Messias Basques is an Afro-Brazilian scholar. He graduated from the University of São Paulo with a BA in Social Sciences, and holds a Master’s degree in Anthropology from the Federal University of São Carlos. In 2020, he earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro after completing extensive fieldwork among the Kadiwéu indigenous people at the Brazil-Paraguay border.
In 2018, as a substitute Professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, inspired by an antiracist letter presented by Black undergraduate students, he co-created with them a syllabus based on Black anthropologists’ lives and work. This initiative is considered the first to be exclusively based on Black anthropologists in the history of the Social Sciences in Brazil. Since then, Basques has promoted similar courses in partnership with public universities, such as the University of São Paulo, and the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony. All resources and classes can be freely accessed on the website https://www.vozesnegras.com, which is available in English and Portuguese.
In 2019, at the São Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP), he employed his background to create an immersion course on Indigenous Peoples and Public Policies. From 2020 to 2022, at the same institution, he conducted a postdoctoral research, analyzing discourses from indigenous leaders, NGOs, and agribusiness agents around agriculture in Brazil.
Messias Basques also works as an anthropological consultant and technical reviewer in the editing and translating into Portuguese of books written by Zora Neale Hurston, Sefi Atta, Junot Díaz, John Steinbeck, and Paterson Joseph. In 2021, he wrote an introduction to the Brazilian edition of Barracoon: the story of the last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston.