The slave states attempted to crush various African matrices within the colonial territory as a strategy to hinder the organization of enslaved people, extinguish their languages of origin and make it impossible for them to maintain their cultures. In other words, genuine processes were created with a view to stripping these populations of African origin of the key characteristics of their identity, thus leading to a dilution of African ethnic identity. This is yet another geographical factor that contributes to the lack of ancestral references with which to indicate the origins of the Afro-Brazilian population, causing deep-rooted interference with Afro-Brazilians' citizenship and sense of territorial belonging. It is important to emphasize that not only were sub-Saharan African populations responsible for the effective occupation of the Brazilian territory and for constituting its workforce, but they also made, and continue to make, an irreversible mark on Brazil's social, technological, demographical and cultural evolution. This contribution has been preserved and recreated throughout the centuries, despite the system's counterpolicies. Historically, various sectors of the Brazilian population have been victims of all kinds of discrimination and prejudice.  
Of these, ethnic discrimination, which affects the country's Afrodescendant population in particular, is undoubtedly the farthest reaching, in both social and territorial terms, owing to its widespread demographic expression and manifestations.  
![img-21.jpeg](img_ref_22)
figure 5. African Brazil. Africa-Brazil diaspora and displacements within Brazilian territory (Fifteenth to Nineteenth centuries).  
Source: Anjos, 2014b.
The following section will present some considerations with regard to the spatial expression of contemporary African Brazil.
'Visible-invisible' African structural matrices in contemporary Brazil: twentieth to twenty-first centuries.