by Eric P. Rice
| Eric P. Rice is a graduate student in anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. He is hoping to complete his degree by the spring of 2000. The dissertation is an examination of the changing relationship between the Afro-Brazilian religion candomblé and the rest of Bahian society, focusing on how a religion once fiercely persecuted by the state has become at one and the same time both a state-promoted tourist attraction and an important symbol of resistance to the wider black movement. The dissertation is based on about 24 months of fieldwork conducted in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, over the years 1992-1997. He welcomes comments and suggestions on this paper, and can be contacted at: eprice29@aol.com. |
III. Legalization and Promotion
V. Converging Attitudes Toward Race: The Conservative State and Re-Africanization
The terreiro (temple) of Gantois, also called Ilê Iya Omin Axé Iyamassê, sits on a hill not too far from the center of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. It is one of Salvador's oldest centers of the Afro-Brazilian religion of candomblé. In the 1930s, when Ruth Landes conducted fieldwork there, it was situated in the woods and difficult to reach. Now it looks out on one of the large traffic circles where several of Salvador's major roads come together. Just behind it a large radio or television transmission tower rises up, overshadowing the trees and buildings that make up the temple complex. In front of the temple itself is a small plaza which includes the following dedication to the founder of the terreiro, signed by both Salvador's Mayor and the Secretary of the Environment:
Standing in the plaza, facing the temple, a visitor sees a museum on the left dedicated to the memory of Mãe Menininha, perhaps Brazil's most famous mãe-de-santo (literally mother of saint, or priestess). The entrance to the living quarters of the terreiro is to the right. Centered in front is the door leading to the public space of the temple, where the public festivals for the orixás (the deities of candomblé) are held.
The tenth anniversary of the death of Mãe Menininha was the occasion for six days of commemorative activities at Gantois, the terreiro where she lived and worked for roughly 50 years. The events included an art exposition, a fair at which religious articles and souvenirs were sold, musical performances, personal testimonials by friends and filhos-de-santo of Mãe Menininha, a Catholic mass for the soul of the departed, and several lectures. Professor Cid Teixeira presented a lecture entitled "Mother of Candomblé," and he also participated in a roundtable discussion on "Society and Candomblé" with Professor Francisco Sena. While each participant was in fact a professor, neither was currently working in academia. Instead, both held positions within the state apparatus, Teixeira as President of the Gregório de Matos Foundation, and Sena as State Secretary for Tourism.
This kind of involvement with candomblé on the part of state agencies and functionaries is not uncommon. Upon approaching Ilé Axé Opô Afonjá's Third African Culture Fair (Terceira Feira de Cultura Africana) earlier that year, I noticed two banners hanging from the outer wall of the compound. One advertised the municipality's sponsorship of the Garden of Sacred Leaves (Jardim das Folhas Sagradas) project, intended to preserve the community's knowledge of and access to the sacred plants central to the religion. The other was an advertisement for the Fair itself, but it also had the name of the City Councilman João Bacelar in large letters. Fry (1982: 49) reports that during the years that candomblé was persecuted by the state, politicians would often trade protection for votes, and it seems that a similar phenomenon continues today. Just before the 1996 elections I attended a festival at a small terreiro in a poor neighborhood, entirely paid for by a candidate for the City Council. This included gifts for the elders of the terreiro and a table full of cakes, candy and toys for the local children (the festival was for the twin saints Cosme and Damião, traditionally celebrated with a feast for children).
However, the state seems to be most directly involved with candomblé through the actions of both the Bahian and particularly the municipal tourism agencies to promote the religion as a tourist destination. As early as 1974, when candomblé terreiros were still required to register all festivals with the police, BahiaTursa (the state tourism agency) published a book entitled The Bahian Orixás (Orixás da Bahia). BahiaTursa published the book to complement the decision by the Department of Culture to create a permanent exhibition about the orixás at the City Museum (O Museu da Cidade). The book argues that the tourist was most responsible for popularizing, legitimizing, and raising candomblé up out of persecution (Magalhães 1974: 101), and the English section of the book states that with the help of the book the tourist will be able to understand all s/he might see of candomblé (Magalhães 1974: 102). BahiaTursa, along with other tourism agencies, continues to work to ensure that tourists will have this opportunity, maintaining a list of terreiros and festival dates, and even providing advice about which terreiros are most authentic. Posters published by both BahiaTursa and the municipal tourism agency EmTurSa often feature photos of candomblé festivals and sacred sites, and both will assist tourists with arranging visits to terreiros, finding lodging near the larger festivals (like the annual giving of gifts to Iemanja), and attending other Afro-Brazilian cultural events, such as The Festival of the Good Death (A Festa da Boa Morte).
Yet this has not always been the case. Candomblé was harshly repressed by the state throughout the first four decades of this century and only tolerated through the 1970s. Stories abound about police raids on terreiros, the seizing of ritual objects, and the destruction of temples. Many of the seized objects are still on display at the Estácio de Lima Museum (Museu Estácio de Lima, formerly called the Museum of Criminal Anthropology), next to displays of murder weapons, drug paraphernalia, counterfeiting equipment, articles used in gambling, the skulls of murder victims, and preserved, deformed fetuses. How and why did the state move from repressing candomblé to tolerating and finally even promoting it? The emphasis on candomblé as a tourist attraction suggests the cynical explanation that the state saw in candomblé solely an opportunity to promote a new industry. There is some truth to this explanation. I suspect it is no coincidence that the Bahian Governor proclaimed the full legalization of candomblé in 1976, just about the same time that a large, modern international airport was built. However, in this chapter I want to suggest that the strange alliances between candomblé and particularly conservative elements of the state have to do with the similar views of race shared by the more fundamentalist terreiros of candomblé and the more conservative political parties. Both see races as essentially separate groups who have and should have their own cultures.
No one knows for sure how long candomblé has existed in its current form. Many participants, especially from more fundamentalist terreiros, claim that candomblé represents the continuation of religions practiced in Africa since long before regular European contact. On some level this is true, although the specific practices have no doubt changed over the almost five centuries since Portuguese colonizers first brought African slaves to Brazil in 1538 (Burns 1993: 495). In addition, many new spirits have been included in the pantheon of candomblé, most notably the Indian spirits of the caboclos. However, the religions from which candomblé derives already included the practice of taking on new divinities (Wafer 1991: 57), so it makes sense to see the various practices that make up modern candomblé as having evolved from these earlier religions, in the same sense that modern Christianity has changed dramatically since the time of Christ yet maintains a certain continuity at the same time.
While generally discouraging the practice of candomblé, Brazil's elites held contradictory attitudes towards its practice throughout the years of the slave trade. Many slaveholders feared that ceremonies would be used to plan revolts, which they often were (Reis 1993: 151-52, 157), and thus forbade practices such as drumming, dancing and nighttime congregations. Reis analyzes the factors that encouraged slaves to revolt, including a large proportion of African born slaves and a lack of cultural integration on the part of such slaves (1995-96: 22). As such, slaveholders often saw the practice of African religion as a sign of just such a lack of cultural integration, and this would certainly have been quite common among newly arrived slaves. Blessings by the orixás are often mentioned in accounts of the Bahian revolts of the early nineteenth century (Reis 1995-96: 26), and slaveholders thus had every reason to discourage the practice of candomblé. However, depending on local conditions, expressions of African religion were sometimes tolerated. Due in part to the perception of many slaveholders that the predominantly Angolese slaves of Rio were not as prone to revolts as the Hausa and Nagô of Bahia, religious ceremonies featuring dancing and drumming were allowed there (Reis 1995-96: 24). In addition, some slaveholders actually allowed slaves to continue to practice their own religions on the theory that this helped to preserve ethnic differences, and that this kind of divide and conquer policy reduced the risk of revolts (Reis 1995-96: 24). Bahia's governor from 1810-18, the Count of Arcos, forcefully argued this point, adding that activities such as dancing represented a safety valve that discouraged revolt (Kraay 1998: 14). However, the majority of Bahian planters disagreed, and after the Count's policies failed to prevent a series of rebellions, they enacted a repressive slave code outlawing the practices of candomblé. Especially after the Malê Rebellion of 1835, African-derived culture was severely restricted by the state, as it was seen as promoting resistance to slavery (Butler 1998: 163; see also Reis 1993: 189-204).
These repressive policies were generally continued throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, as the end of the slave trade and the corresponding rise in the proportion of Brazilian-born slaves made ethnic divisions less relevant. Wimberly describes how even when laws did not explicitly prohibit candomblé, they at least restricted the drumming and sacrifice that accompanied it (1998: 78). However, they were still only sporadically put into practice. While referring to the police searches that rooted out terreiros and confiscated their sacred objects, she also relates that white planters would often provide protection for temples in return for medicinal services (1998: 82-4). The number of newspaper articles describing the practice of candomblé rituals throughout Salvador provide a testimonial to how commonly they were practiced. Graden points out that some of these editorials, appearing in an Afro-Bahian publication called The Alabama (O Alabama), describe festivals lasting for three days (Graden 1998: 67). The necessity for so many condemnations suggests that festivals were not uncommon, and the fact that some lasted for up to three days suggests that, at least at this time, state repression of candomblé was sporadic. It is interesting to note that the Afro-Bahian editors of The Alabama actually called upon the chief of police to break up these festivals, accusing priests and priestesses of selling fake services and of sexual misconduct (Graden 1998: 68). Their complaints were often stated in terms of a discourse of progress that saw candomblé as a remnant of an African past that needed to be left behind if Brazil was to enter the modern world, primitive folklore rather than real religion.
This discourse of modernization was an intimate part of the project of the post-Abolition Republic, and both African descendants and African culture were clearly conceived of as outside the modern. The national state not only discouraged practices, like candomblé, that it saw as backwards and primitive, but it also encouraged immigration from Italy, Spain, and even Japan. This was meant to help whiten the nation, conceived of as an essential step towards modernization, industrialization, and progress. The state of Bahia also began to enforce regulations against candomblé more strictly and to pass more restrictive laws on African culture in general. For example, while Afro-Bahian carnival groups characterized by "their use of the outlawed accouterments and representations of candomblé" (Butler 1998: 164) appeared in 1895, they were banished from carnival in 1905. The action against candomblé reached a height in the 1920s, when Assistant Police Chief Pedro Azevedo Gordilho led a series of regular raids on candomblés, confiscating ritual objects and jailing their leaders (Kraay 1998: 14). This period still lives on in popular memory, and many informants told me stories about what they heard of the days when police would constantly disrupt ceremonies. This may be due in part to the popularization of these stories in the novels of Jorge Amado, particularly Tent of Miracles (1969) and The War of the Saints (1993). Still, it seems clear, if only from the number of objects on display at the old Museum of Criminal Anthropology, that police persecution was a real threat to the candomblés.
The 1930s were an important decade for all of Afro-Brazil, but especially in Bahia. There was a lessening of state persecution, partly because of the role of intellectuals in protecting candomblé. Groups like the Black Front (A Frente Negra) were formed and flourished in São Paulo. Nationally, there was a re-evaluation of the place of the African in Brazil, led by Gilberto Freyre. Arguing that Brazil was a unique combination of the European, the African, and the Indian, he felt that it was not necessary to stamp out remnants of African culture. This came to be known as the myth of racial democracy, and it was an important ideological component of the fascist regime of Getúlio Vargas. In Bahia the repression of African culture continued through the first half of the decade, but by the late 1930s terreiros were given a bit of breathing room. This was accompanied by a legitimization of the whole field of Afro-Brazilian studies. Earlier students of Afro-Brazilian culture, such as the doctor Nina Rodrigues, had tended to medicalize candomblé, seeing it as the product of an inferior race, and even finding traces of mental illness in such phenomena as possession trance (see Rodrigues 1900). Studies throughout the 30s, including newer work by Rodrigues and especially work by Edison Carneiro, took a more social scientific tack, treating candomblé as an ethnic religion that expressed a peculiarly black spirituality (see Rodrigues 1932; Carneiro 1936-37). Much of the work of scholars such as these was presented at the second Afro-Brazilian Congress (O Congreso Afro-Brasileiro), held in Salvador in 1937. The simple fact of this congress shows that candomblé was being tolerated, and the story of the official recognition of this fact is quite incredible.
Getúlio Vargas came to power in 1930 in what is generally considered a triumph of the interests of new urban elites who had made fortunes industrializing over those of the older agricultural elites. Vargas used his power to create a fascist state, the Estado Novo (New State) modeled on Mussolini's Italy. Vargas was strongly nationalist, both in politics and in cultural matters. While he stressed the need for modernization and progress, he argued that this had to occur on Brazil's own terms. There was thus some room for maneuver on the part of Afro-Brazilians, who could argue that their cultures were an important part of this hybrid Brazil. Of course, in practice the European was seen as dominant and most important, but many gains were made throughout this period. One of these was a 1934 law recognizing the practice of Afro-Brazilian religions.
The 1934 law placed all Afro-Brazilian religions, Umbanda, and even Masons and Spiritists under the jurisdiction of the Federal Police's Division of Customs and Diversions (Costumes e Diversões), part of the Department of Toxicants and Fraud (Departamento de Teoxicos e Mistificações) (Brown 1986: 146). Presumably this designation referred to the notion that candomblé leaders were falsely selling medical advice (fraud) by exploiting popular customs, but it had the odd effect of grouping religious practice with gambling, prostitution, and drugs under the jurisdiction of what was essentially the vice squad. While the specifics of the law allowed for the practice of candomblé, they required each and every festival to be registered with the police, who were not required to grant permission. In addition, taxes had to be paid for the right to hold a festival. This opened the way for a great deal of bribery and extortion, mainstays of the Brazilian patronage system.
Leaders of candomblé responded to this new law in a variety of ways. Chief among them was the forging of relationships with some of the new elites in Bahian society, especially intellectuals and artists. This movement was led by the priestesses of perhaps Bahia's three most famous terreiros, Casa Branca, Gantois, and Axé Opô Afonjá. All had instituted an office for influential people (ogãs) who could intercede on behalf of the terreiro, and it was during the 1930s that Mãe Aninha of Axé Opô Afonjá created the Ministers of Xangô. This institution, made up of twelve influential men, has included many of Bahia's most influential scholars of Afro-Brazilian culture. Gantois concentrated more on forging relationships with artists and politicians (I was often told that Antonio Carlos Magalhães, Bahia's most famous politician and Governor in the 1980s, had many times made use of magical services there to ensure his electoral victories and even to kill opponents). These protectors were able to use their influence to ensure that at least some terreiros could exist unmolested. In this new climate of toleration, various organizations were founded that could lobby for the rights of Afro-Brazilians to exercise the freedom of religion guaranteed by the 1888 Constitution, including the African Council of Bahia (Conselho Africano da Bahia) and the Union of Afro-Brazilian Sects (União das Seitas Afro-Brasileiras) in 1937.
Mãe Stella, currently the priestess at Axé Opô Afonjá, published a book detailing the history of her terreiro (1988). While she refers to the early harassment by police during the 1920s (although she states that the orixás caused them to get lost in the woods (1988: 23-4)), she also reports that by 1935 the Governor of Bahia attended a festival at the temple. By the 1937 Afro-Brazilian Congress, attended by Mãe Aninha and several other important priestesses, politicians were regularly stopping by at festivals at the temple, a practice that continues today. The Congress included sessions held at the temple, where these politicians rubbed shoulders with international scholars such as Melville Herskovits and Donald Pierson. Perhaps it was through such influential contacts that Mãe Aninha was able to arrange the most fascinating chapter of this story, her audience with Getúlio Vargas in 1937. Mãe Stella reports that this was the key event in establishing the toleration of candomblé (1988: 33). While historically candomblé was already tolerated, Braga reports that it was Mãe Aninha's meeting with Vargas that led to the official declaration that candomblés could play the drums, an essential part of their ceremonies (Braga 1995: 177-8). It truly is incredible that a black candomblé priestess from what, by the 1930s, was considered a backwater of Brazil, was able to obtain an audience with the fascist dictator of the country during the same month that he was proclaiming the Estado Novo.
Braga calls this audience the first victory in the fight that would lead to complete legalization in the 1970s (1995: 179). The next important step was the founding, in 1946, of the Bahian Federation of the Afro-Brazilian Religion (Federação Baiana do Culto Afro-Brasileiro, or FCAB). Unlike the organizations mentioned earlier, the Federation continues to exist today, representing the interests of candomblé in wider society and representing the religion in legal battles. After 1960 it was this organization that actually registered terreiros and with whom terreiros had to register each festival, allowing at least some form of self-governance. It was the president of the Federation, Antonio Monteiro, who in 1976 wrote the Governor a letter requesting that candomblé be granted full freedom of religion.
III. Legalization and Promotion
The 1970s mark the next important turning point in state relations with candomblé, as it was in 1976 that candomblé was fully legalized. At first glance this seems very strange, for in 1964 the Brazilian military had staged a coup, seizing power from the elected president. They ushered in a decade of fierce repression, with many opponents of the regime forced into exile, imprisoned or tortured. The military government continued to espouse the ideology of racial democracy, going so far as to end the collection of census data about race in the 1970 census, arguing that it was no longer relevant for a country with no racism. In the late sixties it actually forced several researchers who had focused on issues of racial discrimination into retirement, Florestan Fernandes chief among them. By the mid-seventies, for a variety of reasons, the military had begun what is usually referred to as the abertura, or opening. Freedoms were gradually restored, prisons emptied, exiles were allowed to return, and the military restored civilian rule in 1985. However, it was Roberto Figueira Santos, the military-installed governor of the state of Bahia, who finally extended the Constitutionally-protected right of free religion to practitioners of candomblé.
This event took place on the steps of the Catholic Church of Our Lord of the Good End (Nosso Senhor do Bomfim) during the traditional washing of these steps held the third Thursday of every January.(1)
The washing of the steps is ostensibly a Catholic ritual performed as payment of a promise made to the Lord of the Good End, one aspect of Jesus Christ. In 1745 the Portuguese Teodísio Rodrigues de Faria brought an image of O Senhor do Bomfim to Bahia to commemorate his living through an earlier shipwreck. He then founded a brotherhood made up mostly of powerful white men. While their activities had the blessing of the archbishop of Bahia, official Church recognition did not come until 1918, even though the entire church was washed annually by the faithful throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, a series of disputes with the Church over just what form the ritual should take led to various prohibitions, including the limiting of the washing to just the steps. Part of the justification given for this was that the ceremony had been taken over by African customs and was no longer truly Christian.
The ceremony begins with a procession from the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of the Beach (Nossa Senhora de Conceição da Praia), where the participants have filled jugs with water from a fountain. This water will later be used to wash the steps after the roughly four mile procession. Silverstein's (1995) description of the 1976 celebration sounds very much like the one I attended in 1997. Both processions were led by roughly one hundred Bahianas, women dressed in the white, lacy dresses that are associated with candomblé. White is the color of the orixá Oxalá, who is syncretized with Bomfim. Almost all also wear the protective amulets and charms of candomblé, and their water jugs also contain some of the plants sacred within the religion. When they reach the Church the water is rather casually spilled across the steps and around the churchyard, although since the 1950s the church itself has been closed to the participants. On the occasion when I attended the festival, many of the women then entered into trance, as crowds of people swarmed around them. Police controlled access to the door, where people tied small ribbons (each color symbolizes a particular orixá and corresponding saint) to the locked gates. The entire plaza was filled with stands selling food, soft drinks, beer, and souvenirs. After the Bahianas had finished washing the steps the rest of the procession continued to arrive for hours, made up of politicians, famous musicians, and the blocos afros drumming and singing. Also in the procession, although unable to come all the way to the church, were the trios electricos (trucks loaded with sound equipment and a band on top) characteristic of the Bahian carnival. It is both the aspects of candomblé and the profane parts of the celebration that the official Church objects to, but they continue nonetheless.
According to Silverstein there were several innovations in the 1976 celebration. First of all, BahiaTursa offered subsidies to the people of candomblé for both clothing and transportation. The priestesses were asked to dress in the white dresses that Silverstein says were reminiscent of eighteenth-century Portuguese noblewomen (1995: 143), the same style which I saw in 1997. Cars were donated so that famous priestesses too old to walk the four miles could still participate. BahiaTursa also offered prizes for both the "best dressed" Bahiana and one for the most beautifully decorated carriage. It was also this day that the governor chose to proclaim the freedom of religion of candomblé. Flanked on one side by the city's mayor and the Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, with two candomblé priestesses on the other, the governor read aloud Decree No. 25095, declaring that since candomblé was a religion, and freedom of religion was proclaimed by the Brazilian constitution, festivals would no longer be considered as those acts of folklore having to be registered under earlier law. Taxes on festivals were also revoked.
There are two important points to be made here. The first involves the role of BahiaTursa. I have already mentioned their (1974) publication of a kind of guide to candomblé for tourists. Their sponsoring of the festival, especially given their subsidies for particular styles of dress, represents a kind of institutionalized authenticity. Rather than just invite tourists to come see the unique and interesting culture of Brazil (which they also do, through their brochures, offices, posters, and website), they actually help to define this culture. Whether or not this style of dress was common prior to this festival I do not know: however, during all my fieldwork, from 1992-97, this "traditional" white dress was common among mães-de-santo, street vendors of traditional Bahian foods, and women who attempt to lure tourists into souvenir shops throughout the "historic" area of Pelourinho. This raises at least the possibility that BahiaTursa invented this style of dress for Afro-Bahian women. At the very least, there was clearly an attempt to institutionalize a style that must have been perceived as in danger of being lost, or why offer the prizes? Interestingly enough, the municipal City Council actually passed legislation in 1987 fining Bahianas who sold street food without wearing traditional dress (Cornwall 1991: 2). While this is not direct state intervention in candomblé, it does show the ways in which various state agencies attempt to influence what is seen as traditional in an attempt to further the goal of increasing tourism to the region. I spent a great deal of time doing research and chatting with representatives in various BahiaTursa offices, and I was warned away from certain terreiros. Almost inevitably these warnings focused on how certain temples were inauthentic (I was constantly sent to the larger and wealthier terreiros such as Axé Opô Afonjá, Gantois, and Casa Branca), or on the dangers of being "taken in" by an unscrupulous guide who would charge me to see a faked ceremony or even a sacrifice.
The other important point to be made about the legalization of candomblé concerns the grouping of the mayor, the archbishop, the governor and the two priestesses. Silverstein's description focuses on how the groups on each side represented the different power structures of Bahia: the white men of the church and state, versus the black women of candomblé (1995). Yet I am most interested in the fact that they were all there together. Despite various conflicts between participants and the Church over the legitimacy of the popular Bomfim festivities, the archbishop was there in support. Despite denunciations of the effects of tourism on candomblé, the mães-de-santo were there. Despite a history of repression of Afro-Brazilian culture, the governor and mayor were there. And perhaps because of the new modern airport, the American ambassador was also there, along with thousands of tourists. While the priestesses may have felt it necessary to be at the legalization despite any reservations they had about tourism, it seems that all the others had come together to promote tourism in Bahia.
Despite the growing unease of many within candomblé, over the past ten years the state has continued to promote Afro-Bahian culture as a means to nourish tourism. Santos details the ways in which the Bahian state promoted the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira as a kind of cultural tourism (1998). A similar approach was taken with candomblé. This attempt reached its apex with the 1992 decision of the Municipal Council of Carnival to make "Bahia: Land of the Orixás" ("Bahia: Terra dos Orixás") the theme of the 1993 carnival. While the person who had originally suggested the theme later stated that it was meant to be an act of homage to candomblé (Tribuna da Bahia, 1/28/93), there was an immediate outpouring of discontent from many inside the community of candomblé. Mãe Stella stated, "The majority of terreiros in this city have already demonstrated that they don't accept the exploitation of their symbols in a purely profane festival" (A Tarde, 1/23/93). One of my informants, whom I interviewed in the office where she worked for a city cultural organization, explained that the city had planned to put large images of Oxalá right in front of the vendors of acarajé, whose pots of dendê oil are taboo for Oxalá and his followers. This would be akin to placing Satanic pentagrams in front of images of Christ. FCAB launched a legal battle in order to force the Municipal Council to change the theme of Carnival. They cited Article 275 of the Cultural Chapter of the State Constitution, which prohibits "prejudicial treatment of the symbols, expressions and other pertinent aspects of the African religion" (Tribuna da Bahia, 12/29/92). After a series of meetings between the Municipal Council, the state tourist agency, and FCAB, it was decided to change the slogan to either "Salvador, Africa and Magic" or "Salvador, Enchantments and Magic" (Tribuna da Bahia, n.d.).
Yet the state continues to promote candomblé in all kinds of smaller ways. The municipal government sponsors various popular festivals related to candomblé. For example, every February 2 a huge celebration for Iemanja is held in the Rio Vermelho neighborhood. I attended this festival in 1997. The city blocks off the roads and provides two municipal markets for the celebrations. The preparations begin the night before, with dancing and drumming at one of the markets (where a small shrine for Iemanja is maintained by local fishermen) invoking trance in many of the participants. Flowers and gifts for the orixá are collected at the market. At sunrise the next morning all of these are loaded into about twenty boats that head several miles out to sea, where the presents are lowered into the water for the goddess of the waves. Participants in candomblé and umbanda come from all over Brazil to present gifts and invoke Iemanja. However, like Bomfim, the festival continues for the rest of the day, turning itself into a kind of mini-carnival, with music, dancing, and food and drink more profane in nature. This festival is also a large tourist draw, and both municipal and state tourism agencies promote it. In recent years the city has also commissioned a series of sculptures. Each of the twelve principal orixás will eventually be represented, although at present only eight statues have been erected. The city went to great expense to place these in the Dique de Tororó, a lake sacred to Oxum that happens to be located next to a major road. The statues are on large cement bases, well lit at night, and the city plans to erect the other four (of orixás who should not be near water) soon.
Another example comes from the state government. In 1993, Casa Branca, generally thought of as the oldest terreiro in Salvador, dedicated a new plaza to the orixá Oxum. Partly paid for with state funds, the ceremony was attended by many politicians. Most importantly, state governor Antonio Carlos Magalhães (now president of the Federal Senate) gave a speech at which he stated, "My religion is Catholicism, but a governor who wants to serve Bahia well has to respect the religion and culture of Bahians" (A Tarde, 6/21/93). Here ACM, as he is commonly known, aligns himself with Afro-Bahian culture, almost as a populist. Yet I was present at a discussion between a priest and priestess where they discussed the fate of the bloco afro Olodum, who had been cut off from state money and had had their practice space taken away because they did not support ACM's chosen successor. ACM's support for black organizations comes only when at a price.
The state government, in 1990, published the book Bahias, written by Gustavo Falcón and Cid Teixeira (who also lectured at the commemoration of Mãe Menininha's death described at the beginning of this chapter). Like Orixás da Bahia, the text appears in both Portuguese and English, making it accessible to many tourists. A beautiful coffee table book filled with color photographs, I suspect it sells well as a souvenir. In the section on religion the authors write:
The strong religiosity of the people is firmly based in Candomblé, a religion inherited from their African ancestors ... These terreiros go beyond a strictly religious function to serve as ethnic conservatories where people of African descent preserve and reelaborate their traditions (Teixeira and Falcón: 51).
Here the state simultaneously promotes the religion as a tourist attraction, sets it up as a repository of African culture, and, perhaps most importantly, implies that culture has a racial base. It is to this possibility that I now turn.
V. Converging Attitudes Toward Race: The Conservative State and Re-Africanization
At the Third International Congress of Orixá Tradition and Culture, held in New York City in 1986, Mãe Stella presented a paper in which she concluded, "In the present times of total liberation, it is worth remembering that these maneuvers [of syncretism] ought to be abandoned, with all people returning to the religion of their roots" (cited in Wafer 1991: 56). A priest who had been at the conference told me that this brought the movement to purify candomblé to public attention, although Mãe Stella had already been quoted in the weekly newsmagazine Veja as saying, "Syncretism arose because the slaves needed it, but it is no longer necessary" (8/17/83). Similarly, Maestre Didi, the general coordinator of the National Institute of Studies of Afro-Brazilian Culture and head priest of the cults of the ancestors (Egun), argued for the removal of any remaining Catholic elements in candomblé (A Tarde Cultural, 9/22/90). This movement came to be referred to as re-Africanizing, although many disagree with the term, saying it is a purification but not a return to Africa. In truth, even within the re-Africanization movement there are a variety of perspectives: Cid Teixeira, at the lecture commemorating Mãe Menininha's death, argued that many people worship both the orixás and the Catholic saints without confusing the two systems. This perspective invokes the common saying that Bahians will attend a Catholic mass in the morning, a protestant service in the afternoon, and a candomblé at night, covering all their bases, so to speak.
However, others go further than this. One priestess I interviewed told me that she was very grateful to the saints for their role in helping slaves preserve their religion, and because of this she would occasionally light a candle for one of them. She seemed to believe that they existed, yet she did not see herself as worshiping them. They represented a different part of the world of spirits, and one she was not overly concerned with. I also conducted several interviews with a priest who had been at the New York conference with Mãe Stella. He complained that all the so-called traditional terreiros except Axé Opô Afonjá continued to practice syncretism and worship of the saints. In a comment reminiscent of W.E.B. DuBois, he called this "comportamento dualistico" (dualist behavior), going on to state that he did not think it was possible to both be a Catholic and to practice candomblé. A priestess of candomblé da Angola also told me that people within candomblé know the difference between Catholicism and candomblé, saying, "We can't lose our reality. We need to save what is African, we can throw out the rest."
What is important for me here is the racial component of these comments. While I have argued elsewhere that within candomblé race is rather fluid, as anyone who behaves properly and has been called through divination to be initiated can claim to be African, Mãe Stella's comments about returning to the religion of one's roots must be seen as making a claim about race. The Angola priestess also told me that while not all blacks needed to practice candomblé, it was important for all blacks to respect it, and that they must join if called by the orixás. They needed the consciousness that candomblé was linked to their ancestry. I also interviewed a woman I would have identified as white if she had not said, "It is through candomblé that we regain our African names." Since ancestry and naming are central elements of candomblé, I do not believe that these comments can be taken lightly. Rather, they indicate a view of culture as something based in ancestry, something that is actually passed on. In this view each race (loosely defined) has its own proper culture, and the loss of this culture is a tragedy (see Michaels 1992 for a discussion of this attitude in American literature). It makes culture into a type of property that must be protected, and it makes each race into a different kind of person who ought to practice a particular kind of culture.
This essentially conservative view of race is shared by the most conservative elements of the Brazilian state, and I believe that this helps to explain why many of the changes in state policy towards candomblé were undertaken by either the fascist or military governments of Brazil. For even though Vargas was willing to include the African in his nationalist Brazil, he did so on very limited terms. The African was to be kept in a limited place, and specific blacks were not included. To the extent that Afro-Brazilians had a separate culture, were indeed a separate and not fully Brazilian people, they could continue to be excluded from concentrations of power. Similarly, while the military government wanted to modernize, and while it certainly wanted to promote an image of Brazil as both a racial paradise and a tourist destination, it did not have any interest in actually integrating society as a whole. Both regimes conceived of blacks as exotic Others, certainly interesting and worthy of the tourist's gaze, but not equal to whites.
The 1996 elections brought the party of ACM back into power with the election of Imbassahy as the new mayor, a white man defeating a black woman, in many ways a return to older forms of power and patronage in Bahia. With his chosen candidate in office, ACM arranged to have state money begin to flow back into the city. Towards the end of my fieldwork, the streets were cleaner, the roads were smoother, and I thought of the famous comment of how the trains always ran on time in Mussolini's Italy. Perhaps it was for these reasons that so many of the radical organizations of the black movement supported Imbassahy; perhaps it was due more to what two povo-de-santo had told me: why waste a vote on someone who won't be allowed to change anything. Still, I was struck in particular by how Ilê Aiye, one of the oldest of the blocos afros, has thrown their support behind him too. Founded in 1974 by the son of a candomblé priestess and often singing about candomblé, Ilê Aiye is perhaps most famous for their almost separatist views: in fact, whites are not allowed to join (in an inversion of the old test of the US, you must be darker than a paper grocery bag to get in). But I think the reason is because Ilê Aiye and the re-Africanizing terreiros are not so far from conservative politicians in terms of their views on race. Each believes that different races have their own proper cultures, that they are, essentially, different kinds of people.
Kim Butler has argued that Afro-Bahian struggles for self-determination have historically been more concerned with cultural struggles rather than race because the fundamental distinction in the city has been between those who identified with Afro-Brazilian and Euro-Brazilian culture, not strictly between blacks and white (Butler 1998b: Chapter Six). There is a certain amount of truth to this assertion, as shown by the European appearance of both the informant who told me that "it is through candomblé that we regain our African names," and the priest who attended the New York conference with Mãe Stella. In certain contexts I was even thought of as black, as my interest in candomblé was taken to mean that I must have had a black ancestor. However, this does not change the fact that these ideas have become racialized. Even though Axé Opô Afonjá was reportedly the first terreiro to initiate whites, when Mãe Stella speaks of the religion of people's roots, it is race that allows one to access these roots. Race is what allows one to determine what culture one should practice. I believe it is this attitude that conservative elements of the Brazilian state have come to admire within candomblé, and that this helps to explain why the state's attitude towards candomblé has changed to active promotion. Of course, the fact that there is money to be made does not hurt: the state's interest in pushing certain styles of candomblé (as when BahiaTursa offers prizes for certain styles of dress, or directs tourists to "authentic" terreiros), coupled with such things as the renovation of "historic" Pelourinho, the erection of statues of the orixás, and even the building of public telephones in the shapes of berimbaus (an Afro-Brazilian musical instrument used in capoeira), represent an attempt to alter space so as to make it attractive to international capital (Harvey 1989: 295). Yet there is a reason that Afro-Brazilian culture was chosen for this project.
I wish to make it clear that I am not claiming that candomblé leaders have always gone along with this project whole-heartedly: as one informant pointed out, "When Mãe Menininha takes money from ACM to 'fix the roof,' and then uses it to better the lives of the poor in her neighborhood, this is a form of resistance." Similarly, whatever legitimacy may have been lent to the governor and his project of attracting tourists when the two mães-de-santo appeared with him at the legalization of candomblé at Bomfim, I doubt if this was their purpose. The povo-de-santo, even in their most separatist incarnations, generally have little love for tourism or the Brazilian state. However, they do share certain fundamentally conservative attitudes towards race, attitudes which help explain why it has always been the most conservative aspects of the state who have acted to liberate candomblé.
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1. 1In this discussion I am heavily indebted to Leni Silverstein's (1995) firsthand account and analysis of the event.