Chico Rei by Câmara Cascudo and translated by Marina Quaresma
An African King was defeated in battle and made as prisoner. The winner destroyed the vanquished villages, plantations and barns. He assembled the queen and their prince kids, threw them on the road as a nameless herd, selling them all as slaves, to Brazil.
While crossing the Atlantic, the Black King lost one of his sons and saw his best generals and loyal soldiers die out from starvation, cold and ill-treats.
Phlegmatic towards the humiliation, kingly towards the meltdown, the sovereign, lined with whip scars, famished and ill, walked the sand of the New World¹, as the last of men.
Day after day, exposed in the slave market, marked in white paint, eating once a day.
A gold mine owner, coming to Rio de Janeiro² looking for an alive source of work for the grueling plowing labor, chose the King, as who sympathizes with a strong animal languished of tiredness.
He touched out his arms and shoulders, made him open up his mouth, to chew, to cough, and to walk a bit; then bought him in a lot, including women and other men.
They walked towards Minas Gerais³, under the sun, under the rain, in a non nominated and melancholic coffle of crimeless doomed.
The King, in cotton pants and bare chest, took the lead in the march, as if he was commanding his troop, heading to the cubatas⁴, surrounded in a variety of honors.
They all stayed in Vila Rica⁵.
The black King was baptized as Francisco. The black slaves, whispering, put together the two supreme titles of the sterling ex-soba⁶.
They addressed him by the monarch predicate and his christian name.
The slave was Chico Rei⁷.
Silent, adamant, obstinate, the black man plowed the soil and shook the gold panning continuously as a restless and stopless machine.
Master and servant distinguished from each other by their soberness, uncommon effort, and natural composure manners and behavior.
Around him, clustered slaves who had been, brave, bowed, stubborn, immune to time warriors, multiplying the labor.
One day, Chico Rei showed up to his master with his wife's price in gold nugget. The farmer took the prize and gave the black woman - that once was a queen - her letter of manumission⁸.
After some time, Chico Rei was free.
He and his wife - helped by the fealty of a Royalty that have not been disgraced in significance - spared, night and day, the price of their son's and vassal's freedom.
Year after year, Chico Rei pulled away men and women from the captive, putting back to free labor his old companions of weapons and hunt.
One by one, the taken kingdom was rebuilt, now in the American land.
He bought a plot of land in Encardideira⁹. The land was a gold mine.
Chico Rei became rich, and the gold expanded the limits of his property that was the regathering of free men, connected by a worship and hope bond.
King in mantle and crown, acclaimed in the Feast of Nossa Senhora do Rosário¹⁰ Chico Rei was truly a sovereign, possessed the power of a right which had been conquered through tears, sorrow and martyrdom. No authority was greater than his voice; Voice of a king in command, whose didn't forget the egalitarian years during the slavery.
Black men and black women lived softly and had tremendous joy in the popular balls, in the drumming that extended through the nights, in the endless circle of group dances.
On January 6, came from Encardideira that African Kingdom, imposing, full of feathers, splendid in gemstones, dancing through Vila Rica's pavement, to Ouro Preto¹¹, aristocratic, full of churches and palaces, in praise of the Padroeira dos Escravos¹²
The Queen, her daughters and the maids of honor brought the carapinha¹³ powdered with gold flakes.
After the mass, the procession, the public dancing, before returning to the kingdom that was being raised, orderly and peaceful in Encardideira, the Queen and the vassals bathe their heads in the stone fountain up in Alto da Cruz¹⁴.
At the bottom of the fountain, shining in the trembling water, rested all the gold that adorned their combed hair. More slaves would be set free, rescued by that unique blessing.
For that reason no one forgets, in the free lands of Minas Gerais, the physiognomy of Chico Rei, the black sovereign one, victorious over his fate, founder of the thrones, in reason of his persistence, serenity and reliance in the eternal resources of labor.
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¹New World: was how they called Brazil in the Colonial Era.
²Rio de Janeiro: is a state in Southeastern Brazil. From the colonial period until the first independent decades, Rio de Janeiro was a city of slaves. There was a large influx of African slaves to Rio de Janeiro: in 1819, there were 145,000 slaves in the captaincy. In 1840, the number of slaves reached 220,000 people. The Port of Rio de Janeiro was the largest port of slaves in America.
³Minas Gerais: It is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It is known for its huge reserves of iron and sizeable reserves of gold and gemstones, including emerald, topaz and aquamarine mines. The appearance of slavery in Brazil dramatically changed with the discovery of gold and diamond deposits in the mountains of Minas Gerais in the 1690s. Slaves started being imported from Central Africa and the Mina coast to mining camps in enormous numbers.
The distance from Rio de Janeiro to Minas Gerais by the shortest path takes at least 556,49 km (this was the distance that Chico Rei and other slaves had to walk).
⁴Cubatas: designates kind of hut, covered with straw, which served to house the slaves during the slavery.
⁵Vila Rica: (meaning Rich Town) is a city in and former capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a former colonial mining town.Founded at the end of the 17th century. Initially the name was Vila Rica de Albuquerque and then Vila Rica de Nossa Senhora do Pilar de Ouro Preto. Today is known as Ouro Preto (Black Gold)
⁶Soba: In all of Angola's provinces, the title “Soba” is given to the traditional community leaders to provide local guidance and leadership in solving social and physical community matters.
⁷Chico Rei: ‘Chico’ is a nickname for ‘Francisco’, and ‘rei’ means ‘king’ in portuguese
⁸Manumission: is the act of an owner freeing his or her slaves.
⁹Encardideira: is a subterranean excavation mine in the city of Vila Rica where Chico Rei worked and then bought it during the Brazilian Gold Rush. In 1950 Encardideira was rediscovered and renamed as Mina de Chico Rei (Chico Rei’s Mine).
¹⁰Nossa Senhora do Rosário: (Our Lady of the Rosary, also known as Our Lady of the Holy Rosary) is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary in relation to the Rosary.
The saint was already worshipped in Africa, taken by the Portuguese as a way to Christianize the slaves.
The construction of the church of Our Lady of the Rosary was ordered by Domingos Dias da Silva, having been built by his slaves in the eighteenth century, in a place where there was a senzala.
It was built so that the slaves had a place just for them to celebrate the faith, but this was not out of kindness or anything like that. The fact is that the slaves could not enter the church of Our Lady of Grace, for there it was only for the whites.
¹¹Ouro Preto: (meaning Black Gold) was the focal point of the gold rush and Brazil's golden age in the 18th century under Portuguese rule.
¹²Padroeira dos Escravos: (meaning Patron of the Slaves) is another name for the Our Lady of the Rosary.
¹³Carapinha: means kinky and woolly hair characteristic in the black race.
¹⁴Alto da Cruz: is a district of the Town of Ouro Preto.