Male homosexuality and spiritism in the African diaspora: The legacies of a link

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 184-202

  Sweet, James H ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

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EID: 21444456678     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. West Central Africa refers to the present-day countries of Cabinda, Congo, Gabon, Zaire, and Angola.
2. Anne Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo (New York, 1985);
3. Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, WI, 1990);
4. Wyatt MacGaffey, "Dialogues of the Deaf: Europeans on the Atlantic Coast of Africa," in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, ed. Stuart Schwartz (New York, 1994).
5. MacGaffey, "Dialogues," p. 255.
6. Vansina, pp. 249-50.
7. For a more thorough theoretical discussion of African belief systems, see Colin A. Palmer, "From Africa to the Americas: Ethnicity in the Early Black Communities of the Americas," Journal of World History 6 (1995): 223-25.
8. Throughout this article I will use the very recent and Westernized usage of the term "homosexuality." In fact, what I mean in each and every instance is "homosexual behavior." The Western version of the "homosexual" as a discrete "species" is a characterization that has arisen only in the twentieth century. This Western view assumes that everyone who engages in homosexual behavior is a homosexual. But in examining homosexual behavior across cultures, one must take into account a wider range of cultural and social influences on behavioral patterns. One must also recognize that behavior does not mean exclusivity, although in this article it appears that all of the actors were, behaviorally speaking, exclusively homosexual. See Stephen O. Murray, "Homosexual Categorization in Cross-Cultural Perspective," in Latin American Male Homosexualities, ed. Stephen O. Murray (Albuquerque, NM, 1995), pp. 3-32;
9. Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (New York, 1995).
10. Brazilian scholars have chronicled the same-sex behavior of early African slaves but have largely ignored the wider religious implications. See Luiz Mott, "Escravidão e homossexualidade," in História e sexualidade no Brasil, ed. Ronaldo Vainfas (Rio de Janeiro, 1986), pp. 19-40;
11. Ronaldo Vainfas, Trópico dos pecados: Moral, sexualidade e Inquisição no Brasil (São Paulo, 1989).
12. The several examples of Inquisition cases presented in this article are among dozens across the diaspora that discuss African "sodomy." Though this article deals primarily with the Portuguese-speaking world, the tentacles of the Spanish Inquisition also reached into many corners of the diaspora. Scholars doing work in Peru and Mexico have informed me that Africans are well represented among the sodomizers in the Inquisition records of those areas. For a 1585 case from Spain in which an African transvestite was burned to death, see Pedro de León, Compendio do algunas experiencias en los ministerios de que vsa la Comp a de IESVS con q practicamente se muestra con algunos acaecimientos y documentos el buen acierto en ellos (Granada, 1619), case 122.
13. Beyond the African context, Weston La Barre suggests that there is a universal psychological link between homosexual transvestism and spiritual leadership. Arguing largely in the Freudian tradition, La Barre asserts that transvestite "shamanism" is the result of a regression to a preoedipal infantile state characterized by gender ambiguity. Weston La Barre, The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion (Garden City, NY, 1970), pp. 106-9.
14. The meaning of "Guinea" was shifting during this period. During the first part of the sixteenth century, it referred to the west coast from Senegal down to the Orange River. During the late sixteenth century, the term "Guinea" referred to those slaves from the whole coast of Africa from the Sierra Leone River to the Bight of Benin. "Manicongo" would have referred to any slave from western Central Africa. As one will see from the linguistic evidence that follows, both Joane and Francisco were from West Central Africa. See Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, WI, 1969), pp. 104-5, 188-89.
15. Arquivo Nacional de Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Inquisição de Lisboa, Denuncias, livro 779, fols. 128-29v. (hereafter referred to as ANTT).
16. In Portuguese, "crimes against nature" were known as "pecado nefando."
17. Duarte's testimony later revealed that he was from Angola. ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Denuncias, livro 779, fols. 129v-130v.
18. Richard C. Trexler, Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas (Ithaca, NY, 1995), pp. 167-72.
19. Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (New York, 1985), pp. 246-49.
20. It is not at all clear from the denunciation exactly where in the Bantu-speaking world Mathias Moreira encountered the term jin bandaa. Like many Westerners, he simply homogenized all of the peoples of Angola and Congo. We can speculate that he was likely in the area of present-day Angola. The earliest description of transvested "sodomites" in Angola referred to them as quimbandas. The term kimbanda (spirit medium) is used in present-day Angola. See Gerhard Kubik, Angolan Traits in Black Music, Games and Dances of Brazil: A Study of African Cultural Extensions Overseas (Lisbon, 1979), p. 25.
21. Since Moreira's words were reported in the Portuguese, it is difficult to be precise in deciphering his version of the Bantu. In fact, it must be cautioned that Moreira heard these words through Portuguese ears, and the way he reported the word in the Portuguese may have no connection to the true Bantu sound. The Bantu stem mbàndà means "medicine man." Moreira's rendering seems to be most closely associated with the Mbundu (Angola) word kimbanda. See Malcolm Guthrie, Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu Languages (London, 1971), p. 28.
22. Antônio de Oliveira de Cardonega, História Geral das Guerras Angolanas (Lisbon 1942), p. 259.
23. See Hilton (n. 2 above), pp. x, 9; MacGaffey, "Dialogues" (n. 2 above), pp. 254-57.
24. MacGaffey, "Dialogues," pp. 254-57;
25. Wyatt MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa: The BaKongo of Lower Zaire (Chicago, 1986), pp. 72-78;
26. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (New York, 1992), pp. 242-44.
27. Carlos Estermann, The Ethnography of Southwestern Angola (New York, 1976), p. 197. One must be very careful here not to equate marriage with sex. Though these African men take other men as "wives," the economic component of the union is much more important than the sexual one. In these cases, the marriage covenant is one aimed at increasing the status and wealth of the man through the labor of the marriage partner. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Spanish asserted that Native Americans took transvested "wives" in part because they "performed the duties of women with the robustness of men" (Trexler, p. 136). Perhaps African men think likewise.
28. Harriet Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine: An Ethnography of Health and Disease in Nywaswa-Zulu Thought and Practice (New York, 1972), p. 142.
29. Though there is no evidence for Central Africa, there is sparse reference to other parts of Africa. During the nineteenth century in the kingdom of Dahomey, elite boys were recruited by the king to be raised as "effeminates." These boys guarded the king's wives and enjoyed a great deal of political prestige. See Rudi C. Bleys, The Geography of Perversion: Male-to-Male Sexual Behavior outside the West and the Ethnographic Imagination, 1750-1918 (New York, 1995), p. 125.
30. Harriet Sibisi, "The Place of Spirit Possession in Zulu Cosmology," in Religion and Social Change in Southern Africa, ed. Michael G. Whisson and Martin West (Cape Town, 1975), pp. 48-57.
31. Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Army: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford, CA, 1991), pp. 33-35.
32. Serafim Leite, ed., Cartas do Brasil e Mais Escritos de P. Manuel da Nóbrega (Coimbra, 1955), pp. 29-30.
33. Gabriel Soares de Sousa, Tratado descriptivo do Brasil em 1587, in Revista trimensal do Instituto historico e geographico do Brasil, 2d ed., vol. 14 (Rio de Janeiro, 1879), p. 287 (bk. 2, chap. 156).
34. Quoted from the chronicle of Spaniard Hernando de Alarcón, in Trexler (n. 14 above), p. 87.
35. Gutiérrez, p. 34; Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture (Boston, 1986), pp. 21-30. Some scholars are now rejecting the notion that men became berdaches as a result of sacred visions. Richard Trexler asserts that there is no evidence to support such claims, at least prior to the late seventeenth century. Acknowledging the proliferation of berdache healers by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Trexler dismisses their presence in earlier years largely on the basis of his own "suspicions" (pp. 114-15).
36. Trexler, pp. 96-101.
37. Gutiérrez, p. 35.
38. Across Latin America, native peoples hurled insults at the berdache's sexual behavior. Whether these were responses to a perception of the spiritual and temporal worlds as discrete or a response to the imposition of European Christian values is unclear. For a sampling of the slurs, see Trexler, pp. 165-66.
39. Portuguese Inquisition records from as early as 1550 describe African behaviors remarkably similar to those of the jin bandaas. Despite being closely inspected by coastal slavers, one slave from Benin by the name of Antonio evidently passed for a woman for quite some time before being discovered. Known as an "inveterate sodomite in his land," Antônio was fettered in a group of female slaves. Upon discovery of his "true" gender, Antônio was exiled to Brazil where he worked as a "female" prostitute by the name of the "negra Vitória." He was eventually banished to a life of servitude in the king's galleys. ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo no. 10,868. See also Luiz Mott, "Pagode português: A subcultura gay nos tempos inquisitoriais," Ciência e Cultura 40 (1988): 129-30.
40. See John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (New York, 1970), pp. 217-52, for the functions of African religious specialists.
41. ANTT, Inquisição de Evora, Processos, maço 494, no. 4745.
42. From the inquisition record, we know only that Luis's mother was a freed slave. Luis was born in either 1607 or 1608. The first significant numbers of Africans did not start arriving in Portugal until around a hundred years earlier. Lisbon's African slave population accounted for almost 10 percent of the total population by the middle of the sixteenth century, but this figure was much lower in rural areas, like Ferreira. Reproduction was difficult because few women were brought as slaves, and Africans were extremely atomized in rural areas. Thus, there is a high probability that Luis's mother was a first-generation African slave.
43. A 1906 report on same-sex practices in the mining towns of South Africa makes a similar assertion, but in this case, the author of the report claims that the Portuguese introduced homosexuality to southern Africa. See T. Dunbar Moodie, "Migrancy and Male Sexuality in the South African Gold Mines," in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin B. Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. (New York, 1989), pp. 411-25.
44. Donald G. McNeil, Jr., "For Gay Zimbabweans, a Difficult Political Climate," New York Times (September 10, 1995), p. A3.
45. Among the Shona of present-day Zimbabwe, most spirit mediums are men, and those who dress and take on the mannerisms of women are not necessarily thought of as engaging in same-sex behaviors. Nonetheless, since the association between cross-dressing and spirit mediumship is so strong, transvested homosexuals are assumed to be endowed with spiritual power. For a discussion of Shona spirit mediumship, see David Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (Berkeley, 1985).
46. McNeil, p. A3.
47. The Sudanic cultural group includes the contemporary countries of Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, and Togo. Anthroplogist J. Lorand Matory has written extensively on religion, gender, and sexuality among the Yoruba. See J. Lorand Matory, Sex and the Empire That Is No More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion (Minneapolis, 1994). For a discussion of the spiritual links between Yoruba and Brazilian homosexuals,
48. see J. Lorand Matory, "Homems montados: Homossexualidade e simbolismo da possessão nas religiões afro-brasileiras," in Escravidão e invencã̧o da liberdade: Estudos sobre no negro no Brasil, ed. João José Reis (São Paulo, 1988), pp. 215-31. Matory's provocative work suggests that the spiritual influence of Yoruba homosexuals may also be seen in Haitian Voodoo and Cuban Santería.
49. Peter Fry, "Male Homosexuality and Spirit Possession in Brazil," Journal of Homosexuality 11 (1986): 138-41.
50. Peter Fry, Journal of Homosexuality Ibid., pp. 141-42;
51. also see Peter Fry, "Male Homosexuality and Afro-Brazilian Possession Cults," in Murray, ed. (n. 6 above), p. 211.
52. Ruth Landes, "A Cult Matriarchate and Male Homosexuality," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 35 (1940): 393;
53. René Ribeiro, "Personality and the Psychosexual Adjustment of Afro-Brazilian Cult Members," Journal de la societe des Americanistes 58 (1969): 113;
54. Ruth Leacock and Seth Leacock, Spirits of the Deep: A Study of an AfroBrazilian Cult (New York, 1972), p. 104.
55. Fry, "Male Homosexuality and Spirit Possession," p. 146.
56. Leacock and Leacock, p. 106.
57. João Trevisan, Perverts in Paradise: Homosexuality in Brazil, from the Colonial Period to the Present (London, 1986), p. 172.
58. João Trevisan, Perverts in Paradise: Homosexuality in Brazil, from the Colonial Period to the Present ( Ibid., p. 121.
59. João Trevisan, Perverts in Paradise: Homosexuality in Brazil, from the Colonial Period to the Present ( Ibid., p. 173.
60. The other two types posited by Adam are "age-structured" and "egalitarian/'gay'" relations. "Age-structured" relations most often involve an older boy penetrating a younger boy. Upon reaching postadolescence, the passive boy "graduates" to the role of penetrator, taking his own "boy wife." Eventually, nearly all of these boys grow up to marry women. The "egalitarian model" is best characterized by present-day "gay" communities in the United States, where same-sex relationships connote the possibility of exclusive, long-lasting, mutual unions. These communities also display a cohesive group consciousness. See Barry D. Adam, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement (Boston, 1986),
61. and "Age, Structure and Sexuality," Journal of Homosexuality 11 (1986): 19-33.
62. Stephen O. Murray, Oceanic Homosexualities (New York, 1992), pp. 257-352.
63. The notion that sub-Saharan Africa has remained free from the "taint" of homosexuality is one that has permeated the historical literature for hundreds of years. In 1781, historian Edward Gibbon wrote that "the negroes . . . were exempt from this moral pestilence." See Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury (1776-88; London, 1929), 4:537, n. 205. A century later, Sir Richard Burton reinforced the position that Africans refrained from engaging in same-sex behaviors by omitting sub-Saharan Africa from the boundaries of his "Sotadic Zone," the area of the world where homosexuality was supposedly widely practiced and condoned.
64. See Richard F. Burton, ed., A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Now Entitled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: With Introduction Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men and a Terminal Essay upon the History of the Nights (London, 1885), 10:205-54. Building upon the works of Gibbon and Burton, black nationalists have claimed that homosexuality was behavior learned from Europeans.
65. See Moodie (n. 37 above), pp. 411-25; McNeil (n. 38 above), p. A3. Wayne R. Dynes briefly chronicles the history of this debate and provides a substantial bibliography of historical and anthropological works that clearly demonstrate the existence of homosexuality in sub-Saharan Africa. Wayne R. Dynes, "Homosexuality in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Unnecessary Controversy," Gay Books Bulletin 9 (1983): 20-21. Despite the significant number of works describing sub-Saharan homosexuality, the idea of African sexual exceptionalism persists across the diaspora, even among scholars. Roger Bastide describes African-Brazilian homosexuality as "pathological."
66. Roger Bastide, O Candomblé da Bahia (São Paulo, 1961), p. 309.
67. And although Mary Karasch finds evidence of the persecution of men who dressed like women in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, she dismisses homosexuality as "contrary to African values"; Mary Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1850 (Princeton, NJ, 1987), p. 295.
68. The same may not be true for women in same-sex unions. While one heterosexual man theoretically is capable of impregnating hundreds of women, each heterosexual woman is capable of producing only a finite number of children. The lesbian seems to be perceived as a greater threat to family and fertility, especially in matrilineal societies. In Zimbabwe, the families of lesbians have been known to lock them up and have them raped so that they would conceive. See McNeil, p. A3.