* Indication of biography
about this matter for personal deepening:
. BASTIDE, Roger. As religiões africanas no Brasil. 3. ed. São Paulo: Livraria
Pioneira, 1989.
. BERKENBROCK, Volney J. A experiência dos orixás. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1995.
. BOAVENTURA, Josuel dos Santos. Negritude
e experiência de Deus. Disponível em:
http://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/teo/article/viewFile/2702/2053. Acesso de junho de 2017.
._______. Comunidades
afro e experiência cristã. Disponível em:
http://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/teo/article/viewFile/1774/1307. Acesso de junho de
2017.
. BOTAS, Paulo. Carne do Sagrado
– Edun Ara – Devaneios sobre a
espiritualidade dos Orixás, Petrópolis: Vozes, 1996.
. CELAM. Texto conclusivo da V
Conferência do Episcopado Latino-americano e caribenho (DAp.). São
Paulo: Paulinas, 2008.
. CINTRA. Raimundo. Candomblé e umbanda. São Paulo: Paulinas, 1985.
. EQUIPE CENTRAL. Cultura
Oprimidas e a evangelização na América Latina. Texto base do 8º Intereclesial de Cebs Santa Maria/, 1992.
. FREITAS, Décio. O escravismo brasileiro. 2. ed., Porto Alegre: Mercado Aberto,
1982.
. MATTOSO, Kátia de Queirós. Ser escravo no Brasil. São Paulo: Brasiliense,
3. ed., 1990.
. MATTOS, Regiane Augusto de. História e cultura afro-brasileira. São
Paulo: Contexto, 2011.
. SOUZA Jr., Vilson Caetano de. As raízes das religiões
afro-brasileiras, Sem fronteiras, número especial,
São Paulo, p. 5-20, jul. de 1994.
As we had said, the black people brought from Africa to Brazil, being
separated from their families, united themselves from different tribes, forming
new families and recovering the values of their cultures, especially what was
the reason for their existence and expressed a common identity: religious
conception and experience. Inside and outside captivity structures, the
countless black people gradually regrouped the whole of African life in a
reduced form,[1] establishing relationships with their fellows
of origin and race, building spaces for solidarity practice, integrating the Catholic
brotherhoods or founding their own, practicing Islam and their traditional
beliefs.[2] These people were meeting and identifying
themselves,[3] letting themselves be influenced religiously
and culturally, mostly from the end of XVIII century.
So different from each other, these people were bringers of religions,
myths and rituals very different from one another.[4] As it is typical to human beings, the black
ones were not born to live in captivity. Many of them, when they could not
escape, committed suicide.[5] There are records of many suicide cases among
black people, taken as a form of resistance and revenge against their “owner”,
who was injured. “The suicide had not only political reasons but also
religious. Through death, there was hope of returning to the homeland of their
parents.”[6] Therefore, Africa ceases to be only a
geographical place but also has a spiritual and mythical meaning.
Experiencing so much pain and suffering caused by the slavery process,
together with the imposition of religious (Christian) practices, alienated from
their reality and aspirations, their Brotherhoods (Associations) did not fail
to rescue and re-signify African religious values. The vast cultural and
religious interchange between these peoples made the African religions in
Brazil become Afro-Brazilian religions, an expression of creativity and
resistance typical of the black people. All this movement also generates a vast
syncretism, which has spread throughout Brazil.[7] A similar process can be seen in other
countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, where black people were taken.
Therefore, together with the religious expressions of the other countries,
these religions are also called Afro-American and Caribbean religions.
Some people with more advanced cultural characteristics were able to
reproduce aspects of their religion still in captivity. Others of lesser
expression, but taken by a deep 'Africanist' feeling, allowed themselves to be
influenced by the others, and in each part of Brazil where they were led, left
the mark of their religious experience, that is, a different and particular way
to relate to God. The author V. C. de Souza Jr. cites a ‘map’, through which we
can identify the presence of these different religions in the Brazilian
territory:
According to this map, the entire north of the country, from the Amazon
to the borders of Pernambuco, was marked by indigenous influence. This is
evident in pajelança, in Pará and
Amazônia, in the encantamento, in
Piauí, and in the catimbó, of the
other regions (...) it is above all in São Luís do Maranhão that slaves of Daomeana origin left traces of their
religions in the tambor de mina,
which for some is near the voodoo, of
the Daomé.[8]
In the rest of the North East it was very remarkable the contribution of
the Yoruba - also called nagô - people of Nigerian origin,[9] who managed to rebuild in captivity the whole
traditional religious structure.[10] The Brazilians nagô, coming from the Yoruba of Daomé
- now Benin - considered themselves descendants of Ife, that is, the main city of the religion of the Orishas, united by a very generic name.
When they arrived in Brazil, they were not taken to sugarcane mills or to
mining - which was already in decline - but were destined for domestic work in
the large and developed urban and suburban centres of Bahia and other cities in
the North East, Particularly Salvador and Recife. Being in this situation, they
had greater possibilities of grouping, organizing their services and practicing
them,[11] even with police persecution.
Later, an expressive contingent of nagô
was also moved to the south of the country. The result of all this
displacement of peoples, who brought the religion of the Orishas, is the terminology diverse for the same religion,
according to the place where they were. Thus, we have: the xangô, in Pernambuco, Alagoas and Sergipe and candomblé, in Bahia. In the extreme south, particularly Rio Grande
do Sul, we have the batuques.[12] This last current, according to R. Cintra, can
also have strong bantu influence, deriving
from songs and dances led by the sound of the atabaques.[13]
Bantu had greater influence in the South Eastern region of the country and,
in particular, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.[14] There they introduced the religion of cabula[15] name. There is also information that it may
have come up with the bantu from
Salvador, Bahia.[16] Over time, these groups of cabula were called macumba.[17] Even though the Bantu were the first ones to arrive in Brazil, “gradually, but
surely, Yoruba tradition begins to influence groups of macumba. And so the Bantu
spirits were gradually being replaced by the Yoruba Orishas.”[18]
As in this region, popular Catholicism grew with expressiveness,
together with the Kardashian Spiritism and Indigenous Pajelança - which was being introduced in Brazil - the contacts
were made, the syncretism were happening and then, what that came from the
wealth of candomblé, popular
Catholicism, Spiritism, pajelança and
bantu basis, gave rise to a new
religion. After so many adaptations and resignifications, it was no longer
appropriate to call macumba, for this
word became pejorative. It was decided to use the expressions kimbanda and umbanda to designate the greatest synthesis of religiosities that
happened in Brazil. These words come from Quimbundo
language of Angola: umbanda means ‘art
of healing’, while kimbanda means ‘doctor’
or ‘healer’.[19] It is good to remember that they are not just
different words, but they are two very different currents within the same
religious movement.[20] This distinction is offered briefly by R.
Cintra, when he states that: “It is only more recently that a distinction has
been made between umbanda, which is the
cult to honour the Orishas or
entities, and to practice beneficial dispatches and Kimbanda, the cult of Exu.”[21]
In this wealth of aspects, location and organization, the Afro-Brazilian
religions are manifesting their diversity. However, there are some common
points that we would like to consider because they are of utmost importance in
the study: the influence of Catholicism - especially the presence of the altar
with statues of saints - is practically common to all groups, although the
importance given is dissimilar. Other points in common are the trance and the
invocation of spiritual entities, according to the interpretation and valorisation
of each group.[22]
For the participants of these religious groups, the most important is
the feeling of family belonging, being able to experience warmth and security.
Belonging to these groups is no longer by carnal kinship as it was in Africa -
by lineage or descent - but spiritual, with such a close bond that allows them
to use a very appropriate nomenclature as V. J. Berkenbrock reports, “The
nomenclature for various functions or positions within Afro-Brazilian religious
communities points to this new form of kinship: father of saint, mother of saint,
daughter of saint, brother of saint, family of saint, etc.”[23]
The word “saint” in this case refers to the spiritual entity that in the
Candomblé religion is called Orisha. It is, therefore, a religious
reorganization in Brazil that could no longer rely on the bonds of carnal
kinship because of the process of slavery that had destroyed the ascendant
extended family but could not take from the heart of the black men and women
the “Family rootedness and the sense of God” (DAp, n 56). In this spiritual
family, the black people feels part of a whole, integrated into the world of
the ancestors, in which profane and sacred live in harmony.
Author: Josuel dos Santos Boaventura PSDP - Fr
Ndega
Theological review: ThD Fr Luis Carlos Susin
English review: EdM Mary Kung'u
[1] See BERKENBROCK, V. Op. cit., p. 117. The author continues on the same page: “In small
and closed circles the patria was restored. Africa and its different nations
became an inspirational example for these communities, which came to see in
Africa and its nations not only places of origin or a geographical concept.
Africa and its nations have gained a religious and mythical significance.
Africa is the land of the ancestors, of freedom, the dwelling of the Orishas;
black people dream of returning after death to Africa. Africa becomes the land
of promise.”
[2] See MATTOS, R. A. de. Op. cit., p. 154.
[3]“One of the most common forms of recognition
was through the ‘nation-signs’, as they were called at that time, that is, the
scarification (scarring) made on bodies, especially on the face of Africans. These
marks had specific characteristics, allowing to know which African ‘nation’ someone
belonged to” (ibid., p. 116).
[4] See CINTRA, R. Op. cit., p. 35.
[5] See FREITAS, D. Op. cit., p. 44.The Bahian author, K.de Q. Mattoso, comments on
the alternative of suicide, performed by the slave, presenting methods such as:
“asphyxiation, swallowing the tongue, hanging, strangulation, geophagy. At the
height of his anger, a murderous madness dominated him, and at the face of such
a confusion he often came to pick up his tools of work: shovel, pickaxe, and
knife, and killed the lord or factor, who were habituated to punish or mistreat
his mother or his friend.” (MATTOSO, K. de Op.
cit., p. 146).
[6] BERKENBROCK, V. Op. cit., p. 84.
[7] See CINTRA, R. Op. cit., p.
36; see too BOTAS, P. Op. cit., p.
22.
[8] SOUZA Jr., V. C. de. Op. cit., p. 15.
[9]“The Yoruba designation, which originally applied to
an ethnic group located around Oyó,
capital of ancient Nigeria, became a collective term, applied by the French to
various Nigerian tribes. Likewise the term nagô
designates the language spoken by all the Yoruba peoples, set in the Dahomey.
The language of the Daomeanos, in turn, was denominated Gêge by the French colonial administration and designated the
tribes coming from the centre of Dahomey during the tribal fights” (CINTRA, R. Op. cit., p. 36s).
[10]See SOUZA Jr., V. C. de. Op. cit., p. 5.
[11] CINTRA, R. Op. cit., p. 37.
[12]See SOUZA Jr., V. C. de. Op. cit., p. 15.
[13]See CINTRA, R. Op.
cit., p. 76.
[14] “(...) In Brazil the Bantus were placed mainly in the coastal center,
in the States of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais”
(EQUIPE CENTRAL. Op. cit., p. 31.)
[15] “In some writings, around 1900, these groups
are called “Cabula” and around the
30s these groups are called Macumba,
name under which they become known throughout Brazil” (BERKENBROCK, V J. Op. cit., p. 149).
[16]The information is of the author R. Cintra, in
his book Candomblé and umbanda: “Bishop João Correa Nery,
Bishop of Vitória, capital city of Espírito Santo, at the end of the last
century, consecrates one of his Pastorals to Cabula, one of the forms of Bantu cult, which seems to come from
Salvador, where there is a neighbourhood with that name” (CINTRA, R.Op.
cit., p. 76).
[17]See BERKENBROCK, V. J. Op. cit., p.
148s.
[18]Ibid., p. 149.
[19]See CINTRA, R. Op.
cit., p. 77.
[20] See Ibid., p. 151.
[21]Ibid., p. 77. Exu is the messenger of Orishas. In
Candomble, he is the one whom receive the first honour.
[22] See Ibid.,
p. 168.
[23] BERKENBROCK, V. J. Op. cit., p. 116.
