ABSTRACT
In Brazil ideas about equality through racial mixing have long been important in representations of nationhood. The writing of national histories continues to successfully export a stereotypical image suggesting that racial mixing, samba, carnival and sex have created an ideal pluralist modern society free of primordialism and essentialized pasts. This ideal of mixing or fusion in which everyone has his or her chance has been contested by those who draw upon a history of resistance that reaches back to great events in order to mobilize a sense of black identity. It is therefore quite understandable that archaeology should be seen as the technical means of subverting texts written for a dominant white culture in order to uncover the reality of ‘black power’ as an act of resistance against white colonialism.
