ABSTRACT
The 1970s would see the burgeoning of new black movements that had their origins in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Both movements emerged when the dictatorship faced economic and political crisis. In 1968, after years of activity with Teatro Experimental Negra and as an activist and artist, Abdias do Nascimento went into voluntary exile in the US because of his radical politics in Brazil and his fear of oppression by the military dictatorship. African history, culture, political and economic systems, arts and civilization have an eminent place in scholastic curricula. Nascimento envisioned a political project where people of African ancestry could be the primary focus of the nation-state through a cultural project, where people of African ancestry would be conscious of their African identity, including all the racial distinctions, such as pardo and negro. Urban Afro-Brazilian youth began to define their blackness in new ways.
