1932 The Americas

The Americas

Brazil

*Brazil gave women the right to vote (February 24).

*In Brazil, Manoel dos Reis Machado, commonly called Mestre Bimba, founded the first capoeira school in 1932, the Academia-escola de Cultura Regional, at the Engenho de Brotas in Salvador, Bahia. 

Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art with its roots originating in Angola and the Congo, that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, and music.  It is usually referred to as a game. It was developed in Brazil mainly by West Africans, beginning in the 16th century. It is known for quick and complex moves, using mainly power, speed, and leverage for a wide variety of kicks, spins, and highly mobile techniques.

The most widely accepted origin of the word capoeira comes from the Tupi words ka'a ("jungle") e pûer ("it was"), referring to the areas of low vegetation in the Brazilian interior where fugitive slaves would hide. Practitioners of the art are called capoeiristas. 

Previously, capoeira was only practiced and played on the streets. However, capoeira was still heavily discriminated against by upper-class Brazilian society. In order to change the pejorative reputation of capoeira and its practitioners as devious, stealthy and malicious, Bimba set new standards for the art.

Cuba

*Hundreds were jailed in Havana, Cuba, for what police reported to be a plot to overthrow the government of Gerardo Machado (May 18).

*The Supreme Court of Cuba ordered President Gerardo Machado to reopen the University of Havana and reinstate 350 faculty members with full pay, ruling that Machado's indefinite closure of the university in 1930 was unconstitutional (June 7). University student council released a statement saying, "The reopening of the university means nothing and the students will not again step into the university until Machado is ousted."

*3 students in Havana threw a bomb at President Machado's automobile, but it failed to explode (June 10). All three were chased down and arrested.

*In Havana, 9 were killed and 55 wounded in Cuban police raids on communist headquarters (July 24).

*Four Cuban political leaders were killed in a wave of assassinations (September 27). The most prominent death was President of the Senate Clemente Vazquez Bello, who was assassinated in a drive-by shooting as his car was leaving a country club.

*500 university students rioted in Havana on the second anniversary of the death of martyred student leader Rafael Trejo, who was killed by police in anti-government student demonstrations (September 30).

*The Liberal Party won mid-term parliamentary elections in Cuba (November 1).

*The Cuba hurricane killed over 3,000 people (November 9).

*80 political prisoners were released in Cuba (November 28). Government opponents said the move was made in response to pressure from the United States, but President Gerardo Machado said he was "acting spontaneously without interference either from the United States or any other country." Another 66 were released the following day.

Jamaica

*Clement Dodd, a Jamaican record producer known for "finding" Bob Marley, was born in Kingston, Jamaica (January 26).

Clement Seymour "Sir Coxsone" Dodd (b. January  26, 1932, Kingston, Jamaica – d. May 5,  2004) was a Jamaican record producer who was influential in the development of ska and reggae in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond.  He received his nickname "Coxsone" at school: because of his teenage talent as a cricketer, his friends compared him to Alec Coxon, a member of the 1940s Yorkshire County Cricket Club team. 

Dodd used to play records to the customers in his parents' shop. During a spell in the American South he became familiar with the rhythm and blues music popular there at the time. In 1954, back in Jamaica, he set up the Downbeat Sound System, being the owner of an amplifier, a turntable, and some United States records, which he would import from New Orleans and Miami. With the success of his sound system, and in a competitive environment, Dodd made trips throughout the United States looking for new tunes to attract the Jamaican public. While he did, his mother Doris Darlington would run the sound system and play the tunes. Dodd opened five different sound systems, each playing every night. To run his sound systems, Dodd appointed people such as Lee "Scratch" Perry,  who was Dodd's right-hand man during his early career, U-Roy and Prince Buster.  His wife, Norma Dodd, was the co-administrator of his label and ran all of the accounts.

When the R&B craze hit a lull in the United States, Dodd and his rivals were forced to begin recording their own Jamaican music in order to meet the local demand for new music. Initially these recordings were exclusively for a particular sound system but the records quickly developed into an industry in their own right. In 1959, he founded a record company called World Disc and in 1962 he produced the Jazz record "I cover the waterfront" on the Port-O-Jam label, two of the musicians who played on the album, Roland Alphonso and Don Drummond became founding members of the Skatalites one year later. In 1963, he opened Studio One on Brentford Road, Kingston. It was the first black-owned recording studio in Jamaica. Dodd held regular Sunday evening auditions in search of new talent, and it was here that Dodd auditioned Bob Marley, singing as a part of The Wailers.  He gave the group a five-year exclusive contract, paying them £20 for each song they recorded.  For a time, Marley slept in a back room of the studio. The Marley-penned song "Simmer Down", a Dodd production, went to number one in Jamaica in February 1964. However, Dodd became notorious for rarely paying the band the money they were owed for the record sales, and as a result the group were living in relative poverty despite being household names in Jamaica. This eventually became their catalyst for leaving the label. When Marley left Coxsone in 1966, the former released The Wailers' first album named The Wailing Wailers.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, the "Studio One sound" was synonymous with the sound of ska, rocksteady and reggae, ska, and Dodd attracted some of the best of Jamaican talent to his stable during this time, including Burning Spear, Ras Michael, Delroy Wilson, Horace Andy and Sugar Minott.

In 2002, Dodd was awarded a Gold Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica.

Dodd continued to be active in the music industry into his seventies, and on May 1, 2004, Kingston's Brentford Road was renamed Studio One Boulevard in a ceremony which paid tribute to Dodd's accomplishments as a producer.  Coxsone Dodd died suddenly of a heart attack  four days later while working at Studio One.   He was posthumously awarded the Order of Distinction, in the rank of Commander on October 15, 2007, for service to the Jamaica music industry.

Mexico

*The town of San Lorenzo was renamed Yanga for the African slave leader who led a slave resistance against the Spanish.

Yanga Municipality is a municipality located in the southern area of the State of Veracruz, Mexico, about 80 km from the state capital of Xalapa. It was formerly known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (after a colony of cimarrones in the early 17th century) or San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (after a 17th-century Spanish colonial priest). In 1932 it was renamed after Yanga, the cimarron leader who in 1609 resisted an attack by Spanish forces trying to regain control of the area. Captured in the area of present-day Guinea in West Africa before 1570, he was a chief of the Yang-Bara tribe before being sold into slavery.

Gaspar Yanga had been in the highlands since leading an escape by a band of slaves in 1570. After fighting off the Spanish forces in 1609, and having a series of bloody skirmishers over nearly a decade, in 1618, he finally obtained an agreement with Spanish officials to grant freedom to the fugitive slaves and independence to their village, a few kilometers from the city of Cordoba, Veracruz. It became known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (named after the cimarrones) or San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (named after Juan Laurencio, a Jesuit friar who had accompanied the 1609 expedition sent by the Viceroy). 

The inhabitants of African descent of San Lorenzo proclaimed their loyalty to the Church and the King of Spain, but refused to pay tribute to the Spanish government. They also agreed to capture fugitive slaves and return them to their masters in return for a fee. They were among the many free blacks of Mexico, which had the second-highest slave population of the Americas after Brazil. 

Europe

France 

*The manifesto "Murderous Humanitarianism" was signed by prominent Surrealists including the Martiniquans Pierre Yovotte and J. M. Monnerot. 

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality." Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself.

Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur.  However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader Andre Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement.

Surrealism developed largely out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.The anti-colonial revolutionary and proletarian politics of "Murderous Humanitarianism" (1932) which was drafted mainly by Rene Crevel, signed by Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Benjamin Peret, Yves Tanguy, and the Martiniquan Surrealists Pierre Yoyotte and J. M. Monnerot perhaps makes it the original document of what is later called 'black Surrealism', although it is the contact between Aime Cesaire and Breton in the 1940s in Martinique that really lead to the communication of what is known as 'black Surrealism'.

Great Britain

*Buddy (Clarence) Bradley became the first African American to choreograph a show of white dancers.  He was hired to prepare the London production of Evergreen for which he was in charge of sixty-four dancers. Bradley received full-credit in the program.  His career from this time on was mainly in Europe, where he was an important figure in popular dance.