ABSTRACT
Over a period of three years between 1728 and 1731 Portuguese inquisition tried at least five Africans for producing bolsas. This chapter aims to unravel this web of mandingueiros, and to demonstrate how enslaved Africans forged communities that permeated the Portuguese Atlantic world, from Ouidah, to Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Verde, Porto, and beyond. In 1714, a Portuguese soldier, Antô nio Dias, travelled from Portugal to Luanda and then to Massangano, where he gave a bolsa to Angolan freedman, Vicente de Moraes. The Inquisition's lengthy and fruitless pursuit of Joã o de Santiago across the Atlantic span was a microcosm of Portugal's inability to harness and control many aspects of its imperial project. Santiago's diabolical mandinga was first born in the minds of Portuguese missionaries proselytizing among Islamic Africans on the Upper Guinea coast in the early seventeenth century. From there, these magical talismans spread with the slave trade to all corners of Portuguese colonial world, proliferating especially in Brazil.
