In 1500’s the Portuguese, led by explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral, arrived in Brasil. They began to import slave labor from Africa to work the sugarcane and cotton plantations. Free men and women were captured, loaded onto ghastly slave ships and sent on nightmarish voyages that, for most, would end in perpetual bondage.
Approximately four million people were taken from African shores, representing three major groups: the Sudanese, composed largely of Yoruba and Dahomean peoples, the Mohammedanized Guinea-Sudanese of Malesian and Hausa peoples, and the “Bantu” (among them Kongos, Kimbundas, and Kasanjes) from Angola, Congo and Mozambique.
