The Agudás: the Brazilians who came back to Africa

Most histories of the Atlantic slave trade describe a one-way journey. Millions of people were taken from the West African coast and transported across the ocean to the Americas. What those histories rarely include is the return.

In the 19th century, a community of Afro-Brazilians crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction. They were freed slaves, former captives who had accumulated enough to buy their freedom, and descendants of Africans who had built lives in Brazil and then chose — or were compelled — to go back. In West Africa, they came to be known as the Agudás.

Their story shaped Ouidah in ways that are still visible in the city today: in the architecture, the family names, the food, the blending of Vodun and Catholicism that is characteristic of this stretch of the Beninese coast.

Who were the Agudás

The name "Agudá" comes from "Ajudá" — the Fon name for Ouidah, which is itself derived from the Portuguese "Ajuda." It was the name that West Africans gave to the Afro-Brazilian returnees who arrived on their coast speaking Portuguese and carrying a Brazilian cultural identity layered on top of African origins.

The Agudás were not a single homogeneous group. They arrived in several waves, over several decades, from different regions of Brazil and for different reasons:

The Malê deportees (1835): Following the Malê Revolt — a Muslim slave uprising in Salvador, Bahia — the Brazilian authorities deported hundreds of African-born participants back to West Africa. Many of these deportees were Nagô (Yoruba) and Jeje (Fon/Ewe) people who had been enslaved in Brazil and who, despite years on Brazilian soil, had maintained their African identities and languages. Their forced return to West Africa brought a Brazilian cultural layer with them: Portuguese, Catholic practices, Brazilian foods, and construction techniques.

Freed slaves and their descendants: Throughout the 19th century, enslaved and formerly enslaved people who accumulated enough money to purchase their freedom — or who received manumission — sometimes chose to return to Africa. Many had family memories or genealogical connections to the West African coast, even if they themselves had been born in Brazil.

Returnees after abolition (post-1888): When Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, some Afro-Brazilians, no longer legally tied to the country, chose to make the return journey that generations before them had been unable to make.

What they brought back

The Agudás arrived in West Africa with a cultural identity that was neither purely African nor purely Brazilian — it was something new, forged across the Atlantic.

Language: They spoke Portuguese, and they spoke it publicly and proudly. Portuguese loanwords entered the local vocabulary in Ouidah and Lagos. Some Agudá families maintained Portuguese as a spoken language for several generations; in certain communities, traces of it persist today.

Architecture: The most visible Agudá legacy in Ouidah is architectural. The distinctive casas de sobrado — two-storey houses with ornate facades, wrought iron balconies, shuttered windows, and pastel-coloured plasterwork — appeared across Ouidah, Porto-Novo, Lagos, and Accra wherever Agudá communities settled. These houses are a form of material memory: a Brazilian domestic architecture transplanted to West Africa. Many still stand in Ouidah, recognizable at a glance.

Food: Acarajé — the Yoruba-origin bean fritter that became a defining street food of Bahia — connects directly to akara, the fried bean cake that is common across West Africa. The connection runs in both directions: the food crossed the Atlantic with enslaved Africans, was maintained in Brazil, and returned with the Agudás.

Religion: The Agudás brought Catholicism — specifically a Bahian Catholicism already intermingled with African spiritual practices — back to a coast where Vodun was the dominant tradition. The result was another layer of religious complexity in cities like Ouidah: Catholic churches built in the shadow of Vodun temples, families who observed both traditions without contradiction, festivals that blended the calendar of the saints with Vodun ceremonial cycles. The Feast of Bonfim — which has deep Brazilian significance — was celebrated by Agudá communities in West Africa.

Names: The most enduring marker of Agudá identity is the name. Families in Ouidah, Porto-Novo, and Lagos today carry Portuguese surnames — Da Silva, De Souza, Ferreira, Lima, Paraiso, Olympio, Ahotonou, Dos Santos — that are the direct legacy of Afro-Brazilian ancestors. These families are integrated into West African society, speak local languages as first languages, practice Vodun alongside Catholicism, and yet carry a surname that announces the Atlantic crossing in their family history.

The complexity: Francisco Felix de Souza

No account of the Agudás in Ouidah can avoid Francisco Felix de Souza — the "Chacha" — even though his story complicates any simple narrative of return and cultural restoration.

De Souza was a Brazilian-born merchant who arrived on the West African coast in the late 18th century and became the most powerful slave trader in Ouidah. He worked closely with the Kingdom of Dahomey, facilitating the sale of enslaved people across the Atlantic. He built a commercial empire on the coast and fathered dozens of children who became the foundation of one of the most prominent Agudá families in Ouidah.

De Souza is remembered in Ouidah today at Place Chacha — the square bearing his name, near the family chapel and compound that still stands. His legacy is one of the difficult layers of this history: the Agudá story includes not only people who returned as survivors of the slave system, but people who profited from it.

The Agudá community in Ouidah contains both realities. They cannot be separated.

The Agudás in Ouidah today

The families are still there. Many Ouidah residents today are Agudá descendants — people with Portuguese surnames and a cultural identity that bridges West Africa and Brazil. Some families maintain archives: letters in Portuguese, photographs of 19th-century returnees, furniture and objects brought from Brazil.

Walking through certain neighbourhoods in Ouidah — particularly the Zomachi quarter, around Place Chacha and the streets north of the cathedral — you are walking through the material record of this return. The architecture speaks. The family names on brass plaques beside doorways speak.

For visitors from Brazil, particularly those with Afro-Brazilian ancestry or connections to candomblé, this neighbourhood carries a specific weight. The acarajé you eat in Salvador came from the same place as the akara sold at the market here. The syncretic Catholicism of the Candomblé feast days has a cousin in the Vodun-tinged Catholic worship of the Agudá community. The names on the doorplates echo through three centuries of Atlantic crossings.

FAQ

Are the Agudás considered Brazilian or West African? Both, and neither — that ambiguity is part of what makes the community historically significant. In West Africa, they were "the Brazilians." In Brazil, they were African. The Agudás were a third thing: people who built a new identity from the encounter between continents.

Can visitors meet Agudá families in Ouidah? Yes, through guided visits and community introductions. The Ouidah concierge service can arrange meetings with families who are open to cultural exchanges. Cold visits to private homes are not appropriate.

Are there Agudá communities outside of Benin? Yes. Porto-Novo (Benin), Lagos and other Nigerian cities, Lomé (Togo), and Accra (Ghana) all have Agudá communities and Afro-Brazilian architectural heritage. The Beninese and Nigerian communities are the most documented.

What happened to the Portuguese language among the Agudás? It largely did not survive as a first language beyond the first few generations. Local languages — Fon, Yoruba, Ewe — became the primary languages. Portuguese names and some vocabulary persisted. Some families maintained literary Portuguese through Catholic religious practice for longer.