Relaciones Entre Afica Y America

In the preface and the chapter four of Brown´s Book, The Reaper´s Garden, the author argues that death was a very important political instrument in Jamaica. It was not only an instrument for social control by state, but also had worked as an instrument of social negotiation for the different communities in the island. At the same time, death was principal in the relation between slavers andslaves.
Death was used in different ways, on one side, execution was a way of example to the inhabitants the destiny of those who committed acts against the state. On the other side, through the exposure of the bodies, was a way of warning to the living. It was not only a way for slavers to wield power over life itself. Through the violence infringed to the bodies and the use of other symbolsrelated to death, their intention was to use terror for manipulate the imagination of the slaves and thus showing their power over the transcendent, over the spiritual world and in this way control them. The slavers had used bodies and death as symbols of power. But, at the same time, slaves had also used the death as a powerful tool, seeing in the bodies and spirits of the death symbols andexamples of resistance.
In the introduction of Living History:Ecountering the Memory of the Heirs of Slavery, Ana Lucia Araujo argues that history and memory are two different approaches used to construct the narrative of the transatlantic slave trade. History is the official discourse constructed with archival sources and thought not from the present but from the past. Instead, memory is associatedwith a more imaginative discourse, which it’s not entirely true, and that is looked through the present, is a way of “updating the past in the present” (4). Therefore, history and memory are not the same, but they are in constant dialogue, and history uses sometimes memories for construct itself. Another important idea that Araujo mentions, is how slaves narratives are mediated due the lack ofdirect accounts of what had happened, and that for this reason heritage became an important way of transmit identity and to construct memory. Finally, she shows how are different initiatives as the ones made by the UNESCO for generate memory; but how these initiatives arise many questions about how to construct memory, and which are the reasons for doing so, because in this way memory becomes in aplace of political negotiations.
Using the methodology and the arguments presented in the introduction, on the chapter eight of his book, she analyzes how memory and history had constructed a part of the history of Benin. Her approach shows us the power of memory, and the question about how and who construct memory. We can see this in the case of Adandozan and Gezo, they both had shared somesimilarities but one is remembered in a positive way and the other not.
In “Forgetting and Remembering the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Legacy of Brazilian Slave Merchant Francisco Felix de Sousa”, Araujo argues that the visibility that de Sousa had acquired in the memory process of Benin questions the relation between memory and written history. Sousa memory is seeing as the memory of the relationbetween Brazil and Africa. He is the proto Brazilian, born of a Portuguese and an Amazon native woman, he goes to live in Africa as a merchant, participates of the slave trade, but also became an important political figure and introduce palm oil as an product for trade. He also helps prior salves that had arrived to Benin to conform a community based in Brazilian culture. The memory of Sosa is veryvaried, there are different narrations for his story, but with the new heritage project, his role as a union between Brazil and Africa had enhanced its importance. In the case of Sousa we can see all the negotiations that are present in the construction of memory, how its not a stable account but this change according the circumstances, according who is remembering and with what purpose.
The essay...