The story of Domingos Alvares is a fitting one for this point in our class and our ongoing discussions about microhistory. Not only does it refer back to previous readings, particularly The Diligent and Two Princes of Calabar, but it brings to light several of the themes we have explored in our efforts to define what a microhistory is, and what is permissible in the writing of a narrative history like this.
Alvares himself embodies much of what we have seen in other protagonists throughout this course. His story, or what there is of it, comes to us through testimony in a court of the 18th century Portuguese Inquisition. We know of his capture in Dahomey, his enslavement in Brazil, and his resourcefulness that enabled him to buy his freedom in Rio. We know that, like the main characters in several of the other books we have read, he found himself on the wrong side of the religious tyranny of the world he had been thrust into. We know that he had a certain amount of knowledge of African vodun practices, and that he was cunning enough to parlay whatever knowledge he had into a practice as a spiritual healer that tended to agitate his white overseers while empowering him with a level of popular power and financial wherewithal that was unusual for someone in his circumstances. His persistent efforts to improve his situation would be his undoing over and over, as such activities were viewed with suspicion and fear by Christian clergy.
Alvares’ greatest power was his ability to improvise and adapt. When traditional African Sakpata healing was called for, he was able to assume that role. When it became clear that the Christians held the power and would not tolerate his pagan ideology, he implemented Christian emblems and phrases in his “cures.” When even that wasn’t enough, he invoked the natural world and claimed that there was no supernatural element of any kind in his healing powers. When opportunities arose to cast himself as a diviner of Moorish gold instead of a spritual healer, he took on that role – being careful to stage his scams so that he provided himself adequate time to get away before he was found out. In short, he was making it up as he went. But he was also smart, and not everything was made up. He incorporated enough knowledge of actual botanical medicine to provide legitimate treatments when possible, although we do not know whether his botanical knowledge came from early tutelage in Africa or from later encounters with practitioners in Brazil or Portugal.
The only problem with this book, and one we have grappled with, argued about, conditionally accepted, and sometimes criticized harshly, is James Sweet’s occasional reliance on conjecture. As we have established, this is often necessary in microhistory, and generally makes the narrative better. But there has to be a basis of fact, and Sweet makes some points that seem to be less factually grounded than the claims we have observed from other authors. For example, on page 24 Sweet explains that it is likely that Alvares’ parents were “more than simple devotees of the vodun; they quite likely were priest,” basing this likelihood primarily on their names. Ok, I can accept this analysis, but then he takes it further and translates this status onto Alvares himself, saying, “What seems likely, though, is that by the time Oyo and Dahomey began their warfare in 1728, Domingos Alvares was already a powerful spiritual and political leader…” What makes that likely? The fact that he later claimed that his parents had the names of spiritual leaders? The fact that, upon landing in Brazil, he was able to convince other slaves that he had spiritual connections? I think it is possible that he was a spiritual leader at some level in Africa, but at the age of 18 I think it would be less likely that he was a powerful priest, and more likely that he was a gifted con artist who had been exposed to enough vodun that he could fake the funk when it benefitted him. We find out later that some of the treatments he was using in Portugal were things that he learned in Brazil, or even in the Algarve. This, coupled with his propensity to add other tricks to his repertoire as he went along, makes it likely that his real vocation was not as a Sakpata priest, but as a skilled con artist and scammer who plied the tricks of his trade in a desperate effort to survive in the most difficult and challenging circumstances imaginable.
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