Why did slaves in America loose so much of their African culture while slaves in Brazil, Puerto Rico and other parts of Latin America where able to retain so much of theirs?

by o_safadinho

I'm African American and my girlfriend in Brazilian. On a few different occasions she's mentioned how the slaves that were brought to America became so "American" while in Brazil they retained a strong sense of being African.

She described the state of Bahia as having a culture that has way more African influence than the state where she's from in Rio.

I recently went on a trip to Puerto Rico with my mother and we went to a museum. They also talked about how the African slaves were able to preserve their culture and how it influenced the rest of Puerto Rican culture.

Why did this happen in Brazil and other parts of Latin America but it didn't happen in the US?

cdb03b

Slaves in other parts of the Americas, particularly Brazil had much much higher death rates and far lower birth rates. As such the slave traders sent far more slaves to those countries than they did the USA. Some estimate as many as 5-7 times the number of slaves. This means that when slavery was eliminated more remembered the African cultures because they were born in said cultures.

Additionally part of American slavery was the practices of actively removing the original culture. They renamed them, forbid them speaking their native tongues as much as possible, made them wear western clothing, take up various western traditions, and converted them to Christianity.