Ideological Cleaning: Why the New Brazilain Government Combats the General History of Africa?

Abstract

The paper presents a brief reflection on two moments in Brazil’s history (1960 and 2003). Moments in which Africa entered in the national political agenda strictly in terms of economic interests of the Brazilian business community. However, the predominant discourse in both periods was about the "brother peoples" synthesized in the phrase: "a rediscovery of Africa and a reunion of Brazil with its roots".
The difference between the two periods is precisely that the rediscovery and re-encounter with Africa, at present, is a historical construction of the Brazilian Black Movement, anchored on the General History of Africa as a foundational theme. What the new regime is trying to deconstruct when attacking Affirmative Action for Blacks is the kind of solidarity triggered by the re-encounter with the part of Afro-Brazilian history still denied today in the Brazilian educational system curricula.