Luis Nicolau Pares paper

Rethinking Histories of Resistance in Brazil and Mexico 1

WHERE DOES RESISTANCE HIDE? CULTURAL POLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY BAHIAN CANDOMBLÉ

[work in progress, version February 2008]

Luis Nicolau Parés∗

The concept of resistance in Afro-Brazilian studies

This essay examines the socio-political injunctions and transformations of Candomblé

in the last four decades and how the concept of “resistance” applies to this Afro-

Brazilian religious institution when its values and practices are over-exposed in the

public sphere and its signs are appropriated, disputed and re-signified by a plurality of

external actors.1 Indeed, in this period Candomblé has proven to be an unlimited and

potent resource of symbolic capital, constituting a magnet to all sorts of powers. It has

increasingly attracted the interest of the State, NGOs and a variety of social agents,

some acting as mediators – such as intellectuals, artists, politicians, black activists,

environmentalists – and some as conflictive dialectical “others” – including academics,

tourists and, more recently, Evangelical churches. An element that complicates the

study of this “field of forces” is that the distinction between insiders and outsiders is

blurred by the dynamic transitions and multiple affiliations of an increasing number of

practitioners (a devotee who converts to Evangelism, an academic who becomes a

priest, an initiated black activist who occupies a political post within the State etc.). If

Candomblé’s past seems to conform to Michel Foucault’s contention “where there is

power there is also resistance”, Candomblé’s present seems to adjust better to Lila Abu-

Lughod’s reverse sentence, “where there is resistance, there is power”.2

In Afro-Brazilian studies, the concept of resistance was first introduced through

historical studies of slavery, reacting somehow to the 1950s and 1960s studies on racial

∗ Professor of Anthropology, Universidade Federal da Bahia. 1 Candomblé is the name given to Afro-Brazilian religions and more specifically to its regional development in the state of Bahia. Originated in religious practices brought into Brazil by African slaves, Candomblé is a spirit-possession cult involving divination, initiation, sacrifice, healing and celebration. Candomblé congregations worship a series of spiritual entities (orishas, voduns, nkisis), often associated with forces of nature, who receive periodic ritual offerings in their shrines and who "possess" selected initiated devotees during drumming-dancing public ceremonies. Regular interaction with the gods is supposed to bring fortune to the religious group and to defend it against misfortune. 2 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, New York, Random House, 1978, pp. 95–96; Lila Abu-Lughod, “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women”, American Ethnologist 17(1), 1990, p. 42. .


relations of the São Paulo sociological school.3 The latter had portrayed slaves as an

alienated, homogeneous class, constrained by their structural position in the mode of

production, but in the following decades a new paradigm based on binary oppositions

such as assimilation and resistance, and later negotiation and conflict, began to emerge.

These new concepts were better suited to explain the socio-cultural complexities of the

encounter of Africans and their descendants with the dominant European colonisers.

Slaves, and more generally black people, were then represented as historical subjects

with political agency and the capacity to react to oppression. This theoretical approach

was widely disseminated in the 1980s particularly through the New History school,

greatly influenced by E. P. Thompson.4

The historical academic discourse on slavery, together with the political

discourse of Marxist intellectuals and black activists, were responsible for spreading the

resistance concept into the field of Afro-Brazilian religious studies. Candomblé, which

since the studies of Nina Rodrigues had been identified as the paradigmatic example of

the persistence of African traditions in the New World, began to be described as an

emblem of black resistance to white domination, demonstrating the ability of subaltern

groups to articulate counter-hegemonic discourses or alternative spaces of identity

within social structures of inequality.

It must be noted, however, that pioneering remarks on the subject were made by

sociologist Roger Bastide already in 1960. He was the first scholar to envisage

Candomblé, together with Afro-Catholicism, as a “class subculture” that had to be

studied from a sociological perspective, considering “the relations between blacks and

whites in a dualist social structure, relations of exploitation and domination on the one

hand, and of resistance and struggle on the other” [my emphasis], and from a cultural

perspective, examining “the relations between this class subculture and white

civilization.”5 Hence, for Bastide, and this is an important idea, religious resistance was

intimately associated with racial (blacks against whites) and economic (slaves against

masters) resistance.6

3 See, for example, Florestan Fernandes, A Integração do Negro na sociedade de classes, São Paulo: Dominus-USP, 1965 [1964]. 4 See, for instance, E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 1963. In Brazil, João José Reis & Eduardo Silva, Conflito e negociação. A resistência negra no Brasil escravista, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1989. 5 Roger Bastide, Sociología de la Religión, Madrid, Ediciones Jucar, 1986 [original: Les Religions africaines au Brésil, 1960.], vol. 1, pp. 162-63. 6 Ibid., p. 754.


Crystallizing around the resistance-assimilation dichotomous paradigm, as early

as the late 1970s, and more clearly in the 1980s, two antagonistic theoretical ways of

conceiving Candomblé emerged in Afro-Brazilian studies. One continued to represent

Candomblé as a traditional set of values and practices originated in a primordial African

past, transplanted into the New World and tenaciously preserved through generations

with little change. The other, reacting to this essentialist traditionalism and the obsessive

search for “Africanisms,” portrayed Candomblé as a modern institution emerging from

the Brazilian creative hybrid reconfiguration of a variety of “cultural fragments” – of

African, but also European and American origins.7 Indeed, the debate between those

who stress the African continuities in the New World and those who highlight its

discontinuities has been recurrent throughout the history of the wider field of Afro-

American studies.

As suggested by Richard Price, the academic antagonism between Africa-

centred scholars (i.e. Michael Gomez, John Thorton, Paul Lovejoy, Monica Schuler)

and America-centred ones (i.e. Mintz & Price, Kamau Bradwaite, Ira Berlin, Philip

Morgan) is partially based on careerism, (a rivalry between Africanists and

Americanists and, sometimes, between historians and anthropologists), but more

importantly on underlying ideologies or partis-pris. The “Afrocentrics” who tend to

emphasize the idea of “cultural resistance,” are prone to sympathise with black cultural

nationalism, while the “Creolists,” who highlight processes of “cultural synthesis,” have

sometimes been accused of Eurocentrism because of their assimilationist bias. Although

this dichotomy is simplistic, it demonstrates that the observers’ political and ideological

sensibilities often determine their intellectual positioning in the debate.8

One theme that exemplifies these theoretical and ideological antagonisms is

Afro-Catholic syncretism, the cultural process by which Catholic saints were juxtaposed

or even identified with African deities. Space limitation do not allow me for an in-depth

discussion on the subject, but two main interpretative paths are worth mentioning. The

“Creolists” tend to conceive Afro-Catholic syncretism as paradigmatic evidence of the

creative, harmonious hybridism of Afro-American cultures. Concurrently, the

“Afrocentrics” tend to sustain the “camouflage” theory: the use of Catholic saints’

7 See, among many others: Beatriz Góis Dantas, Vovó Nagô e Papai Branco. Usos e abusos da África no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Edições Graal Ltda., 1988 [1982]. 8 Richard Price, “O Milagre da crioulização: retrospectiva”, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, vol. 25, no 3 (2003), pp. 7-8. For the ideological dimension of the debate on creolization: Michael-Rolph Trouillot, “Culture on


iconography was only a strategy to hide the real worship of African gods under the

repressive control of the master. Therefore, apparent accommodation was in fact a form

of veiled resistance. Indeed, Bastide when studying Catholic brotherhoods and

Candomblé had already pointed out how apparent acculturation could hide counter-

acculturation movements.9

The “Creolist” position – explaining Afro-Catholic syncretism as the result of

adaptation to and assimilation of the dominant religious values – would seem to support

Antonio Gramci’s theory according to which the hegemonic ideology is introjected by

the subaltern groups, creating the impossibility to react to power and ultimately

promoting consent to rule. On the other hand, the “Afrocentric” camouflage theory

would seem to support James Scott’s idea of “hidden transcript” – the existence of

occult subversive discourses and gestures of defiance running in parallel to apparent

conformity to public transcripts and the official ideology.10

The camouflage theory has been lately questioned in the face of the many

recorded historical situations in which Africans and their descendants continued to

worship Catholic saints together with their African gods despite the absence of any

coercive force. In Andrew Apter’s view, the Catholicism of Candomblé “was the

religion of the masters, revised, transformed, and appropriated by slaves to harness its

power within their universes of discourse”.11 From this perspective, the ritual mimesis

of the dominant Catholicism was an embodied form to critically apprehend and

“control” the master’s spiritual universe. One might suggest that most of the times Afro-

Catholicism involved the juxtaposition of complementary efficacious resources, not

excluding the possibility of either strategic camouflage nor sincere devotion. The case

in hand reveals the analytical importance to take into account the heterogeneity of

positions within the subaltern groups and also how attitudes of assimilation and

resistance are not necessarily opposite or mutually exclusive, but can be ambiguously

interwoven in a paradoxical symbiosis.

While the concept of resistance applied to Candomblé has been widely used by

intellectuals, politicians and black activists, it must be noted that its use among insiders

the Edges: Creolization in the Plantation Context”, Plantation Society in the Americas, vol. 5, no 1 (spring 1988), pp. 8-28. 9 Bastide, Sociología de la Religión. 10 Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del Carcere, Turin, Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1977, 4 vol.; James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990.


is rare and those who use it are either devotees who have appropriated the external

discourse or the former agents that have been initiated. In any event, if one tries to

understand what “resistance” means, as the word is employed in the everyday speech of

Candomblé people, one perceives that it generally aligns with the Afrocentric

“continuity” theory of the academic debate.

The term may imply, metaphorically, the notion of a reaction to a force or a

counterforce to an applied force, and yet it does not overtly connote the idea of

aggressive response, confrontation or rebellious dissidence. Mãe Stella, high-priestess

of one of the most influential temples or terreiros in Salvador, once declared:

“Candomblé’s resistance, during the 30’s until the end of the 70’s, was the result of the

high-priestesses who went to Rio de Janeiro to talk to president Getúlio Vargas

demanding the freedom of the cult. It was obtained, but discrimination persisted...”.12

Resistance is here pictured as negotiating agency and as organized political action

against discrimination. Concurrently, its use, as in the slogan, “500 years of resistance,”

or as in the speech of an initiated black activist, “black women in Candomblé have been

resisting for centuries and we are still here to resist whether they like it or not”, for

instance, conveys rather a sense of permanence, durability, survival or even defiant

resilience.13 As stated by historian José Maurício Arruti, quilombo communities (here

including Candomblé congregations) “are resistant because one way or the other they

lasted until today”.14

The notion of resistance remits to a temporal continuity from the past to the

present, it evokes the conservation of something rather than its transformation. It

connotes the idea of not loosing what one has rather than winning what one does not

have. This preservation relies on the mimetic behaviour inherent to the cultural

transference from one generation to the other, which leads individuals to reproduce the

values and practices of their progenitors or predecessors. Hence, the ideology of

11 Andrew Apter, “Herskovit’s Heritage: Rethinking Syncretism in the African Diaspora”, in Anita Maria Leopold and Jeppe Sinding Jensen (eds) Syncretism in Religion: A Reader, New York, Routledge, 2005, p. 178. 12 Mãe Stella quoted in Maria Salete Joaquim, O papel da liderança feminina na construção da Identidade Negra, Rio de Janeiro, Pallas, 2001, pp. 28-29. 13 The slogan was used in 2000, during the anniversary of the 500 years of the European arrival in Brazil. The speech was pronounced in Salvador, in 2007, during the launching of a book on black women in 19th century Bahia. 14 José Maurício Arruti, interview http://www.comciencia.br/entrevistas/memoria/arruti.htm. Like the West Indian marroon, quilombo used to refer to a community of fugitive black slaves or their descendants. For the contemporary meanings see below.


resistance seems to be anchored in the past rather than projected to the future, and in

that sense it is conservative or gregarious rather than progressive or revolutionary.

One could even postulate that the logic of African religious systems reinforces

the ideology of resistance, since many of these religions are often oriented towards the

past, be it in the form of the cult of ancestors or in ritual practices that reiterate a

cyclical return to the origins. These cosmologies contrast with the teleological view of

history conveyed by Christianity and its orientation towards the future, salvation and the

idea of life after death.15 To a certain extent, Candomblé cosmology feeds a notion of

resistance closely interwoven with the semantics of ancestrality and tradition, all

concepts remitting to the idea of Africa as the primordial origin.

The State’s “culturization” of religion

If resistance defines itself primarily in relation to domination, one should try to

understand the different configurations of power that have historically conditioned

Candomblé’s practices of resistance and which have been their consequences. To a

great extent the imagination of Candomblé as a form of cultural resistance derives from

its association with slavery. Indeed the power asymmetry of a racialised slave society

and the hegemonic position of Iberian Catholicism placed African religious practices in

a structurally marginal or subaltern space, reacting and adapting to the conflictive

attitudes of repression and selective tolerance assumed by the white elites. However, it

would be reductive to describe Candomblé as merely the product of a “class” (i.e. slave)

or “racial” struggle against domination, since together with concealment and refuge,

interaction and negotiation with the wider social order was inescapable and probably a

key-factor in Candomblé’s social reproduction.16

Nonetheless, the history of the religious institution has been characterized as a

transition from a past situation of black ethnic exclusivity and reclusive invisibility to a

present one of social inclusiveness and public visibility. The beginning of this critical

shift coincided with a new configuration of power relations: the end of the Old Republic

15 John Peel, Religious Encounters and the making of the Yoruba, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2000, pp. 171-72. 16 For a more detailed analysis of the historical process of formation of Candomblé: Luis Nicolau Parés, A formação do candomblé. História e ritual da nação jeje na Bahia, Campinas, Editora da Unicamp, 2006; João José Reis, “Candomblé in Nineteenth-Century Bahia: Priests, Followers, Clients”, in Kristin Mann and Edna Bay (eds.), “Rethinking the African Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil”, Slavery & Abolition, vol. 22, n. 1, 2001; Rachel Harding, A Refuge in Thunder. Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness, Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2000.


and the rise of the Estado Novo in the 1930s. At this point in time there was an ongoing

project intended to define a new national Brazilian identity, based on the ideology of

mestiçagem or harmonious cultural and racial mixture. In this context, different forms of

black popular culture, like samba, carnival and last but not least Candomblé, began to

be positively valorised as part of the national cultural heritage. The scholarly

recognition of Candomblé was initiated with the celebration, in January 1937, of the

Second Afro-Brazilian Congress in Salvador. Yet this carefully structured visibility of

Candomblé – a process that Paul Johnson succinctly describes as a transition “from

tumour to trophy”17 – was quite selective and affected only a few temples, namely those

self-identified as belonging to the Nagô “nation”. Since the late nineteenth century,

these orisha-worshipping congregations had established their prestige as the guardians

of the authentic African tradition, as opposed to the increasing number of “mixed” and

“syncretized” houses worshiping the caboclo Brazilian deities.18

Beatriz Gois Dantas has argued that the intellectual construction of the Nagô

tradition “as a true religion, in contrast with Bantu magic/sorcery” concealed the

interests of the white Euro-Brazilian elites and that it disguised a subtle form of

domination. According to Dantas, these elites, while promoting the recognition of the

Brazilian African heritage (thus favouring an apparent idea of “racial democracy” as

conceived by Freyre), would pursue two main objectives. On the one hand, they would

try to “clean” the African religion of its most dangerous aspects. Nagô “purity” is often

associated with a denial of “black magic”, criticism of the increasing professionalism of

religious experts and, in some cases, certain ideas of “matriarchy” which implicitly

discredit male or homosexual priests. On the other hand, the stress on African “purity”

would “exoticize” Afro-Brazilian culture, and would implicitly promote the

establishment of a “cultural ghetto” which would deprive its social agents of a real

insertion and participation in the wide national society.19

Dantas was subsequently severely criticized by several authors for over-

emphasizing the role played by intellectuals in the construction of the myth of Nagô

17 Paul Christopher Johnson, Secrets, Gossip and Gods, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, p.*** 18 Luis Nicolau Parés, “The Nagôization process in Bahian Candomblé”, in T. Falola and M. Childs (orgs.) The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005, pp. 185-208. The Nagô “nation” refers to a ritual model associated with the orisha religious traditions of Yoruba origin. 19 Beatriz Góis Dantas, “Pureza e Poder no Mundo dos Candomblés”, in Carlos Eugênio Marcondes de Moura (org.), Candomblé: Desvendando Identidades (Novos Estudos sobre a Religião dos Orixás.), São Paulo, EMW Ed., 1987, p. 125; idem, Vovó Nagô e Papai Branco. Usos e abusos da África no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Graal, 1988 [1982], 200, 205, 208-9, 213.


“purity” and for ignoring the agency of the religious participants themselves who since

the early times of Candomblé had been competing among themselves in terms of ritual

legitimacy and prestige.20 And yet, although the historical dynamic of Candomblé

cannot be reduced to the influence of external factors, the strategically-oriented

curiosity of intellectuals and the circulation of their texts and images in the public

sphere served to create a new kind of social visibility for Afro-Brazilian religion. The

new relationships of the terreiros with public powers certainly affected their old

practices of covert resistance, based on ritual secrecy, concealment and social

invisibility, forcing new strategies of negotiation.

Throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s the intellectual avant-garde, including

locals such as Jorge Amado and Dorival Cayimi and foreigners, including Pierre

Verger, Roger Bastide and Carybé, continued to voice and disseminate public images of

Candomblé. At the same time, some of the most famous high priestesses, like Mãe

Senhora form the Axé Opô Afonjá or Mãe Menininha from the Gantois, cultivated

liaisons with influential celebrities, receiving and initiating famous artists, writers and

pop stars as well as politicians. In that sense, the 1970s constitute a new critical period

for the growth of “public” Candomblé and for the marketing of religion into culture.

If politicians, either looking for votes or as clients, had customarily flirted with

Candomblé,21 in the 1970s, it was the State itself that initiated a series of symbolic

“gestures” to signal its official recognition. In March 1975, for instance, the governor of

Bahia, Antonio Carlos Magalhães (ACM) opened the doors of the government’s Palace

to give a reception to dozens of Candomblé women who came to thank him for his

support of Afro-Brazilian religion.22 In January 1976, the newly-elected governor

Roberto Santos signed a decree putting an end to the requirement that Candomblé

20 See among others: Renato da Silveira, “Pragmatismo e milagres de fé no Extremo Ocidente”, in João José Reis (org.) Escravidão e invenção da liberdade. Estudos sobre o negro no Brasil, São Paulo, Editora Brasiliense, 1988, p. 191; Ordep Serra, Águas do Rei, Petrópolis, Editora Vozes Ltda., 1995, pp. 48-65; Sergio Ferretti, Repensando o Sincretismo, São Paulo, EDUSP, 1995, pp. 64-70. 21 Since the second half of the nineteenth century, conservative politicians had developed populist and clientelistic alliances with Candomblé congregations. O Alabama, for instance, reports two feasts held in terreiros or by candomblé practitioners, after the victory of the conservative party in Salvador’s municipal elections: O Alabama, 23 September 1864, pp. 1-2; 26 September 1868, p. 4. For the twentieth century see: Yvonne Maggie Medo do feitiço: relações entre magia e poder no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Arquivo Nacional, 1992. 22 Jocélio Telles dos Santos, O poder da cultura e a cultura no poder: a disputa simbólica da herança cultural negra no Brasil, Salvador, Edufba, 2005, p. 145.


practitioners obtain police permission to celebrate their religious activities.23 These

symbolic events marked a new relationship between the State and Candomblé.

The Bahian political establishment seemed to realize the value of black culture

as an exportable commodity which could contribute to shaping an image of Bahia, that

would appeal to the national and international tourism market. Recycling the

representations of Bahian black culture projected since the 1940s by the above-

mentioned intellectual avant-garde, institutions like Bahiatursa (the official Bahian

tourism agency, founded in 1972) began to promote Salvador as a “mystical” city and

Candomblé as a tourist attraction and “exotic” spectacle. Newspapers also began to

announce regularly the feasts, “to facilitate those who want to visit the terreiros of

Candomblé”.24

Since then, Candomblé has become a “trademark” of Bahia, and an essential

diacritic of the regional identity of baianidade.25 Instead of a sect (seita) Candomblé

was publicized as a true religion, and Bahiatursa contributed to this transition through

an ambiguous and ambivalent discourse. On the one hand, its folders and magazines

used stylized images of Candomblé to stimulate foreigners’ appetite for the exotic, and

on the other, they advised tourists on proper behaviour during religious ceremonies,

allegedly defending the terreiros against exploitation by unscrupulous tourism agencies

and standing up for the preservation of authenticity. Public authorities assumed the

simultaneous roles of advocates, promoters and regulators of the social legitimacy of

Candomblé, evoking the familiar paternalism and protectionist discourse of politicians

in the past.26

One should not forget that those were the times of the dictatorship and the

government of Antonio Carlos Magalhães, the “strongman” of Bahia. Not surprisingly,

the 1970’s expansion and increasing visibility of Candomblé coincided once more with

a period of conservative political power, as had happened in the 1930s during the

Estado Novo. The alliance and clientelist relationships of some sectors of the elites with

Candomblé corresponded to a populist policy intended to please the subaltern classes

23 Decree n. 25.095, 15/01/1976, eliminated the requirement that terreiros receive authorization from the police department of Games and Customs 24 A Tarde, 19/01/1973 25 Roque Pinto, “Como a cidade de Salvador empreende a produção do exótico através do texto da baianidade”, Salvador, Master’s dissertation, UFBA, 2001; Vagner Gonçalves da Silva, O antropólogo e sua magia, São Paulo, EDUSP, 2001; Johnson, Secrets, p. ***; Santos, O poder da cultura; Mattijs Van de Port, “Sacerdotes midiáticos. O candomblé, discursos de celebridade e a legitimação da autoridade religiosa na esfera pública baiana,” Religião e Sociedade, vol. 25 (2), 2005, p. 36. 26 Santos, O poder da cultura, p. 155


with symbolic gestures, but it also hid the elite’s secret desire, dependency (and fear) of

the black man’s spiritual power. Indeed, even if Afro-Brazilian religion and politics

operate according to different logics, what is produced in the religious field (symbolic

capital) can be converted into what is currency in the political field (political capital).27

The personal accumulation of axé (life force, vital energy) on which Candomblé is

based, can easily be equated with or transformed into social or political power.

In any case, the State’s tutelage of Candomblé was only an aspect of a wider

process of commodification and folklorization of black culture, in which ethnic

elements were used to promote the regional identity of baianidade. This “production of

identities” involved institutional redefinitions, reconfiguration of the intellectual

panorama and the creation of new models of cultural policy-making.28 The State’s

initiatives included, among others, the foundation of the Afro-Brazilian Museum in

1974,29 the sponsorship of Afro-Brazilian cultural groups (carnival blocos, capoeira,

baianas do acarajé etc.), and the use of public space for the display of imagery

representing the orishas.30 This scheme reinforced Bahiatursa policies to promote

Candomblé as a tourist attraction.31

These external dynamics had profound effects within the religious community,

to the extent that the old inner conflict between the Africanized houses and the

syncretised ones, was reproduced under new capitalistic terms, opposing the altruistic

religious vocation of the former against the material and commercial interest of the

latter. Tourists emerged as new actors, who, as exponents of capitalistic consumerism,

were perceived as feeding and promoting the greed of religious entrepreneurs accused

of charlatanism, professionalism and umbandization.32

27 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1984; apud. ***, “The Sisterhood of Boa Morte in Brazil: Harmonious Mixture, Black Resistance and the Politics of Religious Practice,” (unpublished). 28 Michel Agier, “Etnopolítica. A dinâmica do espaço afro-baiano”, Revista de Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, no 22 (1992). 29 Santos, O poder da cultura, p. 113; cf. A Tarde, 6/03/1974. 30 See Roger Sansi, “Fetishes, Commodities, Images, Art Works. Afro-Brazilian Art and Culture in Bahia”, PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2003. 31 It must be noted that punctual tourist promotion of Candomblé preceded Bahiatursa efforts. Jorge Amado’s tourist guide, Bahia de Todos os Santos, published in 1945, included a section on Candomblé and other examples are found in the 1950s: Van de Port, “Sacerdotes midiáticos,” p. 36. 32 Umbanda is a Brazilian mediumistic religion emerging in the 1930s in Rio de Janeiro and spreading throughout Brazil. It draws elements from a plurality of sources (Candomblé, Kardecist Spiritism, Caboclo cults, Catholicism and Oriental esoteric traditions) and from the perspective of “orthodox” Candomblé, it is perceived as “syncretic mixture”. See Renato Ortiz, A morte branca do feiticeiro negro: Umbanda e sociedade Brasileira, São Paulo, Editora Brasiliense, 1991 [1988].


The perception of tourism as a potential source of income was thus not an

exclusive prerogative of the State. The condemnation by Candomblé practitioners of the

dangers of tourism started in the early 1970s and has persisted until today. In 1974, for

instance, during the foundation of the Confederação Baiana de Cultos Afro-Brasileiros,

its president Antonio Monteiro stated that “Candomblé could not be transposed into

carnival feasts, transformed into folklore or industrialized in the name of progress”.33 In

1983, the five high-priestesses of the most well-known terreiros in town signed a public

document in which they denounced the risks of using Candomblé for “tourist

propaganda” and “folkloric exploitation”.34

The Candomblé community has not traditionally lined up with any particular

political project, while the temples have always very pragmatically used the available

resources and possibilities in each particular moment. The State’s attempt to co-opt

Candomblé might have been successful as far as some temples accepted the official

embrace, often in the expectation of some material benefit, but at the same time the

resistive forces, as demonstrated by the reaction against tourism, persisted. The old

dilemma between visibility and invisibility emerged again and in a time of increasing

external interference and public exposure the orthodox voices warning about the risks of

profanation and transgression of the limits of secrecy were loudly heard.

Candomblé, the Black Movement and Re-Africanization

Influenced by the United States Civil Rights Movement, a significant growth of black

political organization occurred in the 1970s, with the foundation of the Movimento

Negro Unificado (MNU) and other associations, including the Afro-centric carnival

group Ilê Aiyê. It is to be observed that in the early 1970s, black activists did not readily

identify Candomblé as a space of resistance, since they perceived religion as alienation

and the institution as appropriated by whites – white intellectuals like Amado or Carybé

were then the main mediators between Candomblé and the State. The leaders of the

black movement also associated Candomblé negatively with syncretism and

assimilation.35 For them, resistance was a political concept applied to a racialized class

33 Santos, O poder da cultura, p. 131 34 Josildeth Gomes Consorte “Em torno de um Manifesto de Ialorixás Baianas contra o Sincretismo,” in Jéferson Barcelar and Carlos Caroso, Faces da Tradição afro-brasileira: religiosidade, sincretismo, anti-sincretismo, reafricanização, práticas terapêuticas, etnobotánica e comida, Rio de Janeiro/Salvador, Pallas/CEAO, 1999, pp. 71-91, citation form, p. 71. 35 Santos, O poder da cultura, p. 164-65


struggle, inconceivable within the cultural domain. As stated by Jonatas C. da Silva,

“there did not yet exist a clear comprehension of the role of culture in politics.”36

The demise of the dictatorship and the modest emergence of a black middle

class with access to higher education marked, in the early 1980s, the crystallization of

the black movement as a political force and “influential minority.” Its leadership then

began to recognize Candomblé’s potential in furnishing cultural symbols for political

action. “Afro-Brazilian civilization,” until then the object of anthropological study,

began to be a matter of political discussion, and black intellectuals claimed the right to

be subjects and agents of their own self-representations. The search for a racially-

defined ethnicity found in Candomblé, as an emblem of African identity, a rich source

of cultural referents and dignified icons to guarantee the necessary unity for achieving

the political goals of black empowerment and social equality.37

In sync with North-American Pan-Africanist ideology, Brazilian black activism

fought against white hegemony and racial discrimination, while its most radical wing

promoted ideas of political and cultural separatism. It is in this ideological context that

the anti-syncretism movement in Afro-American religions emerged, both in the United

States and Brazil. This trend argued for the necessity to separate African deities and

Catholic saints, whose blending was perceived as the legacy of white acculturation and

the period of slavery.

In Brazil these ideas were voiced during the second Conference of the Tradition

of Orisha Culture (COMTOC) held in 1983, in Salvador, in which members of the

priesthood, both from Africa and the Diaspora, gathered together. As suggested by the

conference’s title, Candomblé assumed itself not just as religion, but as the ultimate

expression of Afro-Brazilian culture and tradition.38 In this event, Bahia’s five most

important high priestesses signed the above-mentioned document denouncing tourism,

but also in favour of removing Catholic imagery from the terreiros. They thus became

the most visible advocates of what came to be known as the “re-Africanization”

movement.39

36 Jonatas C. da Silva, apud Santos, O poder da cultura, p. 167 37 It is to be noted that “black ethnicity” is not exclusively based on the promotion of “traditional” African cultural referents like Candomblé, and that “modern” North-American referents like Hip-Hop, particularly among the young, are gaining greater attractiveness: Livio Sansone, Negritude sem etnicidade, Rio de Janeiro/Salvador, Pallas/EDUFBA, 2004. 38 Sansi, “Fetishes, Commodities.” 39 For a transcript of the declaration see http://www.geocities.com/ileaxeopoafonja/. For comments see: Consorte, “Em torno de um Manifesto de Ialorixás Baianas contra o Sincretismo”; Vagner Gonçalves da Silva, Orixás da Metropole, Petropolis, Vozes, 1995 [1992], p. 269.


This “crusade” or “act of decolonization” against Catholicism is an indication of

the relative autonomy of Afro-Brazilian discourse and practice, and questions Dantas’

hypothesis, which sees the construction of Nagô purity as a machination of the white

elites. Instead, the “re-Africanization” process could be interpreted as a counter-

acculturation movement (similar to messianic or fundamentalist movements praising a

return to the origins) occurring when cultural transformation is advanced enough to

impede any pure and simple recreation of the original culture. Counter-acculturation, far

from being the return to the origins that it would like to be, is just another type of

cultural change. It does not regenerate the old but creates the new. As stated by Bastide,

the discourse of continuity between African and Afro-Brazilian religious traditions

results from an ideology of compensation which tends to place value on a rooting in the

past to counterbalance real rupture and discontinuity.40 Although the anti-syncretism

movement was not an unanimous position within Candomblé, signalling its lack of

internal cohesion, it expressed the political mobilization of a significant part of its

leadership in defence of a black identity and a project of social justice and equality that

challenged the current configuration of power relations.

What is worth retaining for our argument is the existence of two independent

groups, namely the State (or some elite politicians in alliance with intellectuals) and the

Black movement (or anti-racist activists), both appropriating Candomblé’s signs to

promote separate collective identities, one regional (baianidade) and the other ethnic

(negritude), respectively. Both the regionalist and the radical discourses emerge from

the same source – the recognition of Brazil’s African roots – but they are voiced from

quite opposite ideological positions. At an early stage, both identities may have

overlapped when black cultural groups like Ilê Aiyê or Olodum, for instance, co-opted

by the State funding, assumed themselves as representatives of baianidade too.41 As

suggested by Patricia Pessar in relation to other Brazilian subaltern cultural producers,

these groups had to face “the dilemma of appreciating inclusion and the ability to profit

monetarily from elite embrace, yet struggle to hold on to those forms of alternative

subjectivities, cultural forms, and social spaces that foster challenges to elite

domination.”42

40 Roger Bastide, “Continuité et discontinuité des societés et des cultures afro-américaines,” Bastidiana, n. 13-14 (January-July 1996 [1970]), p. 78. 41 Patrícia de Santana Pinho, Reinvenções da África na Bahia, São Paulo, Anna Blume, 2004, p. 230 42 Patrícia Pessar, From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Milleniarism and Popular Culture, Durham, Duke University Press, 2004, p. 223


During the 1990s, black movement agents began to reach positions of power

within the State, lobbying for the implementation of cultural identity policies. In this

new context, Candomblé’s association with negritude or the manipulation of its

symbols as identifiers of blackness seems to have gained renewed strength. As we will

see in the next section, Candomblé came to be absorbed into the ideologies of resistance

and quilombos, as part of a wider agenda of anti-racist policies. Interestingly, this

ethnicization of Candomblé – the idea of Candomblé as the religion of black people –

was most prevalent in Bahia, while in the southern parts of the country Candomblé

became increasingly universalized. Therefore, to a certain extent, the ethnic emphasis

could not avoid a regional character, reproducing once more the situation of previous

decades.

The “politicization” of culture

If the growing exposure of Candomblé in the public sphere during the 1970-80s could

be portrayed as a form of “culturization of religion,” the 1990s saw a process of

“politicization of culture” and therefore “politicization of religion.” The process was

framed within the wider international agenda of North-American neo-liberal

multiculturalism and the promotion of the so-called “politics of difference” or “politics

of identity.” The recognition of cultural rights of minorities and the search for cultural

identity became fundamental tools for political mobilization. This trend was globally

followed by the increasing ethnicization of black identity.

In Brazil, the 1990s saw the consolidation of the black movement’s political

strategy of “capturing the State”, its members assuming positions within the State

apparatus, particularly through the Palmares Cultural Foundation (Fundação Cultural

Palmares), a department of the Ministry of Culture founded in 1988 with the goal of

promoting cultural policies for the black population. The Palmares Foundation gave an

institutional voice to ideas of preservation, maintenance and memory of black culture,

as well as to a discourse on debt and reparation in historical terms.

In this context, the black movement, via the Palmares Foundation, began to

elaborate and promote a new expanded concept of quilombo that went beyond groups

who originated in communities of fugitive slaves or who had received land from their

former masters, to include any community that self identified as black and claimed the

registration and ownership of the land it occupied. This wider concept of quilombo

became an emblem of the black movement political force and emerged as a metaphor


for resistance, a wide notion of resistance too, including the many strategies a group can

use to perpetuate itself in a particular space, often struggling against the capitalistic

greed of the market (i.e. landowners, real estate speculation).

One of the most interesting effects of the semantic inclusiveness of the quilombo

concept is that it was designed to comprise urban black communities too, most

significantly Candomblé terreiros. Thus, religious congregations were incorporated into

quilombo politics and joined the territorial demands of the black subaltern population.43

Subsequently, terreiros began to be categorised as “black territories,” where the notion

of territory or territoriality implies much more than just a physical space and involves

the symbolic and cultural injunctions operating in the occupation of a particular site and

the associated construction of a collective identity.44

Up to today, the Palmares Foundation has been responsible for receiving

community proposals and acting as mediator with other State agencies like the IPHAN

(National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute) and INCRA (National Institute for

the Colonization and Agrarian Reform), who will eventually legally sanction the land

ownership. Hence, black activism, particularly through the Palmares Foundation,

became the new critical mediator between Candomblé and the State, relegating white

intellectuals to a relatively less visible position. The spread of the quilombo ideology

determined new public policies of governmental entities like IPHAN. The most

important one is the policy of tombamento (i.e. registration), by which a few Candomblé

houses were officially recognised as national cultural heritage sites.

After much discussion, this process was inaugurated in 1984 with the

tombamento of the Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká or Casa Branca, allegedly the “oldest and first

candomblé in Brazil.”45 This case established an important precedent for a policy that,

between 1999 and 2005, declared national “black monuments” four houses in Salvador

(Bahia) and one in São Luis (Maranhão).46 This federal policy was shortly afterwards

replicated by the State of Bahia’s own Cultural and Artistic Heritage Institute that,

43 Daniel Chiozzini Território negro http://www.revista.iphan.gov.br/materia.php?id=63 44 Muniz Sodré, O Terreiro e a Cidade, Petrópolis, Vozes, 1988, pp.14-15. 45 For more details about this process of tombamento and the historical antecedents in the 1970s of a new way to conceive cultural heritage see: Ordep Serra, “Monumentos Negros: uma experiência,” Afro-Ásia, n. 33 (2005). 46 The six houses recognized by IPHAN are [in brackets the date of their tombamento]: 1.- Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká or Casa Branca, of Nagô-Ketu nation [31/05/1984]; 2.- Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá, of Nagô-Ketu nation [1999]; 3.- Ilê Iyá Omin Axé Iyamassé or Gantois, of Nagô-Ketu nation [2002]; 4.- Querebentam de Zomadonu or Casa das Minas, of Mina-Jeje nation, located in the state of Maranhão [2002]; 5.- Manso Banduquenqué or Batefolha, of Congo-Angola nation [13/10/2003]; and 6.- Ilê Maroiá Láji, Alaketo, of Nagô-Ketu nation [19/04/2005].


between 2004 and 2006, registered eight other cult houses. These tombamentos have

somehow crystallized an already existing hierarchy of prestige operating among

candomblés, while stimulating a competitive dynamic among those houses searching for

the official recognition.

A few terreiros have expressed reluctance or “resistance” to the tombamento

policies, in some cases because they fear the State’s intrusion into their sacred spaces

and a loss of autonomy. Yet the refusal may also be due to personal motivation and

interest, since the tombamento imposes collective rights of property and impedes

practitioners, who often live in the terreriro, from registering their homes in their

names. Therefore, “resistance” to the State’s protectionist tutelage may hide more

prosaic transcripts too.

The intervention of official powers within the field of Afro-Brazilian religion

has continued in recent years. The latest, most striking example, was the project

Mapeamento dos Terreiros de Salvador (Survey of the Terreiros of Salvador) that has

mapped allegedly all Candomblé temples in town. Concluded in May 2007, it was the

outcome of a collaboration between several municipal and federal government agencies,

the university and Candomblé associations.47 The convergence of all these agencies

shows how politicians, intellectuals, black activists and symbolically the priesthood,

joined efforts in a project with many purposes and interests. One of its stated goals is to

provide data to guide public policies, like the regulation of the rather chaotic occupation

of land by many of these religious communities and ultimately supplying the temples

with deeds of ownership. So far, 60% of the terreiros are in situations of varying

degrees of irregularity (20.8% without any kind of document).48 Jocelio Teles Santos,

leader of the research team, declared that the Project will also serve “to include the

terreiros in the tourist itinerary of the city”, announcing a future partnership with

Bahiatursa.49 Therefore, the institutional synergy generated by the Project will

47 The project was an initiative of the Secretaria Municipal de Reparação (SEMUR), the Secretaria Municipal de Habitação (SEHAB), in partnership with the Fundação Cultural Palmares and the Secretaria Especial de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial (SEPPIR). It was executed by the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais of the Federal University of Bahia, with the support of the Federação Nacional do Culto Afro-brasileiro na Bahia (FENACAB) and the Associação Cultural de Preservação do Patrimônio Bantu (ACBANTU). The preliminary results of the research identified 1,152 terreiros in the metropolitan area of Salvador: Jocélio Teles dos Santos (coord.), Regularização Fundiária dos Terreiros de Candomblés, Salvador, CEAO, Sehab/Semur, Fundação Palmares/Seppir, 2007. 48 A Tarde, 12/05/2007, p. 14. Around 78% of the terreiros do not have open spaces with sacred plants considered to be fundamental for the worship of orishas, voduns and nkisis. 49 http://www.sehab.salvador.ba.gov.br/Noticias/20070507_1.htm


ultimately be responsible for the continued marketing of Candomblé as one of the city’s

cultural commodities.

According to the Project, the majority of terreiros face economic difficulties in

maintaining their religious activities. Almost 90% survive solely on the personal

resources of their leaders and on the income generated by their religious services (i.e.

divination). Only a mere 0.4% claim to receive funds from municipal or federal

government programs.50 Though the latter figure seems to be slightly under-reported,

there is no doubt that the State’s real effective intervention has been minimal thus far. In

light of such numbers, all the choreographed discourse on the official recognition of and

preoccupation with Candomblé sounds rather hollow.

In this scenario, there is increasing participation by civil society, namely in the

form of NGOs. For instance, KOINONIA, founded in 1994, is an ecumenical

organization which, through the program Egbé – Territórios Negros, intervenes in the

struggle against religious intolerance, the development of professional training

workshops and the articulation of a network of terreiros, encouraging, for instance, their

organization into civil associations in order to have access to the State benefits.51 A

slightly different case is ACBANTU, initially an association of priests and priestesses of

Candomblé houses of the Angola “nation.” Founded in 2000, it today includes more

than 800 “Afro-descendant traditional communities,” ranging from terreiros to samba

groups. Its stated mission is to “preserve and divulge the culture of Bantu Afro-

ethnicities,” but its activities include broader socio-political projects in partnership with

state and municipal agencies, promoting citizenship in the areas of education, health,

environment, food security, etc.

Hence, whether originated outside Candomblé communities or within them,

these NGOS emerge as a new form of mediation between the religious domain and the

secular world of politics. The proliferation of NGOs also points towards an increasing

synergy and overlap of initiatives involving civil society, the State and the black

movement in relation to Candomblé. This new political arrangement and alliance

becomes most apparent in the so-called movement against religious intolerance.

If, in the 1980s, the “enemies” of Candomblé were Catholicism (in the anti-

syncretism re-africanization movement), Umbanda and tourism, in the late 1990s there

was a shift of forces and the Pentecostal churches emerged as the new galvanizing

50 A Tarde, 11/05/2007, p. 8 51 http://www.koinonia.org.br/fala_egbe.asp


“enemy”. In 1995, when the televangelist Sérgio Von Helder gave a few kicks to an

image of Nossa Senhora da Aparecida, the media portrayed Evangelical churches as a

foreign religion and Catholicism, Umbanda and Candomblé as the national ones.52 In

1998 the Pentecostal Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (IURD) launched a new violent

attack, this time against the sculptures representing the orishas in a public lagoon in

Salvador, denouncing them as a clear example of idolatry and Devil worship.53

Yet the episode that ignited a major mobilization of the Candomblé community

was the death, in January 1999, of Mãe Gilda, high-priestess of the Abassá de Ogum,

after seeing her picture in an article on charlatanism published in a IURD newsletter.

After this tragic event, Mãe Gilda’s daughter, with legal assistance from KOINONIA,

initiated a long judicial process against the IURD that after successive favourable result

for the plaintiff is now waiting to be judged by the Supreme Court.54

Throughout the years, the case generated different political actions and public

mobilization. For example, in March 2003, the federal congressman Luiz Alberto,

member of the Black movement, organized an event entitled “Afro-Brazilian Religions

– Tradition and Resistance” in Brasilia’s Chamber of Deputies.55 In 2004, a law was

passed in the City Hall of Salvador, declaring the 21st of January, the anniversary of

Mãe Gilda’s death, as the Municipal Day of the Combat Against Religious Intolerance.

Many other commemorative events were held in various governmental institutions and

several seminars to discuss the subject were organized by the Workers Party (PT), the

black movement and some of the most politically-aware terreiros.

Hence the campaign against religious intolerance added force to the alliance

between the black movement, political parties, State agencies (Palmares Foundation),

NGOs (i.e., KOINONIA, ACBANTU) and the Candomblé community. In an institution

known for the independence and often competitive dynamics of its constituent parts,

this campaign was a significant step forward, because for the first time a significant

number of terreiros was able to coordinate efforts for political action against a common

enemy. In that sense, the movement against religious intolerance expresses a process of

increasing political awareness within Candomblé. While self-conscious collective

52 Johnson, Secrets, p. 158 53 Roger Sansi, "Art, Religion, and the Public Sphere in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil," Working Papers Series in Latin American Studies, University of Chicago, Autumn 2001. 54 Fala Egbé Informativo, nº 7, year 3, August 2005. 55 “Comitiva contra Intolerância Religiosa leva Axé para Brasília. Informe da assessoria do deputado Luis Alberto PT/BA,” http://www.xapana.com.br/intolerancia.htm


political action would allow us to talk of “resistance”, the involvement of governmental

agencies seems to be somewhat at odds.

In this context, one cannot ignore the political agenda of the external agents and

their use of religion as a strategy to mobilize the popular segments of the black

population. The PT, that in 2007 assumed the government of the State of Bahia and

since 2005 participates in Salvador’s municipal coalition, intends to revert the populist

attitudes of the “Carlismo” with public policies of social equality, but it is unclear how

this political shift from right to left will reflect on the tutelage of Candomblé. For

example, the Municipal Secretary of Reparation, has recently launched a program to

invest 2.2 million reais (1.1 million US$) to renovate the physical infrastructure of 56

terreiros (approximately 25,000 US$ per house).56 Given the general poverty of

Candomblé houses, this program that affects less than 5% of the total number of

temples in the city, is bound to exacerbate competition and it has already caused some

discord under suspicion of political preferential treatment.

Moreover, these municipal policies have generated the perception that public

powers are favouring one religion at the expense of others. Some sectors opposed to the

black movement’s racial policies criticize the government for funding and promoting

Candomblé as the “authentic” religion of afro-descendants, discriminating against

evangelical blacks.57 Governmental representatives justify public policies in favour of

Afro-Brazilian religions because of the historical tradition of stigmatization imposed on

its practitioners, highly exacerbated by Pentecostal churches. Indeed, according to a

survey conducted by Datafolha in May 2007, 57% of the Brazilian population still

establishes a link between Candomblé and the Devil.58

A preliminary conclusion is that in the last decade the black movement and

NGOs initiatives in relation to Candomblé have had an impact on the State public

policies, whether at the Federal, State or Municipal levels, as reflected in tombamento

policies, subvention programs, or the campaign against religious intolerance. These

changes signal a re-arrangement of the forces operating in the religious field and an

increasing politicization of the Candomblé community, which has also been a critical

agent in this process.

56 A Tarde, 11/05/2007, p. 8. Resulting from a successful initiative of the Federal Bahian group presented in the National Congress, the money was allocated to the Palmares Foundation, at the Ministry of Culture. 57 “Movimento Negro se aproxima dos evangélicos”, O Cronista, n. 1, June 2007, p. 5. 58 Folha de São Paulo, 06/05/2007


This politicization is due in part to the growing number of young black activists

and intellectuals associated with political parties who become initiated, thus blurring the

boundaries between internal and external social actors and favouring the discourse of

negritude and a greater political awareness by some religious leaders. However, one

should not overemphasize this trend, since the black movement activists, despite their

influence and visibility, are concentrated in a relatively small number of “traditional”

terreiros and their political agendas (i.e., policies against racism, affirmation of ethnic

identity, and promotion of social activities in the terreiros) do not always extend to

other terreiros. Hence, the influence of this vocal minority does not spare the more

conservative and less politically-aware religious discourse of another important sector

of practitioners.

A final transition: from hyper-exposure to concealment again

In this concluding section I would like to elaborate on two main interrelated points: the

persistence of the strategies of invisibility in times of hyper-exposure and the regional-

ethnic identity tension. As we have seen, the past antagonism with the hegemonic

Catholic Church and the uneasy, ambivalent relationship with the white political

establishment were reconfigured into new “resistance” against Evangelical churches,

tourism and to a lesser degree the uncomfortable continuous presence of academics.59

The State, NGOs and black activists constitute today Candomblé’s main official allies,

advocates, tutors and mediators. Although these agents intend to strengthen policies of

cultural preservation and social equality, Candomblé has continued to be explicitly

marketed as the ultimate “authentic” site for tourists, and its signs of African heritage to

be increasingly absorbed and “re-mediated” for consumerism purposes.

Johnson characterizes “public Candomblé” by concepts such as “a widening

semiotic community, systemic rationalization, publishing, television, film and

internet”.60 His main idea is that “the social and discursive boundary of secrecy remains

within the terreiro, but the semiotic system of Candomblé has leapt the barrier and it is

out available for endless possible interpretations […] Secrecy remains a key part of the

59 Particularly since the 1990s, the Pastoral Afro, an anti-racist initiative within the Catholic Church, with Dom Gilío, a black priest, as one of its most visible figures, has contributed to the Catholic approximation with Candomblé. Beyond religious differences, the anti-racist and social equality agenda provide the ground for inter-religious dialogue. 60 Johnson, Secrets, pp. 157-66


discourse of these exoteric revelations in public, but now it is as secretism, the

promotion of the reputation of possessing secrets.”61

What lies behind secretism could be thought, using Winer’s terminology, as the

crucial “inalienable possession”, the control over which allows one to preserve a

differentiated identity.62 Some religious values and practices – not only objects as

discussed by Winer – have then to be kept out of circulation, to be protected/hidden

from the Other, whether academics, tourists, white people or concurrent religious

experts (like priests from the southern cities of the country or evangelical pastors). This

defensive attitude is no longer the result of persecution, as it was in the past, nor the

internal imperative of the secret to regulate the religious hierarchy, but a reaction to

disproportionate publicity and the need to preserve some of Candomblé’s distinctive

signs against external appropriation in order to maintain a menaced identity.

The phenomenon is apparent in the struggle against Pentecostal churches,

accused of copying and reproducing Candomblé’s characteristic ritual practices, such as

possession, cleansing, exorcism or drum-playing.63 It can also be perceived in the

attitude of young black militants who, after undergoing initiation, become the most

fundamentalist advocates of secretism and orthodoxy, opposing any form of

ethnographic publication on Candomblé as intrusive colonialism. But it also surfaces

from within the institution, in the veiled disdain by the Bahian priesthood for initiates

from the south of the country, who are perceived either as “unwelcome outsiders

aspiring to the wholesome reproduction of [Bahian] identity and to the adoption of [its]

entire lifestyle,” or, alternatively, as importing African practices and symbols associated

with privilege and power to challenge or undermine the Bahian “traditional” religious

authority.64

In all cases, however, the subjacent text is the existence of a “deep knowledge”

that has to be preserved against outsiders at the risk of losing something essential. It is

61 Johnson, Secrets, p. 166 62 A.B. Winer, Inalienable possessions. The paradox of keeping-while-giving, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992. For the applicability of the concept to processes of ethnic identity see: Simon Harrison “Identity as a scarce resource”, Social Anthropology, vol. 7, n. 3, 1999, pp. 239-51. 63 A similar phenomenon occurs in South Africa where Zion churches appropriate elements from Protestant orthodoxy: Harrison “Identity as a scarce resource,” p. 241, cf. J. Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance. The Culture and History of a South African People, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985. 64 Harrison “Identity as a scarce resource”, pp. 244-45. The debate about the true locus of tradition, whether in Africa or Bahia is somehow parallel to the one going on in the United States since the 1970's in relation to Cuban Santeria. See, for example, Stephan Palmié, "Againsts Syncretism. 'Africanizing' and


precisely this “inalienable possession” that makes religious (ethnic) identity subjectively

felt as primordial and true. Hence, increasing exposure of the religious signs in the

public sphere to legitimate the institution leads to a simultaneous movement of

concealment, what Winer calls “the paradox of keeping-while-giving”. Visibility and

invisibility, “openness” and “closeness”, inclusion and exclusion, continue to struggle in

apparent opposite directions, in a dynamic that in various degrees has been operating

through out the history of Candomblé.

The most clear example of this “keeping-while-giving” is probably the strategy

adopted by the leading terreiro, Axé Opô Afonjá. Realizing the inexorable dynamic of

public hyper-exposure that threatens to undermine the “authenticity” of Candomblé, the

Afonjá leadership decided to radically augment action toward their own dissemination

and self-representation. In 1980, the terreiro opened within its walls a museum and in

1986 a primary school with a pioneering pedagogical program based on Afro-Brazilian

civilization.65 Senior members of the terreiro have also systematically published books,

videos and an internet site to divulge aspects of the religion that they see fit.66 And yet,

with all this controlled publicization, the idea of secretism (the reputation of possessing

secrets) is reiterated. This hiding of the “inalienable possession” or “deep knowledge”

through partial revelation would be an example of Candomblé’s most recent and

elaborated form of resistance and re-authentication.

One could interpret this paradoxical underwriting of the esoteric through the

public rhetoric of secretism in terms of Scott’s notion of “hidden transcript”, though it

only obliquely constitutes a subversive discourse. Yet there is another important

contrast between ideology and practice that remains usually silenced. The public official

discourse on Candomblé – elaborated by the hegemonic religious leadership, the State,

the black movement and other external interlocutors – reinforces a beneficent side of the

institution that serves to perpetuate the status quo and the ideological interests of its

manufacturers. It is a spectacular display of choreographed images, the white dresses,

the colourful beads, the flashy costumes of the orishas dancing in public ceremonies...

Yet, behind this ceremonial façade and the rhetoric of African and Bahian identities,

hides a complex universe of muted practices: the initiation rituals, the sacrificial blood,

'Cubanizing' discourses in North American òrìsà worship," Counterworks, ASA monograph (1993), pp. 73-94. 65 http://www.geocities.com/ileohunlailai/; http://www.geocities.com/ileaxeopoafonja/page3.html 66 See Lisa Earl Castillo, Entre a oralidade e a escrita: a etnografia nos candomblés da Bahia, Salvador, EDUFBA (forthcoming).


and most specially the healing and witchcraft spiritual works to satisfy the needs of

clients, often based on capitalistic exchange and the priests’ self-interest. The same

moral hierarchy and antagonism established in the 1930s (if not earlier) between

“positive” collective religious worship and “negative” individualistic witchcraft persists

today. There is indeed a whole range of practices that remain unspoken in the public

discourse on Candomblé, but do these covert activities constitute a form of resistance?

What domination do they oppose to? What sort of political action do they involve? Is

the occult economy of blood sacrificial offerings a subversive contestation to the logic

of capitalism or is it just an extension of it?

In any event, the widening public exposure of Candomblé has generally

contributed to an assumption that over the last four decades the institution has finally

been transformed into a “universal religion,” open to anyone regardless of colour,

gender or social class. This assumption may well apply to the southern part of the

country, where white, middle-class, intellectualized, re-Africanized male priests seem to

form an overwhelming majority.67 Because the religious institution is increasingly

dominated by text-based knowledge and assumes individualized forms of belief and

practice, Johnson calls it “Protestant Candomblé.”68

Yet in Bahia, this phenomenon is far from being the dominant trend. The results

of the above-mentioned survey of Salvador’s terreiros show that the Candomblé

community continues to be formed by a majority of non-white people (59.1% black;

31,6% mulatto; 4,7% white; 3,7% Indian; 1% Asian) with low levels of formal

education (4.1% illiterate, 63,7% primary education or less; 28.5% secondary education;

3,6% higher education).69 This means that in Bahia the ethnic-class circumscription of

Candomblé to poor black people with low levels of literacy is still significant.

These figures certainly justify the black movement’s identification of

Candomblé as a “black territory” and the use of the religion as an emblem of cultural

defiance in articulating anti-racism policies. In Bahian Candomblé, the racial diacritic is

still pertinent and the institution can effectively operate as a resource for the

endorsement of black ethnic identity. But it must be stressed that this ethnicization of

67 Reginaldo Prandi, Os candomblés de São Paulo (A velha magia na metrópole nova), São Paulo, HUCITEC-EDUSP, 1991; Silva, Orixás; Claude Lepine, “Mudanças no candomblé de São Paulo”, Religião e Sociedade, vol. 25, n. 2, 2005, pp. 126-28. 68 Johnson, Secrets, p. 169 69 A Tarde, 12/05/2007, p. 14. This data relates to the leadership of the congregations. The racial classification resulted from self-identification of the interviewees.


Candomblé constitutes itself in opposition to its universalization outside Bahia and in

metonymic contiguity with baianidade.

The question is, how do participants respond to and engage these politicized

representations of their religion? I have already mentioned that despite increasing

political awareness and even mobilization (as in the campaign against religious

intolerance), political ambiguity and ambivalence still remain a common option for

many. Candomblé practitioners resort to cordiality and politeness in public, while in

private they behave according to their personal motivation and ritual obligations; the

religious logic usually speaking louder than human political mottos. One might contend

that throughout the history of Candomblé there has always been a discrete number of

individuals and religious groups, very aware of their political agency and leadership,

from the Nagô houses at the end of the ninetieth century to the growing number of

militants today that assume an ethnic-political stand as Candomblé devotees. However,

remembering the inner diversity within the subaltern groups, one might equally contend

that most practitioners had and still have little consciousness of the political dimension

of their religious practices and could thus be characterised as cases of apparent lack of

resistance in the face of domination.

If resistance must involve consciousness, intentionality and deliberate effort of

the social actors involved, one is forced to circumscribe it to a very limited number of

temples. Indeed the cult houses that are more politically self-aware and prone to using

the discourse of resistance are the dozen or so “traditional” ones that have been

systematically used to construct and market the public image of Candomblé.

Paradoxically, they are also the ones that have been more fully co-opted by State

cultural policies, that are visited by famous people and lately even portrayed in fashion

magazines, hence, the ones that would appear to have undergone a greater process of

accommodation. However, as I have pointed out in relation to the Axé Opô Afonjá, this

may only be a spectacular mirage.

And yet, how representative of the whole institution are these elite houses and

the public discourses produced by priests, politicians, militants and intellectuals on

them? Their persuasive discursive practices operate mainly at the level of symbolic

meanings and ideology (of prestige or otherwise), but with little incidence on the life

and ritual activities of practitioners. So where does the silent majority stand? What is

the perception from below? Does the Gramcian dynamic of hegemonic ideology

reproduce within the subaltern group as well? Do most congregations only aspire to


reproduce the values of the traditional Nagô-Ketu houses? The trend imposed by them

is more or less followed by the rest, and yet among the invisible majority there is

perhaps still space for both religious and political heterodox and eclectic attitudes.

Moreover, it may be among this silent majority, predominantly black and poor, where

the real resistive “hidden transcripts” persevere.

As observed by the Comaroffs in the context of colonization and enslavement,

resistance has often consisted of producing certain kinds of historical consciousness

rather than of outward protest.70 This historical consciousness expresses itself via

circulating ideological discourses, but it can also be encoded in embodied attitudes and

gestures, in dance, music, and in signifying ritual practices with no overt political

intentionality. In the midst of persistent inequality, Candomblé continues to produce

empowering narratives and the silent majority’s tenacious practices, though grounded in

specifically religious logic, continue to produce the basic symbolic capital used by

different social actors (both insiders and outsiders) for political purposes. This kind of

tacit resistance inscribed in religious behaviour, regardless of individual or collective

political self-awareness, may be identified with what Sahlins calls “the resistance of

culture.”71 One could even predict that this apparently “non-resistive” majority, alien to

ideologies and partisan interests, through the tenacious re-activation of their religious

knowledge, trying to solve with the aid of the gods the “times of difficult experience,”

constitutes the nourishing ground for future challenges to today’s authorities, whether

external or internal to Candomblé.

70 John and Jean Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination, Boulder, Westview Press, 1992, p. 259. 71 Marshall Sahlins, Waiting for Foucault, Still, Chicago, Prickly Paradigm Press, 2002 , p. 56.

Luis Nicolau Pares paper

Documents

Transcript of Luis Nicolau Pares paper