Diabolical Healers

Intriguingly, women held more or less equal power in many of the African continent’s varied societies prior to its violent colonial subjugation. Gender equality was, however, viewed as a challenge to imperial hegemony by colonial administrators – more familiar with women in Counter-Reformation Europe attired in nun’s wimples ‘in order to prepare them for a life of seclusion.’

A new work, The Heretic of Cacheu (Penguin, Random House, London, 2025) by Toby Green exhumes the records of a Portuguese Inquisitorial trial from 1665 into apparently deviant conduct of one such matriarchal figure in Cacheu – at that point ‘the most important Atlantic trading town in Senegambia.’ This was the first African region to be drawn by the Portuguese systematically into the transatlantic slave trade, the appalling legacy of which we contend with to this day.

Eric Williams argues that ‘slavery was not born of racism; rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.’ The deeply troubling treatment of slaves on American plantations produced a form of dehumanisation, and hierarchical conception of human ‘races.’ Apparently ‘the curse of Ham’ assigned a lower status to dark-skinned people, an idea that perhaps allowed their overseers to sleep at night.

Walter Rodney has previously explored how slavery corrupted preexisting forms of dependence known in West Africa prior to the Portuguese arrival. The legal status of slaves in Cacheu, however, depended absolutely on the Roman concept of slavery, wherein the master held a power of life and death over his human chattel.

The forcible removal, of up to thirteen million men, for the most part – only eleven of whom survived the dreaded passage – caused profound dislocation and lasting trauma to societies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Listen to our podcast with Toby Green as he discusses the effect of Covid lockdowns on Africa, which was largely unaffected by the disease, and the intellectual failure of many on the left. https://t.co/EsbBdkq4xr @toby00green @battleforeurope @SunetraGupta @KevinBardosh

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Green observes how, just as in war time Britain where women took on industrial work after men were sent to the front line to be slaughtered, ‘during the political conflicts in Africa generated by the transatlantic traffic women’s labour burden increased – as did the opportunities to capitalize on this for some women.’ One such was Crispina Peres, the most successful trader in the city of Cacheu, ‘who was such a catch that during her life she was married to not one but two captain-majors of the town.’

Both she and her husband Jorge Gonçalves Frances were of mixed heritage – Portuguese fathers and West African mothers. This gave them a competitive advantage, as they were able to inhabit both worlds, and trade effectively using an array of languages. Interestingly,Crispina was the dominant partner, due in no small part to Jorge’s persistent infirmities.

Her husband’s illnesses led Crispina to engage with the djabakós – traditional healers with knowledge of local herbs and their properties. The djabakós ‘helped with fevers, difficult childbirth, worked with the bodies of the dead and provided succour to all those hanging on to the worlds of the living.’ According to Green, ‘[t]he importance of the djabakós in Cacheu spoke to the fact that African political power remained dominant.’

At that time in Cacheu, as in Europe, ‘the health of the body and the spirit were seen as integrated’. Thus, ‘healing the body also required healing the spirit,’ which gave rise to strange – in the minds of colonial authorities – practices, including animal sacrifices. Moreover, many of these healers also practised Islam, which challenged Christian supremacy.

Green observes that disease was rife in Cacheu ‘because this was a town at the heart of a period of crisis-driven transformation;’ further opining that ‘periods of crisis and the collapse of an existing sociopolitical culture are often accompanied by disease.’

In the sixteenth century, therefore, smallpox and other infectious diseases wiped out an incredible 95% of the population native to the Americas. This was exacerbated by hunger and economic hardship, ‘alongside the psychological crisis felt by many Native Americans at the brutally violent end of everything that they had known and which had brought them security.’

Green also alludes to the plague of alcoholism afflicting the post-Soviet Union society of Russia, which is strongly connected to the decline in life expectancy there by up to five years in the early 1990s. This raises a question as to what lies behind the current stalling and in some cases decrease in life expectancy across Europe, and the U.S.. While COVID-19 has been a factor, excess deaths in many countries have actually increased since 2021. The data might imply that we are witnessing an unravelling, at least, of an existing sociopolitical culture. Green, who is also an historian of the Covid period, might attribute this to the trauma of lockdowns.

It may seem inappropriate to compare our present era with the violent convulsions of the seventeenth century, but Green’s observation about waves of disease and premature death causing ‘fear and panic, generating scapegoating, gossip and hatreds’ might reasonably also be applied to the Covid period in the West. A comparison between the colonial role of the Inquisition in the seventeenth century and the role of the WHO in Africa in more recent times might also be ventured, although Green resists making this explicit.

He does, however, connect health policy with the exercise of authority more generally: ‘historically those who diagnose the condition in the first place are generally those who then are empowered to claim the authority to heal it.’ In our time, the African continent was subjected to inappropriate guidance for a disease such as Covid, a disease which had little impact on its overwhelmingly youthful population, while drawing resources away from more beneficial programmes with lasting benefits.

Similarly, at that time in Cacheu, Senegambian healers knew how to apply local plants to reducing swellings and fevers, while European apothecaries usually relied on imported salves from Europe, which tended not to be useful in such a setting.

Ultimately, the Portuguese officials could not tolerate a high profile figure in Cacheu such as Crispina Peres routinely turning to the djabakós for assistance. Green argues that ‘the imperial assault on West African ways of healing both inaugurated a form of medical colonialism and was a key factor in the shifting balance of power between European empires and West Africans at this time’

Finally, it would be mistaken to see Crispina Peres as either a saintly or even heroic figure. During her trial, which lasted three years and resulted in her having to perform penance, she openly acknowledged the cruelty she visited on her own slaves. Thus, she admitted to imprisoning a household slaves named Eiria, saying she would die without confessing. This poor woman was indeed kept in shackles until she died. It goes to show perhaps that simply empowering women won’t necessarily lead to perfect conditions on Planet Earth.

Feature Image: Fortress of Cacheu