Xica da silva biography

Francisca da Silva de Oliveira (known as Chica da Silva), was.
A Brazilian woman who became famous for becoming rich and powerful despite having been born into slavery.
Chica da Silva (or spelled Xica da Silva), was a Brazilian woman born into slavery, who went on to gain her freedom and become a powerful and well-known member.

•

Chica da Silva without an X

Forget all you think you know about Xica da Silva. Beginning, by the way, with her name: Chica, in actual fact, Francisca da Silva, mulatto, the child of a black woman and a Portuguese man, born between 1731 and 1735 (date uncertain) in the diamond mining region of the hamlet of Tejuco, bought and freed by the diamond contractor João Fernandes de Oliveira, with whom she lived 16 years and had 13 children. The sensual black woman who would elicit howls from her Portuguese lord and horrify society is a myth invented in the 19^th century and reappropriated, in various forms at various epochs, each interested in its own vision.

Getting to know Chica with “ch” is to discover that the would-be “racial democracy” in Brazil is a myth, just as groundless as that slave herself who was a queen. “Chica would frequent the white elite of the city and all the white brotherhoods of Tejuco and, when she died, she was buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. Francis of Assis, a privilege for the well-heeled whites. All this proves t

•

Xica

1976 film directed by Carlos Diegues

This article is about the film. For the biography, see Chica da Silva.

Xica (Portuguese: Xica da Silva) is a 1976 Braziliancomedy film directed and written by Carlos Diegues, based on the novel by João Felício dos Santos, which is a romanticized retelling of the true story of Chica da Silva,^[2] an 18th-century Africanslave in Brazil, who attracts the attention of a powerful Portuguese land-owner and eventually rises into the Brazilian high society. The movie stars Zezé Motta, Walmor Chagas and José Wilker. It was chosen as the Brazilian submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 49th Academy Awards, but it failed to get a nomination.^[3]

Plot

The film is based on the novel Memórias do Distrito de Diamantina, written by João Felicio dos Santos (who has a small role in the film as a Roman Catholic pastor). It is a romanticized retelling of the true story of Chica da Silva,^[2] an 18th-century Africanslave in the state of Minas Gerais, who attracts the attention

•

Chica da Silva

Brazilian freed slave (c. 1732–1796)

This article is about the biography. For the film, see Xica da Silva.

Francisca da Silva de Oliveira (c. 1732–1796), known in history by the name Chica da Silva^[1]^[2] and whose romanticized version/character is also known by the spelling Xica da Silva,^[2] was a Brazilian woman who became famous for becoming rich and powerful despite having been born into slavery. Her life has been a source of inspiration for many works in television, films, music, theater and literature. She is popularly known as the slave who became a queen.^[3] The myth of Chica da Silva is often conflated with the historical accounts of Francisca da Silva de Oliveira.

Biography

Francisca da Silva de Oliveira was a parda woman born in Vila do Príncipe (nowadays Serro), in the north of the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil between 1730 and 1735. Not unlike many other regions in Brazil, in this region the slave population outnumbered whites by a large margin.^[4] People in the town made