Querino, Manoel Raimundo (1851–1923)

Manoel Raimundo Querino (Manuel; b. 28 July 1851; d. 14 February 1923), Brazilian folk-lorist and reformer. His essays on religious cults, artists and artisans, cuisine, folk customs, and other topics celebrated skilled artisans and the Afro-Brazilian achievement.

Querino's works challenged racism by means of objective documentation. Those collected posthumously in Costumes africanos no Brasil (1938; African Customs in Brazil) and A raça africana e os seus costumes (1955; The African Race and Its Customs) assemble a gallery of black heroes and assess the African contribution to colonial Brazil. They describe Bahia's Candomblé religion without the social Darwinist theorizing of his contemporary, Raimundo Nina Rodrigues.

Querino championed the arts and skilled trades in Bahia. He was founder (1872) and teacher at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios, a vocational arts school, and founder (1877) of the Escola de Belas Artes. He represented Salvador's workers in cooperatives, at the 1892 Rio labor congress, and on the city council.

See alsoArt: Folk Art; Bahia; Race and Ethnicity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Teixeira Barros, in the preface to Manoel Raimundo Querino, A Bahia de outr'ora (1922), offers a biographical sketch. E. Bradford Burns, "Manuel Querino's Interpretation of the African Contribution to Brazil," in Journal of Negro History 59, no. 1 (1974): 78-86, analyzes Querino's thought. Jorge Amado, Tent of Miracles, translated by Barbara Shelley (1978), is a novel based on Querino's life. See also Manuel Querino, The African Contribution to Brazilian Culture, translated by E. Bradford Burns (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Leite, José Roberto Teixeira. Pintores negros do oitocentos. São Paulo: Edições K: Motores MWM Brasil, 1988.

                                              Dain Borges