Abdias Nascimento dies
Abdias do Nascimento
Abdias Nascimento, Brazilian Civil Rights Leader, Actor, Painter, and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee passed away last night. He was 98 years old. An Activist since the 1930s, Abdias founded the Experimental Theater of the Negro (TEN) in 1944 and created the Institute for Research and Studies Afro Brazilian (Ipeafro) in 1981 to continue his fight for the rights of black people, especially in the areas of education and the cultura.Abdias was also a congressman, senator and secretary of Defense and Promotion of Afro-Brazilian Populations of the State of Rio de Janeiro, 1991-1994.
He performed in Orfeu da Conceiçao, a play by Vinicius de Moraes which was later adapted into the motion picture Black Orpheus. He became a leader in Brazil’s black movement, and was forced into exile by the military regime in 1968 when he moved to Buffalo, New York U.S.A. Nascimento held positions as a Visiting Professor at several universities in the United States including the Yale School of Drama (1969–1971), and University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, where he founded the chair in African Cultures in the New World, Puerto Rican Studies Program in 1971.
Nascimento returned to Brazil in 1983 was elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies. There his focus was supporting legislation to address racial problems. In 1994 he was elected to the Senete and served until 1999. In 2004 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Selection of publicatons by Abdias Nascimento
- “Africans in Brazil: a Pan-African perspective” (1997)
- “Orixás: os deuses vivos da Africa” (Orishas: the living gods of Africa in Brazil) (1995)
- “Race and ethnicity in Latin America – African culture in Brazilian art” (1994)
- “Brazil, mixture or massacre? essays in the genocide of a Black people” (1989)
- “Sortilege” (black mystery) (1978)
- “Racial Democracy in Brazil, Myth or Reality?: A Dossier of Brazilian Racism” (1977)
Abdias is survived by his wife Elisa Larkin Nascimento and son Osiris Nascimento who was a co-host and cameraman on the Brazil Show and also by ex-wife, Brazilian actress Lea Garcia who played Serafina in the film Black Orpheus and with whom he has two sons.
Our heart felt condolences to the Nascimento family.
Brazil Travel on theBrazilShow.com
[...] more at the Brazil Show. Watch video of Nascimento in Black in Latin America at the 44:00 [...]