Between the 16th and 19th centuries, slave ships carried 3-5 million Africans to Brazil. There they created dynamic Afro-Brazilian religions, such as Candomblé, that are still widely practiced.

Among the enslaved were Yoruba-speakers from West Africa, Kongo-speakers from Central Africa, Christians, and Muslims. Their philosophies and concepts of the soul blended with one another and with Brazilian Indian practices, Catholicism, and European mysticism.

Through the tragedy of freedom lost, to liberation finally won, African religious beliefs took new life.