Consisting, at this time, of the descendants of slave traders, formerly enslaved Africans who had returned from Brazil, their descendants and the people enslaved locally, the Agudás were at not only the forefront of western culture penetrating the region, but also the origin of virtually all related economic activities. Indeed, at this time, they represented the future, given that European culture would eventually impose itself on everyone. If we take a closer look at the Agudá culture of this second period, we can see that it is different from that of the first Brazilians; it came to serve a social purpose. The Bahian traffickers were  
white and thus naturally different from the natives. As such, they had their own place in local society. This place was ensured by their economic alliance with the king of Dahomey and expressed symbolically by the role of the Chachá and other Brazilian cabeceiras in the existing power structure. This neologism, created from the word cabeça, meaning 'head' in Portuguese, referred to someone who was at the head of an enterprise. At the court of Abomey, this title implied the right to certain prerogatives, such as the use of a parasol and other symbols of power. The most prominent of these individuals was Domingos José Martins, the son of one of the heroes of Brazilian independence (Rossi, 1965).  
As we have seen, the African returnees were forced to create a place for themselves in a society that did not accept them. They were seen as people who had already been expelled - sold to be enslaved - and, at the same time, as foreigners, especially since they had returned entirely different and with 'white ways'. Building a new social identity based on the memory of their time in Brazil gave them a way of gaining a foothold in this society, in the same place that had already been created for whites. As Meillassoux explains (1986, p. 105):