Domingos Influence

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Many helped with the creation of New Atlantic World; one of them was Domingos Alveres. Domingos was born around 1710 in the Mahi region of the modern-day West African country of Benin. Domingos spent his youth in a vodun community dedicated to the earth spirit Sakpata. Domingos’ parents, Afnaje and Oconon, held positions of leadership in this community, a status Domingos inherited from them. Domingos was an Afro-Brazilian intellectual and healer. Domingos rose to prominence in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World after being enslaved in Africa, transported to colonial Brazil, and eventually prosecuted by the Portuguese Inquisition in Lisbon. “Even before he entered the social world of Rio’s slave community, Domingos’ reputation preceded him,…show more content…
“He was multilingual, polytheistic, and flexible in is understanding of kinship.”(pg.26) By having an open mind and accepting many religions this helped him to learn about each culture. This open mind helped him to see each new culture in a different light, which would help make him a historian because he was knowledged in many religions. His movement across the Atlantic world helped to broadened his horizon. “The migration of voduns across the Gbe-speaking region and their integration into the fabric of local societies had prepared [Domingos] to be tolerant, even welcoming, of new beliefs.”(pg.47-48) This newfound tolerance came from fully embracing his baptisms in the Catholic Church, which is another way in which he immersed himself into a new culture. This type of immersion into a new culture is how historian, like Domingos, gets a full understanding of the culture. “A religious leader like Domingos Alvares had a clear sense of where he was from and where his core beliefs originated, but he was also imminently cognizant of the plurality of social, cultural, and political ideas that made communities like his possible.”(pg.26) A historian must be open-minded but they also need to know where they come from and how each new culture differs from his

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