The Agoudas of Ouidah: When Brazil Returned to Africa

There are houses in the streets of Ouidah that look like nothing else on the entire West African coast. Facades of clay covered in ochre-coloured lime, adorned with bas-reliefs. Pointed arches. Red tile roofs. Ventilated balconies overlooking interior courtyards where papaya trees grow. Names carved in stone above the doors: De Souza, Da Costa, D'Almeida, Paraiso, Domingo.

These houses tell a story that most tourist guides barely mention. They are the physical traces of a unique Atlantic round-trip in history: men and women who left Africa as slaves, who crossed the ocean, who survived, who learned trades, who gained their freedom — and who came back. Not as victims. As builders.

These men and women are called the Agoudas. And in Ouidah, they left an entire neighbourhood.

Who are the Agoudas?

The word Agouda probably comes from the Portuguese Ajuda — the name the Portuguese gave to Ouidah, derived from the fort São João Baptista da Ajuda that dominated the city. In Fon and Yoruba, Agouda initially designated Brazilians in general, then more specifically Africans who had returned from Brazil with their Portuguese surnames.

The Agouda community is a composite community, built in two phases.

The first group consists of Portuguese and Brazilian slave traders who settled on the coast from the 17th century onwards to manage the slave trade. These men — the most famous being Francisco Félix de Souza — had children with African women. Their mixed-race descendants grew up in Ouidah between two cultures, speaking Portuguese and Fon, practising Catholicism and Vodun, trading with Europeans and serving as intermediaries with the kings of Abomey.

The second group, much larger, arrives mainly after 1835. These are Africans who had been deported as slaves to Brazil — mainly to Bahia — and who, after gaining their freedom through manumission or purchase, chose to return to the African coast. Many had been trained in crafts during their captivity: masonry, carpentry, cabinetmaking, tailoring, shoemaking. They returned with these skills, with the Portuguese language, with Brazilian eating habits, with a particular relationship to Catholicism mingled with Candomblé — and with a hybrid identity that no one else possessed.

Today, Agouda families represent between 7 and 10% of Benin's population. They are recognized by their surnames: De Souza, Da Silva, Da Costa, D'Almeida, Paraiso, Domingo, Gomez, Da Piedade. They are concentrated in four coastal cities: Ouidah, Porto-Novo, Grand-Popo and Agoué.

Francisco Félix de Souza: The Man Who Founded It All

You cannot speak of the Agoudas of Ouidah without speaking of Francisco Félix de Souza — known as Chacha, or Cha-Cha. He is both the most fascinating and most ambiguous figure in the city's history.

Born in Salvador de Bahia around 1754, the son of a Portuguese merchant and an enslaved woman, De Souza arrived on the African coast at the turn of the 19th century. He first settles in Aného (today in Togo), where he founds the Ajudá neighbourhood — ancestor of the Ajido neighbourhood found in Ouidah. Then, following a political dramatic turn, he becomes the most powerful man in the region.

The story goes like this: imprisoned by the king of Abomey, Adandozan, over a commercial dispute, De Souza makes a pact with the prince Gakpé, a claimant to the throne. The two men seal a blood oath. De Souza escapes, provides weapons and goods to the rebel prince, and Gakpé overthrows Adandozan around 1818 to become King Ghézo — one of the most powerful sovereigns in Dahomey's history. In gratitude, Ghézo invites De Souza to settle in Ouidah and gives him the title of Chacha — the kingdom's commercial representative, intermediary between the king and European traders.

De Souza then settles in Ouidah and builds an empire. He manages the slave trade on a large scale, maintains a harem of over forty African women, and leaves behind a progeny so numerous that some descendants estimate the family still occupies "half the land of Ouidah" today. He dies in 1849, with all the honours of a great Dahomean chief.

His legacy is deeply ambiguous. On one hand, he is the founder of the Agouda community of Ouidah, the architect of its influence and social cohesion. On the other, he is one of the greatest slave traders in the history of the West African coast — a man whose fortune was built on the deportation of human beings. The De Souza family carries this contradiction to this day, and makes no effort to erase it. The House of Brazil in Ouidah — a building constructed in 1930 by the De Souza family — testifies to it with rare honesty.

Today, a statue of Francisco Félix de Souza stands on Chacha Square in Ouidah — the same square that was once called the Place of Auctions, where slave sales took place. This coexistence is no accident. It says something about how Ouidah chooses to look at its history: hiding nothing, simplifying nothing.

1835: The Revolt That Changed Everything

If the Agouda presence in Ouidah is ancient, it is one specific event that gave it its ultimate scale: the Male Revolt in Bahia, in January 1835.

In the night of 24 to 25 January 1835, a group of African slaves — mostly Yoruba and Muslim, called Males in the Nagô language — took up arms in Salvador de Bahia. The revolt is brief: it lasts only a few hours before being crushed by colonial forces. But its consequences are lasting. More than 70 insurgents are killed. Hundreds appear before Brazilian courts. Convictions pour in: death sentences, flogging, hard labour, and for many — expulsion to Africa.

These men and women, former slaves who had fought for their freedom in Brazil, disembark on the African coast in Ouidah, Porto-Novo, Lagos and Agoué. They no longer really speak the languages of their childhood. They have lived in Brazil, some since birth. They wear Brazilian clothes, eat Brazilian food, practise Catholicism tinged with Candomblé. The local people view them with suspicion — they are seen as foreigners. They view the locals with a certain distance — they consider them "savages" compared to their urban Brazilian lifestyle.

This double exclusion does not prevent their integration. Quickly, thanks to their craft skills and commercial networks, they form an influential social class. They build. They open workshops. They send their children to Catholic mission schools — the only ones in the region willing to accept their children. They speak Portuguese in their homes and teach it as a mark of identity and social distinction.

The Brazil Neighbourhood: A City Within a City

In Ouidah, geography itself bears the mark of this return. The city is structured into neighbourhoods that roughly correspond to the major historical communities: the Xueda (original people), the Fon, the Yoruba/Nago, and the Agoudas. The latter inhabit mainly the Brazil (also called Ajido), Zomaï and Docomè neighbourhoods, grouped not far from the former Place of Auctions.

This geographical positioning is laden with meaning. The Agoudas settled precisely where the slave trade took place — near the slave market, the Portuguese fort, the trading house buildings. Some had direct family ties to these places. They were returning to the city that had shipped them, or had shipped their ancestors.

In these neighbourhoods, one finds today the remnants of Afro-Brazilian architecture that the Agoudas introduced to Ouidah. This style is the result of a unique blend: building techniques learned in Brazil — clay walls covered in lime, bas-relief finishes, tile roofs, ventilated wooden arcades and balconies — applied to the African coast using locally available materials.

These houses resemble neither traditional African architecture of earth and thatch, nor classical European colonial architecture. They are something unprecedented — a hybrid form born from crossing, exile and return.

The House of Brazil — now the House of Memory — is the most emblematic building of this heritage. Built in 1930 by the De Souza family, it has successively served as an administrative building, a temporary museum space (to house collections during the renovation of the historical museum), and as a place of memory dedicated to the African diaspora. It houses in particular portraits of Agouda families, business correspondence from the period, ritual objects that testify to the particular syncretism of the Agoudas — both Catholic and Vodun practitioners.

The problem is that many of these Afro-Brazilian houses are today in an advanced state of deterioration. Properties held in common by many heirs unable to reach agreement, exposed to tropical rains and termites, they progressively disappear. Surveys conducted in the early 2000s documented the loss of dozens of these buildings within a few decades. Each house that collapses takes with it a page of this history.

A Hybrid Culture, Still Alive

The Agouda heritage in Ouidah does not come down to stone facades. It is also in the food, in the music, in the festivals, in the names.

Cuisine is one of the most tangible legacies. Fechouada — the Beninese adaptation of Brazilian feijoada, that stew of black beans and various meats born in the kitchens of enslaved people in Bahia — is still prepared in Agouda families in Ouidah on major occasions. Kokada — a sweet bite made with roasted peanuts and cane sugar — is still sold in some markets. These dishes are not found in tourist restaurants. They are eaten as families, during festivals and ceremonies, as markers of identity.

Music: the Agoudas imported bourian (from the Portuguese burinha, little donkey) — a Brazilian folk celebration with no religious dimension, which distinguishes it from all other regional festivities. During bourian, a little donkey is exhibited, masked characters appear, and two giant dolls called Yoyo and Yaya, representing according to tradition the owners of enslaving plantations in Brazil. This festival is also the occasion of the enthronement of the Chacha — the title of chief of the Agouda community, passed down in the De Souza family since Francisco Félix. We are now at Chacha VIII.

Religious syncretism: the Agoudas are officially Catholic, but their practice of Catholicism is deeply marked by Vodun and Candomblé. They built chapels in their homes and founded Catholic confraternities in Ouidah. At the same time, many of them maintain relationships with the city's Vodun convents. Francisco Félix de Souza himself, declared Catholic, had his own family Vodun sanctuary and was buried with the honours of great Dahomean chiefs — including four ritual human sacrifices that his children tried in vain to prevent.

Surnames: the Portuguese and Brazilian family names borne by the Agoudas are a story in themselves. Some come from slave traders whose ancestors were enslaved by them — they bear the names of those who enslaved them, but have made them their own. Others are deformations of African names filtered through the Brazilian mould. Still others were deliberately chosen, as marks of social distinction in the city. Each surname is a piece of Atlantic history.

What You Can Discover Today

A walk through the historic neighbourhoods of Ouidah is the best way to approach the Agouda heritage. You must look up, watch the facades, open doors when invited.

Key sites:

The House of Brazil / House of Memory is the essential starting point. Located in the historic heart, it traces the history of Ouidah's Afro-Brazilian community and the relationship between Benin and Brazil. Opening hours are variable — enquire with your guide or the Ouidah tourism office.

Chacha Square (former Place of Auctions) still bears the statue of Francisco Félix de Souza. This square is today being rehabilitated as part of the major programme to rebuild the historic city. It was here that slave auctions took place, metres from Agouda houses. The proximity is unbearable and instructive.

The De Souza Family Museum, adjoining the family home, preserves portraits of Francisco Félix de Souza and his two eldest children, family objects, and traces of daily life in the Agouda community in the 19th century.

Walking in the Brazil / Ajido neighbourhood: a local guide can take you through the neighbourhood's alleyways to identify still-standing Afro-Brazilian houses. Some are in good condition, others abandoned. Each has a story. Facades adorned with bas-reliefs, pointed arches, tile roofs — recognizable in their unique style, midway between Bahia and West Africa.

Zinsou Foundation (Villa Ajavon): this contemporary art museum housed in a restored 1922 Afro-Brazilian villa is the finest example of what these houses can become when preserved and valued. The foundation spent around €150,000 to restore Villa Ajavon. It hosts exhibitions by contemporary Beninese and African artists, and its café is one of the few pleasant places to rest in the heart of Ouidah.

Practical Tips

• The walk through the Brazil neighbourhood is best done in the morning, before the heat.
• Go with a local guide: many houses are not signposted, and owners are sometimes present and willing to share their story.
• Avoid photographing private courtyards and residents without explicit permission.
• The best time of year to meet the Agouda community at their ceremonies: the bourian festival and certain families' Catholic celebrations (ask the tourism office for local dates).

A Heritage in Peril — and in Reconstruction

The story of the Agoudas of Ouidah illustrates a tension the entire city is experiencing today: between disappearing memory and accelerating reconstruction. On one side, century-old Afro-Brazilian houses deteriorating for lack of means and agreement among heirs. On the other, a multi-hundred-million-euro government programme rebuilding the historic city, with forts, museums, roads, hotels.

The question that always arises in these situations is: who decides what deserves to be saved, and how? Agouda houses are not part of the current official rehabilitation programme. They are private properties, difficult to integrate into a state project. And yet, they are among the most original and irreplaceable heritage in the city.

What is certain is that time is working against them. Every rainy season is an additional risk. And once an Afro-Brazilian house disappears, only photographs remain.

Coming to Ouidah and taking time to get lost in the alleyways of the Brazil neighbourhood is also an act of memory. Looking at these facades is acknowledging that something extraordinary happened here — that people ripped from their continent, transported by force, found the means to return and rebuild, with the hands and knowledge given to them despite themselves.

This story is not simple. It is full of contradictions, violence, reversals. But it is real. And it is there, inscribed in the stone of Ouidah's houses — for those who take the time to look.

Sources: Cairn.info / Milton Guran (EHESS thesis), Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, EHESS Usages Publics du Passé, Wikipedia FR/EN, Nofi Media, Pulse CI, OpenEdition Journals, voyageavecnous.com.

See also:

• The Vodun Sanctuaries of Ouidah: Zô Houé and Mami Toligbé
• Mami Wata in Ouidah: The Goddess of the Waters Who Crossed the Atlantic