# Feasts, historical memory and reinvention of Africanity  
Dances, songs and African characters marked the Catholic religious ceremonies, where the feasts of the Brotherhoods occupied a privileged place, integrating Africans in the Portuguese space, allowing them to recover and live some of their cultural practices that were based on fundamental pillars of their historical memory. Since the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Rosary of Blacks is the most relevant to the African community, the feasts consecrated to this Virgin Mary were of particular importance, because for all the brotherhoods, the annual feast of her saint was the most important moment of the institution's life. Throughout the country, there were the popular feasts of the black brotherhoods of Senhora do Rosário, who, as is still the case today in Brazil, elected a black man from his 'nation', to whom they gave the honorary title of king. The Congo and Angola were the most attached to this tradition. It highlights their demographic importance, organizing the festivities, making invitations to the ceremonies for important personalities, electing the kings, and seeking to occupy a privileged position vis-à-vis the other Africans. They intended to establish a secular history of relations between the kings of Portugal, the Congo and the N'gola, a tradition that marked in a profound and lasting way the conservation of historical memory. The example of the kings and queens of the Congo was unique, for its long duration, but also for the many situations created around these African royal figures in Portuguese society.  
The election of an African king or queen in the framework of Portuguese religious ceremonies revealed an African strategy of historical, cultural and identity revitalization. The African importance of these royal figures, who