Abstract
As the Western world neared the final century of the millennium, a war between the saints raged not only in the hearts and minds of many of Salvador’s citizens but also in its streets. There, on an almost weekly basis, angry intellectuals and members of Bahia’s enlightened elite confronted the battle cries of ancient polyrhythmic drums of spiritual conquest heard across the multitude of bairros that made up Brazil’s once capital city. Mobilizing for what many felt was a definitive conflict between modernity and their own barbaric past, the Bahian elite called upon all of their collective power and paramilitary might to eliminate the scourge that had ruined their international reputation. Theirs, however, was a reaction out of desperation. The battle, they feared, was already lost, carrying with it disastrous consequences for them all.
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Notes
See Paul Johnson, Secrets, Gossip and Gods: Transformations in Brazilian Candomble (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002), p. 81.
Julio Braga, Na Gamela do Feitiço: Repressão e Resistencia nos Candombles da Bahia (Editora da Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, 1995), p. 105. Stefania Capone interestingly noted a similar process in Rio de Janeiro. See
Capone, Searching for Africa in Brazil: Power and Tradition in Candomble (Duke University Press, Durham, 2010), p. 70.
For more on the notion that religious freedom protections were not intended to apply to African-based religions, see Joao Jose Reis and Eduardo Silva, Negociação e Conflito: A Resistencia Negra no Brasil Escravista (Companhia das Letras, São Paulo, 1989).
The newspaper itself was published from 1863 to 1883 and again from 1887 to 1890. See Dale Graden, “So Much Superstition among These People! Candomble and the Dilemmas of Afro-Bahian Intellectuals, 1864–1871,” in Hendrick Kraay (ed.), Afro-Brazilian Culture and Politics: Bahia, 1790s to 1990s (M. E. Sharpe, London, 1998), p. 57.
See Pares, The Formation of Candomble: Vodun History and Ritual in Brazil (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2013), p. 102.
Roger Bastide, The African Religions of Brazil (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1978), p. 302.
Ruth Landes, The City of Women (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1994), p. 131.
For more on immigration to Brazil, see George Reid Andrews, Black and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil 1888–1988 (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1991).
See Thomas Skidmore, Black and White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (Duke University Press, Durham, 1993).
Nina Rodrigues, O animismo fetichista dos negros bahiano (Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1935). For more on the early career of Rodrigues, see
Anadelia A. Romo, Brazil’s Living Museum: Race, Reform and Tradition in Bahia (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2010).
Edison Carneiro, Ladinos e Crioulos (Editora Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1964), p. 103.
Joao Jose Reis, “Candomble in 19th Century Bahia: Priests, Followers, Clients,” in Kristin Mann and Edna Bay (eds), Rethinking the African Diaspora: The Creation of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil (Frank Cass, London, 2001), p. 117.
Whether Rodrigues created this perception or was manipulated into it by his plethora of Yoruba-based informants at Gantois is still a matter of scholarly contention. For more, see Beatriz Gois Dantas, Vovó Nagô, papai branco (Edições Graal, Rio de Janeiro, 1988); Romo, Brazil’s Living Museum; Capone, Searching for Africa in Brazil; and
J. Lorand Matory, Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005).
Manuel Querino, Costumes Africanos no Brasil (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, 1988).
Gilberto Freyre, The Master and the Slaves (Casa Grande e Senzala), trans. Samuel Putnam, 2nd English edition revised (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1978).
See, for example, Florestan Fernandes, O negro no mundo dos brancos (Difel, Sao Paulo, 1972) and A integração do negro na sociedade de classes, 2 vols. (Dominus, São Paulo, 1965). See also Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo.
Papers from the 1934 Conference were published in two volumes. See E. Roquette Pinto (ed.), Estudos Afro-Brasileiros (Editora Limitada, Rio de Janeiro, 1935); and
Gilberto Freyre, Novos Estudos Afro-Brasileiros (Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1937).
Artur Ramos, As Culturras Negras no Novo Mundo (Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1937), p. 75.
Donald Pierson, Negroes in Brazil (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1942), p. xix.
Lorenzo Turner, “Some Contacts of Brazilian ex-slaves with Nigeria, West Africa,” Journal of Negro History 27.1 (January 1942): pp. 52–62; and
E. Franklin Frazier, “The Negro Family in Bahia, Brazil,” American Sociological Review 7.4 (August 1942): pp. 469–474.
Landes, “A Cult Matriarchate and Male Homosexuality,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 35 (1940): 386–397.
Artur Ramos, A Acculturação Negra no Brasil (Companhia Editora Nacional, São Paulo, 1942), p. 190.
Letter from Edison Carneiro to Artur Ramos, October 28, 1938, in Waldir Freitas Oliveira and Vivaldo da Costa Lima (eds), Cartas de Edison Carneiro a Artur Ramos de 4 de Janeiro de 1936 a 6 de Dezembro de 1938 (Editora Corrupio, São Paulo, 1987), p. 180.
See Melville Herskovits, Life in a Haitian Valley (Columbia University Press, New York, 1937) and
Melville Herskovits and Frances Herskovits, Suriname Folk-Lore (Columbia University Press, New York, 1937).
Melville Herskovits, “The Social Organization of Candomble” (1955) in Frances Herskovits (ed.), The New World Negro (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1966).
Melville Herskovits, “The Contributions of Afroamerican Studies to Africanist Research” (1948), in Frances Herskovits (ed.), The New World Negro, p. 12.
UNESCO did, however, fund various research projects in order to revive interest in the cultural impacts on American societies. See Roger Bastide, “Race Relations in Brazil,” UNESCO International Social Science Bulletin, 9 .8–9 (August–September 1952). For a critical analysis of UNESCO’s goals, see Carneiro, “Os Estudos Brasileiros do Negro,” in Carneiro, Ladinos e Crioulos, p. 105. Two of the major works published by UNESCO-funded scholars are Charles Wagley (ed.), Race and Class in Rural Brazil (Paris, 1952); and
Florestan Fernandes, Relações racias entre negros e brancos em São Paulo (São Paulo, 1955). See also
Marcos Chor Maio and Ricardo Ventura (eds), Raça, Ciência e Sociedade no Brasil (CCBB, Rio de Janeiro, 1966).
Carneiro, Religões Negras (Civilização Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro, 1936), p. 63.
Roger Bastide, Estudos Afro-Brasileiros (Editora Perspectiva, São Paulo, 1973), p. 165.
Julio Braga, Na Gamela do Feitiço: Repressão e Resistencia nos Candombles da Bahia (Editora da Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, 1995).
Scott Ikes, African-Brazilian Culture and Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil (University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2013), p. 54.
Maria Stella de Azevedo Santos, Meu Tempo e Agora (Projecto Centrhu, Curitiba, 1995). Interestingly, Mae Stella notes the term “Ogan” was incorporated from another African group the Jeje, neighbors of the Yoruba in West Africa, again reflecting the tendency for cultures from this region to be highly flexible and willing to adapt or even adopt cultural elements from each other and incorporate them into their respective organizational structures. See also Pares, The Formation of Candomble, pp. 93–94.
See Braga, Na Gamela de Feitiço, p. 178; and Diogenes Reboucas Filho, Pai Agenor (Editora Corrupio, São Paulo, 1998). Braga also mentions a version of the story where Mae Menininha of Gantois influenced the decision to end the ban on drumming by refusing to perform a ritual for the wife of a high-ranking military officer until she convinced her husband to assist them. See
Ickes, African-Brazilian Culture and Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil (University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2013), p. 64, for a description of her role in also reestablishing and legally protecting several other forms of Yoruba religious public ritual.
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© 2014 Miguel C. Alonso
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Alonso, M.C. (2014). Self-Defense Strategies in Bahian Candomble in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In: The Development of Yoruba Candomble Communities in Salvador, Bahia, 1835–1986. Afro-Latin@ Diasporas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137486431_5
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