carefully controlled studies of the Negro personality in the New World.12
MJH helped Ramos to get a Rockefeller Grant to spend time in the US: âI think I have the man for you to try initiating the programme for Brazilian fellowship. It is Arthur Ramosâ.13 On August 24, 1940, Ramos and his wife travelled
In 1941, before going to Brazil, Mel helped to organize a Ramos lecture tour through the US; Ramos would travel with his wife after spending a semester at Louisiana State. Ralph Linton had asked Ramos to give a lecture at Columbia. There Mel introduced him, among others, to Klineberg, Boas, Du Bois, Mead, Benedict, Elsie Clews Parsons, Ralph Linton, Carter Woodson and Kardiner. Not bad! Richard Pattee of the Department of State, who Ramos already knew and had just translated his O Negro no Brasil into English, would also help.17 Ramos would lecture at Howard University, too, where he met the historian Carter Woodson. Ramos acknowledged the lavish attention and wrote from Brazil, saying that he and his wife would welcome the Herskovitses on their arrival in Rio on September 10.18 Mel would keep corresponding with Ramos until his sudden death in 1949.
Antonio Sergio Guimarãesâ scrutiny of this correspondence (2008a) adds a few interesting details â for instance, on the change of focus to cultures in Africa rather than African cultures in the Americas in the latter part of Melâs career. Was this related to a certain lack of interest in pursuing his studies about black culture in Bahia, provoked by some inexplicable idiosyncrasy? Jerry Gershenhorn suggested, based on the information provided by Herskovitsâ daughter,
Ramosâ sojourn in the US had a lasting effect on his professional identity. After he attended Herskovitsâ seminar and familiarized himself with the North American anthropological scene, he felt he was an actual anthropologist. In turn, Herskovitsâ meeting with Ramos opened doors to the Brazilian intellectual scene and Bahiaâs âAfricanâ world (Guimarães 2008a:58). Guimarães maintains that, despite the equality established through each otherâs expertise, this was an exchange between a medical doctor, who wrote (mostly in Portuguese) from his address using a typewriter, and an established professor, who replied (always in English)20 from his university office, also using a typewriter but keeping carbon copies in his files. Looking at this exchange, the correspondence between these two scientists reveals Herskovitsâ interest in obtaining data, information and knowledge about black people in Brazil, mainly through the books Ramos sent him. In contrast, if Ramos was at first motivated by a similar interest in North American black people, he quickly became interested in deepening his knowledge of the study of cultural anthropology by seeking a temporary position with Herskovitsâ Northwestern University (Guimarães 2008a:60).
René Ribeiro qualified as a doctor in 1936 and specialized in psychiatry. He was one of the first intellectuals in Recife to associate themselves with Gilberto Freyre (Motta 2007:39). His academic life was constructed with the help, and the limitations, of Freyre and Herskovits, in terms of funding for research and securing a teaching position. In the 1930s, Ribeiro became closely associated with the Recife School of Ulisses Pernambucano. In his first letter to MJH on March 15, 1944,22 he anticipated his future study on the amaziado. On April 15, MJH replied, stating his great interest in the research notes and asking permission to publish them in the American Journal of Sociology (Ribeiro 1945). Ribeiro, who wrote to him as amigo and signed his letters âyour disciple and admirerâ, supplemented information for Herskovitsâ thesis on the organization of the black family: âI tested and the difference that Frazier sees between amaziado and viver maritalmente is entirely falseâ.23 On August 21, Herskovits wrote back with some satisfaction: âIt would be interesting to see what Frazier has to say about your findingsâ (Motta 2007; Hutzler 2014).
In 1949 Ribeiro obtained a Masterâs in Social Sciences at Northwestern, with a dissertation on the Afro-Brazilian Cults in Recife, initially published in English and published in Portuguese in 1952. It was the first anthropological study of
In November 1952, in concluding his collaboration with the Columbia/State of Bahia/UNESCO project, Ribeiro wrote a report on religion and race relations in Recife (1978 [1952]). Its primary conclusion, very much in line with Freyreâs views, was that racial prejudice existed in Brazil, but its harshness was softened by the intrinsic tolerance of Luso-Brazilian culture and the variant of Christianity that was dominant in Brazil.26 In this publication, Ribeiroâs concept of racial etiquette appeared for the first time: a set of codes, the purpose of which was to weaken racial prejudice and sometimes turn it into euphemism (Motta 2014:172).27
Ribeiro wrote to Mel giving detailed descriptions of the Brazilian academic context, Brazilian Anthropological Association meetings and concursos, as well as suggesting exchanges of books and projects to translate into Portuguese, such as Herskovitsâ book, Cultural Anthropology (this was a suggestion first
In 1954, MJH was invited to the âAmericanistasâ conference in São Paulo and his expenses were paid for. He was then invited to give one or two lectures at the FUNDAJ (again, all costs were covered). On that occasion, he also gave a speech at the FFCH in Salvador, as a university guest. This was quite exceptional treatment, awarded only to critical scholars in those days.
In October 1954, René Ribeiro sent his paper âProblemática pessoal e interpretação divinatória dos cultos afro-brasileiro do Recifeâ (published in 1956) to MJH. Ribeiro was interested in psychological tests of spirit possession, especially the famous Rorschach test, to classify the stages of possession from more to less dissociation, liberation and functioning. It was a recurrent theme throughout the years. MJH passed the data collected by Ribeiro to psychiatrists from the Chicago area who were happy to interpret them. As Roberto Motta shows (2007), Ribeiro was very closely connected to Freyre and was one of the leading cadres of the FUNDAJ, as was Freyre.29 Ribeiro was the only collaborator of the UNESCO research project in 1950â53 who did not adhere to the new, more conflictual paradigm sacramental in that project (Maio 2017). It must have been hard for Ribeiro to read the harsh reaction of Freyre to Herskovitsâ review of his Um Brasileiro em Terras Portuguesas (Freyre 1953a) and Aventura e Rotina (Freyre 1953) in the Hispanic American Historical Review. Herskovits had written the review just after coming back from Portuguese East Africa, where he had had quite a bad impression of the Portuguese presence in what is today Mozambique. In âUm escritor se defende de um crîtico talvez injustoâ, Freyre
Another Brazilian who obtained his PhD in anthropology under Herskovitsâ supervision was Ruy Coelho, who did fieldwork in Honduras among the Black Caribs and was possibly the first Brazilian to spend one solid year doing fieldwork for his PhD, as was normal in the US. Coelho published his thesis as a book and, later, his field diary (Coelho 2000). While studying for his PhD, he took on a teaching assistantship at the University of Puerto Rico, where he spent one year, and then secured a one-year contract with the social sciences department of UNESCO. He enjoyed this position very much. As he wrote to Herskovits, âI find it difficult to uproot myself from this exciting and dangerous city that is Paris. In São Paulo one must work since there is not much else to doâ.32 Mel went out of his way to make it possible for Ruy to defend his thesis in São Paulo, benefiting from his presence at the International Americanists Congress in 1954. Mel invited Wagley, William Bascom and Fernando de Azevedo, head of the sociology department at USP, to participate in the examining committee. As Mel said in a letter to Bascom, it would be a reunion of good colleagues and, in some cases, friends.33
Although Pierre Verger was never a student of Herskovits, when he settled in Salvador in the 1940s he established a working relationship with him similar to that of the young Brazilian scholars mentioned above. If Verger thus was not a disciple of Herskovits, he shared the same interest in African survivals in the New World and a particular predilection for Yoruba culture in the search for such survivals. Moreover, both scholars were convinced of the power of photography. Presenting African or Afro-Brazilian pictures and playing recordings of African or Afro-Brazilian music to informants and asking them to recognize images and tunes similar to their own was a powerful tool, used by the Herskovitses first and later by Verger. Both were important in consolidating the BahiaâKetu/Yoruba connection. On December 25, 1948, Verger wrote from Dahomey to MJH, saying that âlegends and proverbs I caught in Brazil are well
On February 8, 1949, Verger added:
Some of the songs I brought to them from Brazil, especially from Recife, were well-known to them ⦠I got in return a good stock of songs for the Babalorixás and Yalorixás of Brazil (â¦) In Ketou they were glad to see pictures of their âcousinsâ of Bahia and by the way, in Porto Novo, I found the descendant of the Gantois family back from Bahia last century.
The excitement of having found in Benin the real Aguda (descendants of returnees from Brazil) was mixed with the sense of a mission not unlike that of the Herskovitses. Verger started to see himself as the messenger of both shores of the Black Atlantic â through his pictures. There is more evidence of such feeling in the correspondence:
The approach with an exhibition of pictures of Brazil and West Indies African ceremonies gave excellent results and helped a lot to create a climate of confidence with the people visited. I believe the first time in this country that somebody came to give them information on their people sent abroad in the past and the little knowledge I acquired in the terreiros of Bahia was proof of my goodwill. ⦠I got presents for the babalorixás of Bahia.34
Additionally:
I am back now at Bahia, giving fresh news from Africa here around to our friends from Candomblé. I am rather well received and admitted among them due to the prestige of the pilgrimage in their fatherland. I hope that it will help get more accurate information and permit me to go deeper inside the questions in Africa where I intend to return within a year or two.35
The possibility that both his whiteness and his status as a foreigner in Brazil and as a French citizen in colonial Africa added something special to his ethnographic authority and photographic gaze was not an issue Verger questioned
In Brazil, Herskovitsâ influences were most evident in Afro-Brazilian studies but they were not limited to this field. Some of his more academic books were read quite early, such as Acculturation: The study of culture contact (1938), and chapters such as âThe processes of cultural changeâ, in Ralph Lintonâs edited collection, The science of man in the world crisis (1945). Other works were translated early into Portuguese and were quite influential in the sixties and seventies. They were among the most consulted books in the UFBA library, which was relatively poor and received foreign books mostly when foreign donations were available, mainly from the RF and Fulbright.
The influence of MJH on the Brazilian social sciences and even on important intellectuals in the government, such as Darcy Ribeiro and Celso Furtado, in the 1960s and 1970s, was due to the popularity of two of his notions among Brazilian anthropologists such as Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira and Galvão: âacculturationâ and âcultural focusâ.36 Of course, these two notions were pliable and open to local interpretation, if not âcreolizationâ. Julio Campos Simões has analyzed this reinterpetation and here are some excerpts. âAcculturationâ, for Darcy Ribeiroâs dependency theory:
The exchange produced by contacts and interactions between peoples has been designated in anthropology by the concept of acculturation (Herskovits 1938) (â¦) Herskovits (1938) says that when contact occurs spontaneously, people can exchange culture privileged by the freedom to choose what to adopt from the patrimony of others and the ability to produce by themselves the new elements adopted. When this contact occurs under different conditions of power or degree of technical development, the two conditions mentioned above are not satisfied, neither the freedom to choose what to adopt nor autonomy in the creative process. Darcy Ribeiro (1972) thus defines the configuration of a dependency process.
Simões 2019:13â14
âCultural focusâ, for Celso Furtadoâs critique of development theory:
The acceleration of the development of material culture brings Furtado closer to the work of Herskovits (1945), an anthropologist who defends the
Simões 2019: 26idea that societies are moved by a dominant field of culture, a âcultural focusâ that tends to be the dynamic core of changes, having repercussions on the whole. In Furtadoâs words: âStudies of social change (â¦) have almost always led to the same conclusion that cultural dynamics derive from the particular behaviour of certain sectors. When we examine different cultures, says Prof. M. J. Herskovits, we realize that they differ not only with respect to their external form but also concerning the dominant concerns of their bearers.â This dominant field, Herskovits calls âcultural focusâ, to state that âthere is little doubt that the cultural focus in our modern society resides in the field of technologyâ (Furtado 1964:19). During his academic travels, Furtado personally met the anthropologist Melville Herskovits, during a visit to Northwestern University, who brought him closer to the study of cultural diffusion and would influence this phase of his work. He recorded: âLike other anthropologists of his generation, he was inclined to superimpose a âlogic of cultureâ on history, which led him to see innovation (and discovery) more as a response than a mutation. He was far from sliding into cultural determinism, but he emphasized the pre-existence of a âcultural baseâ, without which innovation would not be absorbed, nor would cultural change present itself in an orderly fashionâ (Furtado 1985: 92).
2 The State of Bahia-Columbia University-UNESCO Project: The Beginning of a New Stage
Bahia has always and will continue to attract scholars in the social sciences for it is a natural laboratory for the study of human society ⦠Today with its multiracial society which co-exists, in relative harmony, it has a lesson to teach the world (â¦) Bahia should be the home of one of the most vigorous schools and research institutes for the study of man in the New World.
Wagley and Wagley 1970:37â38
The social network and web of emotions, affection, enmities, saudade and, for many, ritual devotion to Candomblé described above paved the way for a set of successive stages in the representation, and in many ways construction, of Bahia as one of the ideal places to carry out ethnographic research in the New World, especially in the field of African survivals, racial hierarchies and African-Catholic religiosity. This also led to Salvador being revered as a
All these projects were influential in cementing the status of Bahia as an ideal fieldwork location and in establishing new opportunities for the production of knowledge among the small but growing number of Bahia-based social scientists. Some scholars have analyzed the first project (Maio 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2009; Pereira and Sansone 2007) even though part of its documentation still deserves scrutiny. The other two projects would require a proper in-depth analysis, which I plan to do shortly, based on archival research in 2019 at the Rockefeller Archive Center and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Columbia. In the following text, I render a general picture of these projects, measuring the effects of the relationship developed by the Herskovitses with Brazil and Brazilian scholars to develop the social sciences in Brazil, and foremost in Bahia.
The Director-General is authorized to organize in Brazil a pilot investigation of contacts between races or ethnic groups to determine the economic, political, cultural and psychological factors whether favourable or unfavorable to harmonious relations between races or ethnic groups.
Resolution of the 1951 General Assembly of the UN
Between 1947 and 1950, UNESCO developed several initiatives on race/racism, intolerance and cultural diversity, such as the Committee on Slavery of the Economic and Social Council, the plan to publish a series of books on humanityâs scientific and cultural history, and the Committee for the Statement on Race. Some of the best social scientists participated in these committees, some of whom circulated through Brazil: Métraux, Frazier, Herskovits and Bastide. This engagement shows the prestige enjoyed by UNESCO and the political momentum, which heightened the civic motivation of social scientists. Brazilians were quite present in these events â Paulo Carneiro, Arthur Ramos, Ruy Coelho, Luis Costa Pinto â which is why Brazil played a primary role in the first years of UNESCO, directly or indirectly.
The primary aim of the State of Bahia-Columbia University research programme in its initial stage was to identify cultural change, and factors and opportunities for modernization and industrialization, in the State of Bahia. The objectives were as follows:
1. To acquire a knowledge of rural society and culture in three ecological-cultural zones of Bahia; 2. To determine the effect of three different ecological settings on the similar Luso-Brazilian culture patterns which have developed within this one are of rural Brazil during the last 400 years; 3. To determine the changes in society and culture that have occurred in each zone within the last few years under the impact of new forms of economy, new technology, new ideology, and more modern transportation facilities; 4. To determine the dynamics of such changes in each zone and the differences and similarities in the process from one zone to another; 5. To determine what aspects of the present society and culture and the tendencies of change must be considered to plan and to efficiently administer educational and health programmes in the region.
Wagley, De Azevedo and Costa Pinto 1950: 37
The question of race relations was almost absent from the original research plan, with the partial exception of Harrisâ project, in which the racial question was one of the central issues right from the start. That question would be added to each subproject after UNESCO joined the programme. Before the
Hence, several forces were at work in conceiving the State of Bahia-Columbia University-UNESCO project in Brazil: Anisio Teixeiraâs modernizing project for the State of Bahia â in association with the creation of UFBA;40 the Columbia department of anthropology project for fieldwork in Latin America; and, a little later, Métrauxâs agenda for research on race relations in Brazil. In Métrauxâs plans, the project was meant to empirically support the famous UNESCO Statement on Race which came out in 195041 as a reaction to the Holocaust and the declaration of apartheid in 1948.42 Even though, as said before, the initial research plan was not focused on race relations but on community studies with an emphasis on factors for continuity or change (Wagley et al 1950), one of the driving ideas behind the research project ended up producing evidence that race relations could be harmonious (at least in Brazil). Central to this project were Alfred Métrauxâs activities at UNESCO, which aimed at developing a global antiracist agenda. Eventually, the UNESCO effort
To understand the complex and tripartite political agenda behind the State of Bahia-Columbia University project, the lengthy report sent by Métraux to Alva Myrdal on January 22, 1951 is helpful. The 1950 UNESCO Conference on Race, which generated the Committee that edited the Statement on Race, had suggested research on race relations in Brazil. Métraux worked hard to join the effort with Charles Wagleyâs and Anisio Teixeiraâs projects. He established the need for research on social mobility among people of colour in the city of Bahia (Salvador), while the rest of the research would result from fieldwork in the interior of Bahia. Rio de Janeiro would be included, for which Costa Pinto was indicated as the responsible researcher, and São Paulo, where Bastide and Florestan were indicated. Adding São Paulo to the whole project was necessary but increased tensions, as Métraux wrote:
I know that including São Paulo, with its racial tensions, in a research plan can take us to conclusions that are different from those mentioned [would say, wished!] in the 1950 UNESCO Resolution on Race, but it would be betraying the scientific character of the research leaving out SP.
Recife was added as yet one more location, mostly to appease Freyre, and René Ribeiro would take care of the fieldwork there focusing on race relations and Afro-Brazilian religion, and produce a report (Ribeiro 1956).
From the correspondence, especially that in the UNESCO archives in Paris, it is evident that UNESCO in the years 1948 to 1953 had embarked on an absolute frenzy in terms of initiatives, statements and plans for advancing ethnic-racial and cultural tolerance. It was certainly a period of great hope and
Here are some examples of how the network functioned and how central and influential the scholars based in NY and Paris were compared to those based in Bahia:
My trip to Brazil was interesting and successful. I spent three weeks in Bahia, during which I visited many terreiros, attended several ceremonies and even found the time to visit the âsertaoâ, where young American anthropologists, under Wagleyâs direction, are studying rural communities. Contrary to my previous plans, Bahia will no longer be the focus of our project. We shall study race relations as they appear in four rural communities and concentrate on social mobility in the city of Salvador. On the other hand, we shall concentrate on the rapidly deteriorating racial situation of São Paulo. Dr. Costa Pinto will undertake a similar study, but on a lesser scale, in Rio de Janeiro. At the end of the year, I expect to get a picture of the racial situation in Brazil, which will be close to reality and cover both the bright and dark sides. In Brazil, I met many of your friends and often you were remembered in our conversations. I had, in my friend Verger, the very best guide. He has taken in recent months sensational photographs, in particular of the secret sect of the Egun. He is trying now, using photographs, to show the persistence of Africanisms in Bahia (â¦) Poor Verger is still faced with the difficulty of publishing his photographs. Perhaps you will be in a position to help him?45
I have just returned from Brazil. As you may well think, it was a pleasant and fruitful journey. René Ribeiro, who is now working for us, was especially helpful and thanks to him I spent three interesting weeks in the religious field, and by religious field, I mean of course the xangos ⦠I have witnessed a few interesting ceremonies and, on my birthday, I made a big sacrifice to Exu, which is paying off â¦46 I am glad you had so good a trip to Brazil. Ribeiro is really tops, and I am expecting fine things from him as his work develops. I am glad you had an opportunity to see some of the cult ceremonies, and am sure that Eshu will take good care of you. He tends to repay those who look after him!â47
Even though De Azevedo was the administrator and local coordinator,48 he would soon also be one of the key researchers when he embarked on his project on the coloured elites in Salvador (De Azevedo 1953). In June 1950, Wagley arrived in Bahia with three PhD candidates from Columbia University. They would work in cooperation with Brazilian students of the social sciences (Wagley and Wagley 1970:30). The first was William Harry Hutchinson, doing fieldwork in the sugarcane region of São Francisco do Conde (with the assistance of student Carmelita Ayres Junqueira, to whom Hutchinson would soon get married). The second was Marvin Harris, working in the former mining region around Rio de Conta (with the assistance of students Josildeth Gomes and Maria Guerra). And the third was Benjamin Zimmerman, who worked in the arid sertão (with the aid of junior lecturer Gizella Valladares).49
3 Columbia Undergraduate and Graduate Exchange Programmes
The success of the State of Bahia-Columbia University project made the continuation of the partnership easier. It occurred through two relatively large-scale initiatives in the successive decade: the interinstitutional Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, Illinois Summer Graduate Field Training Program 1962â1965, and the Undergraduate Exchange Project (De Azevedo 1984:74).
There was a crescendo of commitment to fieldwork in Latin America and especially Brazil from the Department of Anthropology of the University of Columbia â often associated with a number of other select US universities. It was part of a more general trend. There was a great degree of institution-building in the US concerning the development of Latin American studies within North American universities in the late fifties and early sixties. In 1958 there was a big plan to develop a general American library. From 1958 the Ford Foundation invested in Latin America, diverting to that region parts of the
In June 1955, Wagley handed into the FF a project proposal titled âA Research Training Programme for the Study of Man in the Tropicsâ,50 the tropics being from northern Brazil to the Caribbean and Central America. Vera Rubin would come to direct it. Six grants per year would be given to graduate students. It was hoped that the programme would also motivate students and faculty from the region to study in the US in exchange.
In 1959, Sidney Mintz and other colleagues wrote a lengthy report to the FF concerning programme possibilities in Latin America. The information was followed by an assessment of the situation in Brazil by Bill Hutchinson, then visiting the ELS. Soon afterwards, Mintz wrote a series of quite detailed reports for the FF. He planned to make the FF sensitive to Latin America: it had twice the population of the US and Canada, was part of the undeveloped world, its anti-Americanism was less extreme than in Egypt and Indonesia, the US needed to know more about Latin America, and, last but not least, the region was different from India and Indonesia, where independence mostly meant the return to an ancient order.51
The same year, on August 30, the Draft Proposal for an Undergraduate Summer Field Programme was drawn up, to introduce upper college students to a foreign culture under the guidance of professional anthropologists. Each team would consist of six students plus the coordinating anthropologist. The programme would be integrated into each of the participating universitiesâ academic structures and would offer credits â also to be distinguished from less selective summer school programmes.52 Among the fifty-eight undergraduate students who took part in the programme from 1961 to 1962, several became well-known anthropologists. For example, two of the students of the 1961 exchange were Renato Rosaldo and Richard Price, and David Epstein and Conrad Kottak were part of the cohort in 1962. The programme involved a cluster of universities. As part of the related interuniversity agreement, Harvard made available the use of its âfield stationâ in San Cristobal de las Casas, in Chiapas, Mexico, Cornell sent its group to Vicos Hacienda in Peru, and Columbia
From 1964 to 1967 another Columbia University programme in the training of graduate students in various disciplines â the Metropolitan Graduate Summer Field Training Programme â focused on Bahia, with a financial grant from the Ford Foundation. Again, De Azevedo served as advisor and coordinator of the field research, orienting the students during their residence in Brazil. The students were Anne Morton, Daniel Gross, Maxine Margolis (who did a follow-up study in the sugar-growing region where Hutchinson had done fieldwork), Leonore Veit, Nan Pendrell and Barbara Trosko. Wagley and Wagley reported, âthe Programme was not limited to Brazil but functioned to send pre-doctoral candidates to various parts of Latin America to begin their research for their doctoral dissertationâ (1970:35). Wagley and Wagley (1970) continued to stress the importance of this long-standing programme for Bahia. Also, Thales de Azevedo lent weight to it by compiling a bibliography (1984) of articles and books produced in Bahia and elsewhere in Brazil that had resulted from this research. About ten students from Bahia and Rio were given an opportunity for advanced training, which was later completed in Rio, São Paulo, the US and France. Many of the North American participants became essential professional academics and Brazil or Latin America specialists, such as Marvin Harris, William Hutchinson, Rollie Poppino, Conrad Kottak,54 Daniel Gross, Maxine Margolis, David Epstein, Nan Pendrell, Renato Rosaldo, Janice Perlman and Richard Price.
Perhaps the largest foreign student exchange programme in the field of social sciences in Brazil was the Carnegie Corporation (CCNY) project funded from 1959 to 1964. It involved a greater number of (senior) undergraduate
Throughout this period, the language of area studies is present in the documents, especially in those of the CCNY. The CCNY, as well as Columbia University, supported the development of new area studies, to make undergraduates familiar with other cultures (in Latin America) under the leadership of anthropologists. The Corporation supported other such programmes in different regions of the world in that period, for instance for Princeton students. The Board of Trustees of the CCNY voted in December 1959 to support undergrad experience abroad â in the light of the fact that in those years too few young Americans had passports55 â but it was concerned that there were many Summer Abroad programmes of low academic standing at US universities. There was a need for better-qualified programmes that could issue good credits to their participants.
The exchange programme that was devised was led by Columbia but included participation from Cornell and Harvard as well. It would focus on a few field stations â in Chiapas (Harvard), Guatemala (Cornell), Ecuador (Columbia), Peru and Brazil (Columbia).56 Eighteen students would be selected per year, to be dispersed across the five field stations. Marvin Harris was appointed as secretary of the programme, which was under the supervision of Charles Wagley.57 The CCNY issued a one-year grant in 1959 and in 1960. Following the success of the summer 1960 session, the programme applied for a three-year extension from 1961 to 1963.58 The project impressed the CCNY Board, which approved the USD 160,000 grant without discussion in their meeting on November 15, 1960.59
This summer training was based in the same field stations in Latin America, but the undergrads spent only three months in the field, being housed in the same (poor and rural) community they studied. Harris led the programme, of course, with the backing of Wagley. The aim was to induce curiosity and an understanding of the living conditions of rural Latin American communities. It was not exclusive to PhD candidates in anthropology, but the field coordinators were anthropologists and basic training in anthropology was required, together with language.61
The first report on the visit to the field stations by Joe Casagrande reveals:
The programme was a sort of small-scale goodwill mission. There was obvious reciprocal warmth in the friendships many students established with people in their communities. From the villagersâ point of view, they also had a significant cross-cultural experience. Through the students, in addition to the opportunity to know interesting and sympathetic North Americans, they at least glimpsed another way of life, other alternatives and gained new knowledge. In Huaylas, I am sure, incidents in the âYear of the Gringoâ will become legendary. Not all was sweetness and light, but certainly, far more goodwill than bad was generated.62
The Summer Training programme would continue after 1964, the military coup in Brazil notwithstanding, as did the Undergraduate Interchange Programme, at least until 1969. It was decided to drop Cali as a field station to focus on Bahia. Harris became the director of both programmes.63 The programme
There is a clear continuity between the Undergraduate Interchange Programme (CCNY) from 1959 to 1963 and the Summer Field Studies Programme (FF) of 1965â67 for first- and second-year graduates. However, in 1968 the FF turned down the application to fund the programme again, not because of its lack of merit but because its funding priorities regarding Latin America had changed. Most of these funds for field studies seemed to dry up around 1966. From 1965 to 1968, there was no mention of a study abroad programme by the Board of Trustees of either the FF or the CCNY. The golden period of fieldwork exchange was over by about 1965. But whereas the CCNY scaled down its funding for studies in Latin America, the much larger FF remained engaged. Columbia University applied to the FF, RF and SSRC to create a Latin America Institute at Columbia, which requested funds for the period 1960â63 under the leadership of Frank Tannenbaum and Richard Morse and, from 1963, under Wagley. In 1962 the FF gave the SSRC USD 1 million for the development of Latin American studies, and especially for a Faculty Exchange Programme, at six US universities: Columbia, Texas at Austin, UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, Harvard and Minnesota. This large donation was followed by meetings between directors of Latin American language and area centres.65
The Faculty Exchange Programme would be the next âfrontierâ in the institutionalization of Latin American studies in the US and the making of Latin-Americanists. In a letter of August 21, 1962, from Schuyler Wallace to Wagley, the critical question was raised: should invitations to Latin American scholars be on an individual basis, or should the committee plan to collaborate continuously with indigenous institutions or such institutions like the Inter-American Institute of Political Education located in São Jose, Costa Rica? Seemingly, most invitations would end up being on an individual basis. In a report of May 27, 1963, Wagley stated that âThe programme will allow us to keep in continuous contact with the intellectual trends and cross-currents of Latin America by having Latin Americans with us and our professors frequently visiting their universityâ.66
There is evidence that, after the 1964 coup in Brazil, rather than sending relatively large groups of students to Brazil the priority (certainly for Columbia University) changed to hosting top-notch Brazilian scholars, especially those whose research had been made difficult by the Brazilian military government.69 They invited influential Brazilians, such as Anisio Teixeira, who had already studied at Columbia in the twenties. His report on his stay at what he called his alma mater shows how much it was appreciated and how pleasant such a period of his life was. Indeed, especially in the days of the dictatorship, a few monthsâ stay in New York and at Columbia could mean a pleasant break from the tension back home.
This is a short list of scholars invited from Brazil, mostly for a semester, to Columbia or Harvard: Levi Cruz in 1962; Eduardo Galvão, Glaucio Soares, Carolina Bori, Anisio Teixeira in 1964; Helio Jaguaribe (to teach in the Department of Government at Harvard); in 1966, Octavio Ianni; in 1965, Florestan Fernandes, Gilberto Freyre, Celso Furtado, Mario Simonsen, Anisio Teixeira and Helio Jaguaribe. In 1966 Candido Mendes and Afranio Coutinho. In 1967 José Antonio Gonçalves de Mello was invited but eventually could not come; in exchange, Ronald Schneider was sent to the UFMG. From February to June 1965, several US professors visited the UNB with the support of the programme. In 1965 Thomas Skidmore was sent to Latin America, for the third time, with the support of the programme, and in 1966 Samuel Huntington was sent for a tour.
These particular exchange programmes produced important documents â in a way, a scholarship of their own. It started with a lengthy report to the FF by Wagley and Harris (1959) and was followed by two fieldwork guides by
The larger the number of students â and the more the programme was condensed into shorter periods, like three to six months â the fewer were the efforts made to establish contacts with local scholars or universities. It was not the empowerment of the social sciences in Latin America that mattered, but anthropology in the US. Latin America was regarded as good for fieldwork and field stations, but anthropological reflection and archiving remained in the US. Brazil and especially Bahia had played a crucial role in the creation of contemporary anthropology, especially Afro-American anthropology. Now they became a test case for a broader internationalization plan and as a âfield stationâ.
From the 1970s, Bahia would be promoted as an ideal place for (undergraduate) summer schools and graduate fieldwork for students at US universities â which allowed many of us at UFBA, especially those who could teach in English, to earn some welcome Yankee dollars.70 However, involvement with local intellectuals or groups of students was piecemeal if not altogether avoided. In their fieldwork they were meant to communicate directly with the povo, the people. But the often-used argument for not doing this was that the povo were black and the local scholars were primarily white, which was generally true. Most of these summer schools concerned US departments or black and/or Africana studies programmes. The merit was that many more black US students could visit Bahia than in earlier times. The question this raises is twofold. First, how was (black) Bahia and its âmagicâ represented in these short summer courses? Second, to what extent did this increase in information exchange contribute, as much as it could, to improving the conditions for the production of knowledge in Bahia, where there was also a steady increase in the number of black students, especially from the mid-2000s because of various forms of affirmative action?
4 Francesâ Comeback
A few years after Melville Herskovitsâ death, his wife and fellow traveller Frances (1897â1972) went back to Bahia in 1967, intending to do additional fieldwork to finalize the manuscript for THE book on their research in Brazil. She was then
Before Frances set off for Brazil, she started corresponding with Waldir Oliveira, director of the CEAO:
I have been going through my husbandâs unpublished notes from Brasil [she spelled it with an s] for some time, and find that some comparative materials on what has happened in the twenty-five-year interval are essential for the analysis and documentation of the theoretical points which we wish to see elaborated. I am very anxious to discuss this with you. Our stay in the Congo and Angola [in 1952â53] also raised questions that bear on Bahian materials. There is always, in addition, the saudades evoked by memories of Bahia, and I look forward to visiting the places and, hopefully, some, at least, of the men and women who had given us their friendship and confidence. It will be a great pleasure to visit your Center. My husband was both deeply touched and proud of his appointment as Honorary Professor of your University. My daughter and I are planning to see to it that your library has as full a collection as it is possible to assemble of his publications.74
Over a period of seven weeks, Frances would do extensive fieldwork and visit the Candomblé houses and many of the informants she had got to know in 1941 and 1942. The style of the notes is reminiscent of the fieldnotes collected twenty-five years earlier: reports of the genealogy lines of specific houses, the death and succession of Mãe Aninha and Mãe Senhora, detailed descriptions of ceremonies and of (certain) rituals with their âobligationsâ (offerings), transcription of what could be called gossip (fuxico), a little analytical observation.80 She visited most of the cult-houses in the company of Vivaldo, Julio and sometimes Waldir. It was a whirlwind of feasts, visits and events. Almost every day, there was an activity, often two or even three in a single day and until late at night or dawn. Frances also visited the Valladares family, Thales
A newspaper article covering Frances Herskovitsâ visit to Salvador. From left to right: Vivaldo da Costa Lima, Thales de Azevedo, Frances Herskovits and Waldir Freitas de Oliveira at the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais of the Universidade Federal da Bahia
She also became aware that gossip was part and parcel of Candomblé talk and that gossip united and divided the diverse Candomblé houses, especially the orthodox ones. For insiders, being aware of the gossip, which revealed moral codes and the constant process of fission and fusion among the cult-houses, was an essential element of social life in the Candomblé community (Braga 1998). Frances also became aware of the strong sexism that had existed in the field of Afro-Brazilian studies since its inception and had meant that women could be given a hard time when they ventured as scholars into Afro-Brazilian religion. The love affair between Mestre Didi and the young Argentinian social psychologist, Juanita Elbein, was the cause of much gossip. He was an older black man, married to a black woman close to the cult-house, with two children. Juanita was a foreigner, white, a psychology student, and thus far unrelated to Candomblé. Nonetheless, Juanita would eventually establish herself as a specialist, emphasizing the necessity to study Candomblé from within rather than without (Elbein dos Santos 1986), and to be recognized and accepted as such in what was usually called the Candomblé community (a comunidade). That occurrence was reminiscent of the rather sexist uproar generated by Ruth Landesâ relationship with Ãdison Carneiro almost three decades earlier.
Frances described an Oxóssi feast in Apo Afonja house, with Jorge Amado and the painter Carybé, then the feast of Agua de Oxala and the Monday feast of Apaoka Roko (two of the twenty-two orixás worshipped in the Apo Afonja house).82 Together with Julio Braga and Vivaldo, she also witnessed an Acheche (a ritual for the soul of a dead person and a significant occurrence in the Candomblé world) for Mãe Senhora, who died on February 22, 1967. The priestess in charge was Mãe Menininha: âGreetings in Yoruba all-around â more Yoruba spoken than had heard formerly. Explainable by courses of Yoruba at University, Yorubas studying and visiting and Bahians in Africa studying and visiting â also influence of Pierre Verger (?) â¦â.83 In the following, Frances registered
First enters the Pade, executed by an old filha de santo from Gantois and S. Goncalo. Then two by two, one filha from each side, danced before the lighted candle and the water jar on the floor. Before each change of dancer, they prostrate themselves facing the entrance door and the improvised altar for the dead then went to prostrate before Menininha and Ogun Joba. Each was given a bill or coins by both, and this was an offering for the âassistenciaâ. A pile of bills a foot and more high, people coming forward, while the two danced.84
Here, again, was an attempt to describe the world of Candomblé from the inside, through its myths, logic and rules. Frances was also constantly drawing connections between her work in Dahomey or Haiti and her observation on this second trip to Bahia. When not related to a specific myth (such as âOlga is definite about Oshun being the daughter of Yemanjaâ), details in a ritual and genealogy of saints/orixás or âfamilias de santoâ, most of the questions in the fieldnotes are of the kind, âwhat kind of saint is Onile and what is its
Frances was impressed by meeting Mãe Menininha again: âShe knew all about the Professor (Mel), Ramos had talked about him, and she had seen the volumes on Dahomey. Perhaps Haitian Valley too. She talks about âbooks with picturesâ. She remembered me from the moment she saw me.â85 Frances, of course, was delighted when people, such as in the Bogum house, remembered her and Melville, the recording, the books and her young daughter Jean from their first visit.86 However, in the same house, Vivaldo informed her that the terrain had shifted. During the visit, she met a team from a German TV station getting ready to film and heard comments that Jorge Amado and Carybé frequented the house a lot because they liked its feasts.87 On the one hand, she was reminded of the past, while on the other hand, she perceived dramatic changes in the cult-house.
Over the previous twenty-five years, essential informants â the most prominent in the Candomblé community â had died: Joãozinho, Vidal, Tia Massi, Manoel de Ogun, Procopio, Bernardino, Emiliana and, during her fieldwork, Mãe Senhora.
With Senhora gone, Vivaldo considers Olga as the new star of the Candomblé world (â¦) Vivaldo and his brother Sinval are close to her, and Julio is of the house, surely Vivaldoâs influence (â¦) Engenho Velho (Casa Branca) house dismissed as not in the public eye â no initiation there to publicize. With their attitude against engaging in any âworkâ for outsiders or divining, they would hardly attract important outsiders. Me, I am still as impressed with their knowledge and probity as Mel and I were in 1942.88
Frances got along nicely with Vivaldo and Julio but also had her own opinions. The last eight pages of the fieldnotes are questions she wanted to double-check
Bahia had changed a lot since 1942: the cityâs population had doubled; the oil industry and the two concrete industrial plants in Aratu and Camacari had meant, at long last, upward social mobility for a sizeable part of the black population; the founding and growth of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and the active role of its first president, Edgar Santos, in attracting scholars and intellectuals had made Salvador an essential hub for the avant-garde; in the media the acceptance of Candomblé and the African roots of Bahiana popular culture had become much more evident; and last but not least, by then several foreign scholars and artists had become regulars in the most significant and more renowned Candomblé houses. These included Alfred Métraux, Roger Bastide, Odorico Tavares, Jorge Amado, Carybé and especially Pierre Verger.90 Indeed, in her fieldnotes Frances registered some changes compared to 1941â42: more Yoruba was spoken in the rituals, but less Yoruba was spoken in daily life. That is, knowledge of the Yoruba language was less part of daily life and used more than before to add a touch of tradition to rituals â and in general, knowledge of it was more superficial.
Another change had to do with outsiders, foreigners and scholars, who had become more conspicuous; there were more white people at the feasts than before. Some of these white people had become influential. Verger and his Yoruba-Nago ethnocentrism, or even âobsessionâ,91 played a role in making the Yoruba language more popular than before in certain orthodox cult-houses.92
Yet another difference was the degree of not just academic but also political recognition of certain Candomblé houses, especially those held to be more traditional and closer to African traditions â these were the cult-houses Frances visited (Axe Opo Afonja, Casa Branca, Gantois, Alaketo Batefolha, Oxumare, Bogum). More intellectuals and politicians were calling on the cults, especially
In many ways, Frances was nostalgic for the more straightforward and impoverished cult-houses of twenty-five years ago. Now she found that in certain places, such as in the house of Zezéâ built on her large terrain (roca) in Amaralina, there was even opulence, with crystal glasses and expensive silver on display.
The attitude toward Candomblé much changed. To belong is fashion. You speak of it openly. Name your Orisha. Gisella (American Jewish) is for Oshun, Licia Shango and the youngest Ogun. Both have âcontas lavadasâ (â¦) So everybody goes for a jogo de buzio (divination) and furnishes what is required by the mae de santo. It seems it is not that one really believes, but neither does one disbelieve.101
Frances compared both Bahia and West Africa in earlier years, such as in the Alaketo house â⦠Olga herself got possessed. As sharp a possession as I have seen in Dahomey, and how very Dahomean her dancing.â Frances played the discs she and Melville had produced for the Library of Congress and showed a couple of books, such as Dahomean Narrative. The first reconnected the past
Things had changed radically also within the US Consulate in Salvador. In the 1940s it had to find a way of dealing with the arrival of black scholars such as Frazier and Turner â the consul was known to be a racist. By 1967 an adequately edited and up-to-date list in English of (Afro)Bahian feasts and festivities was handed out by the same consulate to US visitors to the city. The âmagicâ of Salvador had already become one of its unique selling points for US visitors and tourists.
Upon her return to the US, Frances wrote to Vernon McKay who had since moved from the State Department and was at the Programme of African Studies, Johns Hopkins:
I am back from a most interesting six-week stay in Bahia, and delighted that I took this opportunity, thanks to your encouragement, to revisit the cult centers where we had done most of our work in 1941â42. The African orixás deserve their share of credit, for they granted privileges that brought me invitations to the shrines â the holy of holiest, that are not for casual visitors, not even initiates, except when they make offerings to their special deity. I was deeply touched. There were still some among the cult heads who remembered Mel and the Dahomey volumes which he showed them; our recording sessions; and even Jean dancing with the initiates during the less formal rites. ⦠What struck me emphatically was what a superb base the Centro de Estudos Afro Orientais is for Afro-American studies â and comparative African studies as well. I am wondering if you were as impressed with Vivaldo as I am. There is no one more respected, more esteemed, or better informed in the Candomblé world than he. ⦠I have also been struck by the meagerness of the resources at the disposal of the Center.102
From the correspondence, we can deduce three key facts: Mel impressed people with his Dahomey books and the recording sessions; FSH was emotionally attached to Bahia and the Candomblé world; and she was very supportive of the CEAO and Vivaldoâs effort to visit African Studies programmes in the US during the three months for which he applied for funding with the FF, USIS, CNPq and the Brazilian Foreign Office.103 Frances also suggested that Waldir apply to the FF in Rio for support for their library and the acquisition of
There seemed to be high expectations for the publication of a book based on their unpublished fieldnotes. As George Simpson put it:
I am delighted to hear that you are writing up the unpublished fieldnotes that you and Mel collected in 1941â42 and that you were able to get so much new and valuable material in your recent stay in Bahia. Afro-Americanists will be fortunate to have a chance to read the work you are doing on Candomblé. The re-study and additional materials twenty-five years after the first work will be of great value.107
Simpson was one of the professors whom Vivaldo had wanted to study with, had he received support for his plan to study in the US.108 As soon as she was
Why did the book, apparently titled âA Comparison of Bahia-Yoruba Cultsâ, not get published? Were the circumstances similar to those Turner faced â that modern Yoruba nationalism was not interested or had other priorities? Unlike Turner, FSH had institutional and financial support for the project. In September 1969, Gwendolin Carter, Head of the African studies programme at Northwestern, in the same letter in which she communicated that the Africana Library of the University had been named after Melville Herskovits, shared that the programme could provide USD 2,500 for a research and writing grant âto work on the Brazilian materials of which part at least came out of the travel grant from the Programme a couple of years ago. It would be perfectly appropriate, particularly concerning the earlier work you and Mel had doneâ.111 On September 12, FSH replied to Carter:
I will get a draft for the grant to you before the beginning of term. The problem with writing up the Brazilian materials, much of it, which we call âsensitiveâ in terms of the political situation, is that things seem to be going from bad to worse. I have decided to follow the good advice of friends here and in Brazil and write up the unpublished material and let publication wait, or perhaps leave some things out. Which could be the politically sensitive parts in the fieldnotes? One day will talk about all this.112
This chapter dealt with the aftermath of the extended field trip by Turner, Frazier and the Herskovitses for the construction of Bahia as an ideal fieldstation for young and upcoming social scientists, mainly from the US, in the period 1942 to 1967. When we compare the late thirties with the late sixties, significant qualitative and quantitative changes had taken place in the scholarly exchange between the US (mainly Northwestern and Columbia universities at first) and Brazil, more specifically Bahia. The trend was from experimental one-person fieldwork missions (Pierson, Landes, Frazier, Turner and Herskovits), supported by individual grants, to a collective tripartite agreement between the State of Bahia, Columbia University and UNESCO, and then a bipartite exchange (Columbia, Harvard, Cornell and Illinois on one hand, and Thales de Azevedo as the representative of the FFCH/UFBA, on the other). This last arrangement would be repeated in the graduate and later undergraduate exchange fieldwork programmes, which corresponded with the democratization of the access to the study of anthropology in the US and the ensuing growing demand for fieldwork locations, preferably and whenever possible, in exotic contexts.
Ironically, the individual fieldwork projects offered many more grant opportunities to Brazilian scholars to study in the US, mainly through Herskovitsâ motivated and paternalistic efforts (for Ruy Coelho, Eduardo, René Ribeiro, José and Gizella Valladares, among others). With one exception, no Brazilian student-assistants involved in the UNESCO project were invited to complete their graduate studies in the US (De Azevedo 1968).115 This also applied to the
The fact that the State of Bahia itself largely financed the tripartite project I think explains why that project included a certain degree of reciprocity and the formal training of Brazilian student-assistants. Anthropologist Vivaldo da Costa Lima, then possibly the best-known scholar in the field of Afro-Brazilian studies in Bahia, and one of the more renowned in Brazil more generally, tried to obtain a grant to complete his studies in the US through his connection with Frances Herskovits, in 1967, but failed to get a grant after all. That is, despite the undeniable qualities of the several community studies carried out in those fieldwork projects, which reverberated positively throughout the Brazilian social sciences one way or another, these exchange projects were conceived of on an extremely unequal basis and did not contribute to consolidating and making Bahia-based anthropology less provincial as much as they should have done.
Métraux to MJH, September 21, 1950.
MJH to Métraux, October 2, 1950.
Coelho qualified for his PhD in June 1949 and, in July, he accepted a position at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio de Piedras. From there, in June 1950, he would go on to UNESCO, where Métraux hired him to work on the 1951â1952 UNESCO Project in Brazil. In 1952, he returned to Brazil. Coelho would finally and exceptionally defend his doctorate on the Black Caribs of Honduras in August 1954 at the USP in São Paulo â profiting from MJHâs and Wagleyâs presence at the Congresso de Americanistas in the same city (Coelho 2002).
âEâ visÃvel, na versão final do estudo e nas cartas, a obstinação em encontrar evidências empÃricas que corroborassem a origem africana dos domÃnios investigados â os africanismos retidos e reinterpretados no Novo Mundoâ (Ramassote 2017:240).
In MJH to Carlton Smith, October 12, 1945, Box 32, Folder 2, NU, Herskovits presents himself as a âprofessional bahianoâ.
MJH to Ramos, March 26, 1936. Box 19 Folder 14, NU.
Ramos to MJH, May 11, 1937, Box 19 Folder 14, NU.
MJH to Ramos, May 8, 1937.
Ramos to MJH, August 17, 1937.
Ramos to MJH, May 30, 1938.
MJH to Ramos, January 16, 1940.
Ramos to MJH, March 14, 1940.
MJH to Moe, June 20, 1938. In the course of his career, MJH also recommended Turner (1936), Frazier (1940), Romulo Latchanere (1941), Vianna Moog (1942) and others for different grants.
MJH to Moe, October 22, 1940.
MJH to Moe, October 25, 1940.
MJH to Pratt, March 21, 1941.
In fact, Ramos wrote to MJH that this book in translation was just a quick summary of the history of the Negro in Brazil and his contribution to material civilization in Brazil. The publisher wanted a booklet written in simple style for a broad US audience (Ramos to MJH, June 1, 1939).
Ramos to MJH, July 10, 1941.
âHerskovitsâs daughter, Jean, believes that her father wrote less about Brazil than his other field trips because of the scary association of Brazil with his heart attack. Due to Herskovitsâs work for the Bureau of Economic Warfare during World War II, his all-consuming focus on the Program of African Studies after the war, and his reluctance to interrupt his daughterâs schooling, he never undertook another ethnographic field trip after Brazilâ (Gershenhorn 2004:259â260). Bastide (1974:111â2) had another explanation: âWhen asked why he [Herskovits] didnât publish a book on Brazil, Herskovits answered that he would first have to do some research in Portugal so that he would not mistake the origins of cultural traits he had patiently inventoried among blacks.â
In our context, the language and style in the correspondence are revealing and are part of a power struggle. So, Gilberto Freyre always wrote back in English, mostly in handwritten letters â a mixture of local and global style, I would suggest. Verger did the same â his letters were always handwritten, which was part of his ânaturalâ style. Thales, who could obviously read English and French, always wrote in Portuguese, mostly typing his letters on his personal paper which referred to him as âmedical doctorâ. Anisio Teixeira wrote back mostly in English. He had been trained in education at Columbia, after all. Ruy Coelho and Eduardo always wrote to MJH in English, usually in typed form. René Ribeiro mostly typed his letters, but they were all in Portuguese. Verger and Bastide sometimes wrote in French, also to non-French native speakers. Métraux wrote mostly in English â he had become a US citizen but grew up as Swiss French. All the non-Brazilians used a sprinkling of Portuguese in their English or French, especially when it came to rendering âlocal colourâ or showing familiarity with the world and deities of Candomblé. This use of languages creates an interesting hierarchical map of communication in correspondence.
According to Jeferson Bacelar (personal communication, 29.09.2020), it was Valladares who introduced Vivaldo da Costa Lima to the world of Candomblé.
Box 30, Folder 14.
Ribeiro to MJH, no exact date, 1944, Box 30, Folder 14.
RR to MJH, May 30, 1951, Box 54, Folder 8.
My impression is that the project did not go ahead because US universities were not interested in establishing a collaboration in which the Joaquim Nabuco Insitute paid for living expenses locally and the US institutions covered the travel costs.
RR to MJH, November 1952, Box 6, Folder 11.
It is close to my concept of racial habitus (Sansone 2003).
From the late 1940s the libraries of the FUNDAJ (Recife), FFCH and CEAO (Salvador), ELS and FFLCH/USP (São Paulo) and Museu Nacional (Rio) started to receive copies of the Herskovitsesâ books. The UFBA library benefited too. See Appendix 5 for a list of the titles in these libraries.
Freyreâs letters to MJH, always in impeccable English, ceased in 1940, but he kept in touch through his assistants, mostly through René Ribeiro. It is interesting to notice how the use of a certain language adds status or, to the contrary, informality to the correspondence. Ribeiro, as well as Valladares, wrote in Portuguese, whereas Coelho and Eduardo wrote mostly in English. The first two were more established in Brazilian academia, For them the doctorate in the US was the crowning of the career, whereas Coelho and Eduardo started their doctorate at a younger age.
RR to MJH June 15, 1955.
MJH to RR, March 25, 1960.
Ruy Coelho to MJH, July 22, 1952, Box 55, Folder 25.
MJH to Bascom, August 2, 1954, Box 62, Folder 29.
Verger to MJH, January 29, 1950.
Verger to MJH, July 22, 1950.
I owe such insights to Julio Campos Simões (2019), who dedicated his undergraduate dissertation to the dialogue between Furtado and Ribeiro and the joint use of anthropology made by the two.
Anisio would spend a year again at Columbia after the 1964 coup, with a grant from the Ford Foundation.
RR to MJH, July 1, 1945.
MJH to RR, January 8, 1946.
In the years 2005â2010, I was involved with a research project that dealt with the UNESCO projects in Bahia and Brazil more generally. It was a critical reappraisal of that intellectual endeavour. For this project, I carried out research in numerous archives and went back to the field in one particular location, in the region of the same sugar mill where William Hutchinson did research in 1950â53 for his PhD under the supervision of Charles Wagley (Hutchinson 1957). The title of that research project was âBahian Counterpoint of Sugar and Oilâ (Sansone 2007).
The UNESCO Statement on Race is available at www.unesco.org and was originally published in the journal Man, 50 (1950), 138â39.
For a good general overview of the UNESCO message for the public on race and racism, see the special issue of the UNESCO Courier (VI, 8â9, 1953) entitled âThe Intellectual Fraud of Racial Doctrinesâ. It contains, among others, an article by Métraux, meaningfully entitled âA man with racial prejudice is as pathetic as his victimâ (p. 3) and one by E. Franklin Frazier, who was at the UNESCO in 1952â53, on the âSociological aspects of race relationsâ (p. 10). Its main point was that the attitudes of members of another group are not individual, as the then very popular psychological and interpersonal explanation of racism tended to suggest, but social attitudes.
See, in the first place, the work of Marcos Chor Maio, Antonio Sergio Guimarães, and, for a collection of articles that also includes Maio and Guimarães, Pereira and Sansone (2007).
As Marcos Chor Maio put it, âIntellectual prestige, personal relations, former work experiences and international experience were pivotal in choosing the case studiesâ (1999:150).
Métraux to MJH, January 29, 1951. Despite the inspiration brought about by Pierre Vergerâs residency in Bahia in the 1950s, it was only during the 1960s that the first Bahia anthropologists, historians and linguists would go to Africa â Vivaldo da Costa Lima, Julio Braga and Yeda Castro (Reis 2015). The CEAO-Africa exchange project would be, in fact, one of the first relatively large-scale international projects in the field of the humanities and social sciences for a professor of the Federal University of Bahia.
Métraux to MJH, December 20, 1951.
MJH to Métraux, February 11, 1952.
In the otherwise rather sober interview De Azevedo had with Marcos Chor Maio, he stated that he was âjust the administratorâ, betraying a degree of frustration at his subordinate role in the whole project (Thales de Azevedo, in Maio 1996:166). Elsewhere, De Azevedo (1984:75) wrote that the research was âunder the direction of Charles Wagley and Thales de Azevedo and the supervision of the Bahia Foundation for the Development of Science (FDCB)â. In other words, in publications in English, Wagley was presented as the main coordinator, whereas in those in Portuguese, Wagley and De Azevedo shared the coordination.
Short after fieldwork began, Rollie Poppino, a PhD candidate in history at Stanford, arrived with plans to undertake a historical study of Feira de Santana. He was urged to join the programme. Eventually, he published his thesis in 1953 (Poppino 1953). Harris published his thesis in 1956 (Harris 1952, 1956) and Hutchinson in 1957 (Hutchinson 1957). The only report of Zimmermanâs research is in Wagley (1952). There would be two more PhD candidates from Columbia to join the programme in 1951: Anthony Leeds, doing research in the cacao-producing area (Leeds 1957), with the support of the Fundação para o Desenvolvimento da Ciência na Bahia, and Carlo Castaldi, researching urban problems and Afro-Brazilian cults in Itaparica. Castaldiâs thesis is still unpublished (1953) and he would soon leave academia, but he published an article on folk Catholicism (Castaldi 1957). Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz (1918â2018), after a suggestion by Roger Bastide, undertook research sponsored by the programme on Messianism in the town of Santa Brigida (De Queiroz 1955), and Maria de Azevedo Brandão, Thalesâ daughter, carried out relatively similar research in the small coastal town of Abrantes (Brandão 1957, 1959). These were the only two junior Brazilian scholars involved, and it is not clear what kind of support they received from the programme. The programme obviously had the capacity to attract scholars.
University of Columbia, Dept. of Anthropology, June 10, 1955.
Project File C 336, 1959, RAC, FF.
CCNY Grants, series III-A, Box 509.
David Epstein, Virginia Greene, David Berke, Gordon Harper, Shepard Foreman and Conrad Kottak, who would carry out longitudinal research in the then small fishing village of Arembepe (Kottak 1966, 1967a, 1967b).
In personal communication in 2020, both Maxine Margolis and Conrad Kottak confirmed that they never had Brazilian students working with them. They did their research alone, with the help of local key informants â often their hosts.
In those years, the Corporation awarded a lot of grants for undergrad study abroad, and more for area studies in general. For example, the Maxwell Center at the University of Syracuse received a grant for its international programme, whereby students spent four months at a foreign university (CCNY, Board 15/3/62). A sign of the centreâs relatively liberal leaning was that Eduardo Mondlane was employed to teach anthropology there, from 1961 to 1963.
It is unclear from the documentation who were the local contacts at each field station â if any.
Marvin Harris to William Marvel, September 25, 1959, CCNY.
In 1964, the project would be continued with a smaller CCNY grant and a matching grant from the National Science Foundation.
Columbia-Cornell-Harvard-Field Studies Programme, Report and Proposal, October 19, 1960, CCNY.
CCNY Grant Files, Box 768.
December 3, 1965, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Illinois Summer Field Studies Program, CCNY.
Report, December 3, 1965: 17, CCNY.
Progress report, May 8, 1967.
November 19, 2019: 64â147, The Trustees of Columbia University, Reel 0385.
November 18, 2019, RAC, SSRC. Many of these meetings were dedicated to relatively trivial issues, such as the question of honoraria â the Corporation was unwilling to pay these to professors who sat on the selection committee for the field programme candidacies.
RAC, SSRC, US-LA Faculty Exchange Program, Box 323.
RF Records, Projects, SG.1, Latin American Studies, Box 494, RAC.
RAC, SSRC, US-LA Faculty Exchange Program, Box 327.
This change of policy is related to a different relationship with the US government. In 1967 the FF published a report arguing for a less automatic alignment with the State Department than had been the case thus far. The consequence was that the FF started financing, for instance, Cepal and exiled scholars from countries like Argentina, Chile and Brazil â mostly supporting them with grants that allowed them to live for a while in the US and sometimes in France (Rosenfield 2014).
I taught at such summer schools for many years, especially at the programme of the Department of Black Studies of the University of California at Berkeley.
She had typed up all the field notes by 1942, and in many ways the notes are as much hers as Melâs. They are packed with her remarks.
FSH to Ribeiro, November 2, 1965.
The main ones were the then young Vivaldo da Costa Lima and Julio Braga. Allow me to mention that CEAO is the institute I have been working at for the last twenty years.
FSH to Waldir, January 8, 1966. Waldir Freitas de Oliveira, who is cited several times in the field notes, did not remember Francesâ visit: Infelizmente tenho pouca lembrança da passagem de Madame Frances por Salvador. Efetivamente, estava no CEAO como auxiliar de pesquisa de Vivaldo da Costa Lima e somente passava por lá para entregar minhas anotações do trabalho de campo. Até porque era o último ano de Faculdade e, se por acaso, a ajudei teria sido algo de pouca importância (personal communication, August 1, 2020). Waldir passed away on June 17, 2021.
FSH to Waldir.
FSH Budget.
FSH to US Consulate, Schomburg. In a letter to Thales, Herskovits had mentioned that the couple would have liked to go back to Bahia soon after their trip to Africa in 1953 (MJH to De Azevedo, December 17, 1952).
FSH to G. Carter, January 16, 1967. Because of the devaluation of the Cruzeiro, Frances managed to spare USD 500 of the USD 2,500 she obtained from the Program of African Studies at NU. In her final fieldwork report, she wrote that she would like to hold on to this USD 500 in order to send more books to CEAO and for the organization of the manuscript on Bahia.
MacKay to State Department, November 1, 1966.
It seems that Vivaldo da Costa Lima was particularly pivotal in describing the genealogies. In the mid-sixties, he had carried out historical research on Candomblé houses of the 1930s (2004). In Francesâ fieldnotes, there is also a summary of two interviews by Vivaldo in April 1960 with Mãe Senhora and Mãe Menininha. It is quite possible these two interviews resulted from that research.
De Azevedo and Oliveira were a bit cool with her and showed less interest in receiving her than she expected. Vivaldo resented it, but she did not care much.
The months from January through March are those in which most feasts are organized in the traditional cult-houses. Candomblé houses follow the Catholic calendar; Easter feasts and festivities are suspended. Frances was in Bahia at the right time for Candomblé feasts.
FSH Fieldnotes 1967: 35. The relationship between the Herskovitses and Verger seems to have grown sourer over time. As we saw, Melville was quite supportive of Verger at first. On April 1, 1948, Métraux wrote to Verger that MJH had agreed to write a book with him on the Afro-Brazilian cults in Bahia and Pernambuco and was enthusiastic about Vergerâs photos (Le Bouler 1994:95) about which Verger rejoiced. That book was never produced, but in the 1950s Vergerâs outstanding photos were used in books edited by Wagley for UNESCO and Bastide and Métrauxâs articles in the UNESCO Bulletin. However, something changed in the 1960s. Verger, in his correspondence with Métraux, on October 1, 1960, complained that âHerskovits, the big patron of Northwestern University at Evanston, does not love me. I have been for him a troublemaker (un affreux trouble-fête), since Brazil and Africa have been for him âterrainsâ for his observation and for (to us his own terms) the phenomenon of acculturation ⦠and yes, I committed the unforgivable error of giving news of the one to the otherâ (Le Bouler 1994:294). Apparently, both the Herskovitses and Verger would have preferred to have been the sole transatlantic messenger between Africa and Brazil. By 1967, Francesâ fieldnotes reveal a feeling of competition with Verger. During her visit, she felt that Verger had too much influence in the Candomblé community. As a matter of fact, Verger did not have much personal influence on the visit of African students to UFBA and especially to the CEAO. The presence of African students was the result of an exchange between UFBA and a few African universities, especially Ile Ife in Nigeria (Reis 2014, 2018, 2019). I believe that the tension between the Herskovitses and Verger reveals the higher complexity of the Candomblé community over time. It had become a community which by then had already become somewhat integrated with several foreign and national scholars, especially anthropologists. These scholars had also become part of the highly structured gossip flows that are part and parcel of the process of fission/alliance of the more âtraditionalâ Candomblé cult-houses.
FSH Fieldnotes 1967: 38.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 56.
In Francesâ correspondence, we find reference to the presents (and sums of money) that she distributed during her second visit to some informants of her earlier research in 1941â42: Mãe Menininha, Zezé, Mãe Olga, Clexilda, Sociedade São Jorge do Engenho Velho (Casa Branca). Olga and Menininha sent her greetings and were thankful for the lembranças. The Herskovitses, as did Landes and Pierson before them, left behind quite some saudade in Bahia, as can be gathered by several personal letters. The question, of course, is to what extent these presents and payments equalled the strength of such saudade.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 120.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 6.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 123.
For an account of such sociocultural changes in Salvador in the 40s, 50s and 60s, see Sansi (2007), Riserio (1995) and Ickes (2013). Ickes (2013) explores in great detail the active role of the press and radio stations in creating a positive regional identity based mainly on the African origin of the majority of the population.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 45.
âWith Vivaldo ⦠we talked about Verger a little â a feeling here about that is that he is Yoruba (and chiefly Oyo and Oshun, the Ogbo area) obsessed. He has his special ethnocentrism fixated on the Nago-Yoruba people. Vivaldo is careful, but skeptical about his bias and influenceâ (FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 45).
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, pp. 46â7.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 76.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 49.
In Appendix 2 we see that out of 280 Candomblé feasts of houses registered with the police in 1941 (an important bureaucratic obligation then) only three were of the Jeje nation. In fact, Frances indicated in her nostalgic complaints that there had been a conspicuous process of Yorubaization/Nagoization of Candomblé houses that changed their allegiance to, for instance, the Ijexa nation and so they became Nago/Yoruba. Over the process of Nagoization see also Luis Nicolau Parés (2004).
Further evidence of the importance of the CEAO in those years can be found in the letter, kept in the CEAO archive, sent by St. Clair Drake, then visiting professor of sociology at the University of Ghana in Logon, to George Agostinho da Silva, the first director of the Centre, on March 23, 1960: âDr. Turner has not yet had the opportunity to analyse the data [of his research in Brazil]. ⦠I am wondering if you are in a position to provide him with an opportunity to do so either in Brazil or in Chicago ⦠I have also thought that I should like to spend a year in Bahia ⦠and would like to inquire whether there are any possibilities of cooperation for persons who speak English only.â This letter is revealing of both the importance the CEAO had acquired internationally in those years and of the continuous lack of resources in the US for renowned black scholars such as Lorenzo Dow Turner and John Gibbs St. Clair Drake.
An overview of the daily newspapers Estado da Bahia, Diario de Noticias and A Tarde published in 1967 shows that, at least in the press, the general situation concerning Candomblé and the Afro world had changed considerably since 1942. The Diario de Noticias carried a weekly column called Africanismos, the baianas in the Bonfim feast were reported on very positively in all the consulted newspapers, and the âstone and chalkâ religious material heritage was celebrated as a sign of Bahiaâs distinctiveness in Brazil (and no longer as a remembrance of the past). There were several articles on foreign tourists â arriving, again, on the SS Brasil of the McCormack company â whose presence was evidence that Bahia was an appealing destination and that (high class) tourism could bring revenue. It seemed that the elites had by then developed a different attitude to the past, if not yet to their African past (on the slow but sure incorporation of Afro-Bahian culture into the self-image of the state in the press, see the masterly account by Ickes, 2013 and 2013a).
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 63.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 62.
FSH Fieldnotes, 1967, p. 90.
FSH to McKay, March 15, 1967.
Vivaldo to FSH, March 5, 1967.
Despite the support from William Bascom and other professors in the US, Vivaldo would never get this grant to study in the US.
Vivaldo received, with Julio, Waldir and the CEAO library, many books: this was certainly also a form of thanks for their guidance.
De Oliveira to FSH, June 8, 1967.
Simpson to FSH, July 4, 1967.
There are several links between the research for the present book and my next project on the life of Eduardo Mondlane, the first president of the Mozambique Liberation Movement, who had been trained as a sociologist in the US at Northwestern and was closely related with Herskovits. George E. Simpson, whose fieldwork on Shango in Jamaica had been influenced by Ribeiroâs Masterâs dissertation on Shango in Recife, was one of the personal connections between my two projects, and African and African-American studies more generally, through Mel, Frazier, Frances Herskovits and Mondlane â who was a mentor and later a friend until his assassination in 1969. Simpson was also connected to CEAO in 1967 and knew Waldir Oliveira, who he met on the occasion of Francesâ visit and research that year in Bahia (Simpson to FSH, July 1, 1967, FSH Papers, SC). Other connections with Mondlane are Marvin Harris and, of course, the Herskovitses.
FSH to Vivaldo, July 1967.
Vivaldo to FSH, March 5, 1967.
Carter to FSH, September 8, 1969.
FSH to Carter, September 12, 1969.
FSH to Carter, October 7, 1969.
The obituary in the New York Times read: âEvanston, Ill., May 7 â Mrs. Frances Shapiro Herskovits, an anthropologist who worked with her late husband, Dr. Melville J. Herskovits, on African cultural anthropology, died Thursday at the age of 74. Mrs. Herskovits and her husband, who died in 1963, taught at Northwestern University. She edited books based on their research. Her own book, âCultural Relativism,â is virtually complete and scheduled for publication. She co-authored with her husband âRebel Destiny: Among the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana,â published in 1934. Surviving are a daughter, Dr. Jean Herskovits, a member of the faculty of the New York State University at Purchase, N. Y., and a sister, Mrs. Harry Dolkart.â In fact, Cultural Relativism was another anthology of Melvilleâs work. Her own book would never be.
To be fair, Thales de Azevedo received an invitation to visit and lecture at Columbia University in 1952. He travelled with his wife, spending six months in the US. In this period, he also called on the Herskovitses in Chicago, and seemed have maintained a friendly relationship with the couple over time (see Thales to MJH, November 4, 1952, and MJH to Thales, November 12, 1952, Box 59, Folder 7, NU). According to my colleague Maria Rosario de Carvalho, Raymundo Duarte, a senior undergraduate student in social sciences, received a grant to study in the US, but he turned down the offer because he had just got married. One possible reason for the scarcity of foreign grants for Bahia students was their relatively small number in the 50s and 60s compared to São Paulo, Rio and even Recife.