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 Selka
Religion and the Politics
ANTHROPOLOGY/RELIGION

of Ethnic Identity in Bahia, Brazil

Brazilians of African descent draw upon both

of Ethnic Identity in Bahia, Brazil

Christian and African diasporic religions to
Stephen Selka is assistant professor of African “A brave work that helps relieve the issue of race and religion in

Religion and the Politics

construct their racial identities in a variety of
American and African Diaspora Studies and Brazil from the heavy weight of ideology it all too often carries, while intriguing ways. Focusing on the Recôncavo
American Studies at Indiana University. advancing the discussion of Brazilian racial politics to a new level of region of northeastern Brazil—known for its
sophistication.” rich Afro-Brazilian traditions and as a center
Front cover, clockwise from top right: A painting of one —John Burdick, Syracuse University of racial consciousness in the country—
of the stations of the cross at the church of Our Lady Stephen Selka provides a nuanced and
of the Rosary of the Blacks; a portrait of Santa Barbara
“A fascinating look at the role religion plays in struggles over identity sophisticated ethnography that explores what
at the church of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks; it means to be black in Brazil.
a mural depicting Xango in downtown Salvador; and racism in Brazil. This is a richly detailed, theoretically sophisticated,
clearly written, and important exploration of the ways in which Selka examines how Evangelical
statues of Pretos Velhos at the church of Our Lady
Protestantism, Candomblé (traditional
of the Rosary of the Blacks in Salvador. All photo- Catholicism, Candomblé, and Evangelical Protestantism figure into
graphs are by the author. Afro-Brazilian religion), and Catholicism—
resistance, struggle, and the construction of Afro-Brazilian identity.”
especially progressive Catholicism—are
—Lindsey Hale, University of Texas, Austin deployed in discursive struggles concerning
racism and identity. Making use of formal
A volume in the series New World surveys, informal and formal interviews,
Diasporas, edited by Kevin A. Yelvington. participant observation, and immersion in
the field, Selka presents a rich ethnographic
perspective and illuminates the ways that
religion interfaces with racial identity. In the
University Press of Florida process, he provides a model for wedding
abstract theory with the concrete details of
www.upf.com everyday life.
Revealing the complex and sometimes
contradictory aspects of Afro-Brazilian
religious practices and racial identity, Selka
ISBN 978-0-8130-3171-2 brings a balanced perspective to polarized
discussions of Brazilian racial politics.
,!7IA8B3-adbhbc! upf

Stephen Selka
Religion and the Politics of Ethnic Identity in Bahia, Brazil

New World Diasporas

University Press of Florida

Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
New World Diasporas
Edited by Kevin A. Yelvington
This series seeks to stimulate critical perspectives on diaspora processes in the New World.
Representations of “race” and ethnicity, the origins and consequences of nationalism, migratory
streams and the advent of transnationalism, the dialectics of “homelands” and diasporas, trade
networks, gender relations in immigrant communities, the politics of displacement and exile,
and the utilization of the past to serve the present are among the phenomena addressed by
original, provocative research in disciplines such as anthropology, history, political science,
and sociology.

International Editorial Board

Herman L. Bennett, Rutgers University
Gayle K. Brunelle, California State University at Fullerton
Jorge Duany, Universidad de Puerto Rico
Sherri Grasmuck, Temple University
Daniel Mato, Universidad Central de Venezuela
Kyeyoung Park, University of California at Los Angeles
Richard Price, College of William and Mary
Sally Price, College of William and Mary
Vicki L. Ruiz, Arizona State University
John F. Stack, Jr., Florida International University
Mia Tuan, University of Oregon
Peter Wade, University of Manchester

More Than Black: Afro-Cubans in Tampa, by Susan D. Greenbaum (2002)

Carnival and the Formation of a Caribbean Transnation, by Philip W. Scher (2003)
Dominican Migration: Transnational Perspectives, edited by Ernesto Sagás and Sintia Molina (2004)
Salvadoran Migration to Southern California: Redefining El Hermano Lejano, by Beth Baker-Cristales
(2004)
The Chrysanthemum and the Song: Music, Memory, and Identity in the South American Japanese
Diaspora, by Dale A. Olsen (2004)
Andean Diaspora: The Tiwanaku Colonies and the Origins of South American Empire, by Paul S.
Goldstein (2005)
Migration and Vodou, by Karen E. Richman (2005)
True-Born Maroons, by Kenneth Bilby (2006)
The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory, by Lucía M. Suárez (2006)
Dominican-Americans and the Politics of Empowerment, by Ana Aparicio (2006)
Nuer-American Passages: Global Migration in the Twentieth Century, by Dianna J. Shandy (2006)
Religion and the Politics of Ethnic Identity in Bahia, Brazil, by Stephen Selka (2007)
Religion and the Politics
of Ethnic Identity
in Bahia, Brazil

Stephen Selka

University Press of Florida

Gainesville
Tallahassee
Tampa
Boca Raton
Pensacola
Orlando
Miami
Jacksonville
Ft. Myers
Sarasota
Copyright 2007 by Stephen Selka
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Selka, Stephen.
Religion and the politics of ethnic identity in Bahia, Brazil / Stephen Selka.
p. cm. — (New World diasporas)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-8130-3171-2 (alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8130-3992-3 (e-book)
1. Brazil—Religion. 2. Salvador (Brazil)—Religion. 3. Religion and politics—Brazil—Salvador.
4. Ethnicity—Brazil—Salvador. 5. Ethnicity—Religious aspects I. Title.
BL2590.B7S45 2007
305.800981'42--dc22
2007027405

The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University
System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida
Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College
of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida,
University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
www.upf.com

All photographs are by the author unless otherwise noted.


Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics
do not know what religion means.

Mahatma Gandhi
 Contents

List of Figures viii

Acknowledgments ix

1. Introduction 1
2. Religion and Race in Brazil 9
3. Catholicism and Afro-Brazilian Identity 48
4. Candomblé, Afro-Brazilian Culture, and Anti-Racism 73
5. Alternative Identities, Emergent Politics 97
6. The Politics of Afro-Brazilian Identity 120

Notes 153
References 157
Index 170
 Figures

1. A view of Cachoeira 10
2. Cachoeiran women participating in a Candomblé ceremony 38
3. A Candomblé initiate making a public debut 39
4. The church of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks in Salvador 52
5. Escrava Anastácia at the church of Our Lady of the Rosary of the
Blacks 53
6. Statues of the orixás in Salvador 75
7. A banner featuring images of Africa in Salvador during Carnaval 2002 86
8. The Catedral da Fé of the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus
in Salvador 101
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank a number of people without whom this book would not
have been possible. First and foremost, I thank my parents, whose dedication
to scholarship and learning inspired my decision to become an anthropologist.
Your moral and material support over these years will always be remembered. I
could not have completed this book without the help of my wife, Kristen, who
has been by my side ever since this project was just a vague idea in my head.
She provided encouragement when I needed it, consolation when things were
not going my way, and an occasional swift kick in the ass to get me going again
when I faltered.
Early on in college and graduate school, Jake Early and Susan Brown en-
couraged my interest in the study of syncretism and religious complexity. Later,
Jim Collins helped me refine the theoretical perspective from which this book is
written; Liliana Goldín coached me as I wrote the grant proposals that funded
my fieldwork; and Louise Burkhart provided candid feedback and close editing
of the text (and corrected me on the finer points of Catholic doctrine that had
apparently escaped me in catechism). In addition, I benefited greatly from John
Burdick’s encouragement and support over the years.
My initial visits to Brazil would not have been possible without financial sup-
port from the Department of Anthropology, Graduate Student Organization,
and Benevolent Foundation at the University at Albany. In addition, I am very
grateful to have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to
fund my extended fieldwork. In Brazil, my contacts at the Universidade Federal
da Bahia (UFBA), especially Mark Cravalho and Miriam Rabelo, helped me get
established in Brazil and have never hesitated to provide assistance whenever
I needed it. Thanks are also due to Jeferson Bacelar and Livio Sansone at the
Centro dos Estudos Afro-Oreintais (CEAO) in Salvador.
In Chicago, where I began working on my manuscript, I benefited from the
encouragement and advice of a number of people, including Willie Hart of the
 x Acknowledgments

Friends of the Amistad Research Center and Michael Hanchard of Northwest-

ern University. In 2004, I moved to New Orleans to teach at Tulane University
and to continue working on my book. I am grateful to my colleagues at Tulane
in the Department of Anthropology and Stone Center for Latin American
Studies who provided support and votes of confidence, especially Vicki Bricker,
Judie Maxwell, Chris Dunn, Martha Huggins, Adeline Masquelier, and Bob
Hill.
Unfortunately, my time at Tulane was cut short by Hurricane Katrina. Back
in Chicago, however, I was welcomed by so many people who went out of
their way to accommodate a displaced colleague trying to finish a book. Special
thanks to Jean Comaraoff from the Department of Anthropology and Dain
Borges from Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago; Bill Leonard
from the Department of Anthropology, Richard Joseph from the Program of
African Studies, and Brodwyn Fischer from the Latin American Studies De-
partment at Northwestern University; and John Monaghan from the Depart-
ment of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Most importantly, I would like to thank everyone who participated in this
study: the members of the Irmandade do Rosário, members of the Pastoral Afro
and the Movimento Evangélico Progressista (MEP), activists in the Movimento
Negro Unificado (MNU) and the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), and all of
the candomblecistas and evangelicals who patiently and generously shared their
time and insights with me. Finally, I give particular thanks to Kevin Yelvington,
Eli Bortz, and Susan Albury for their editorial guidance on this project.
 1

Introduction

Is a holy war raging in Brazil? By many accounts, evangelical Christians and

practitioners of African-derived Candomblé are engaged in a battle for Brazil-
ian souls. While I was living in Brazil between 2000 and 2002, for example, sev-
eral reports of evangelical Christians attacking Candomblé terreiros (temples)
circulated in the news. For some Afro-Brazilians, however, these attacks are
more than just religious antagonisms. Many Candomblé practitioners equate
evangelical attacks on their terreiros with racism. In fact, the symbolic con-
nection between African-derived religion and Afro-Brazilian identity is close
enough that images of Candomblé are often featured prominently in antiracist
campaigns in Brazil. “Without Candomblé, there would be no black move-
ment!” exclaimed a practitioner who lives in Salvador, the capital of the state
of Bahia. Candomblé is deeply rooted in Bahia, and for my friend and many
others like her, African-derived religion and the struggle against racism are
intimately linked.
Yet in my time in Brazil, and contrary to much of what I had read about the
topic, I found that the relationship between religion and racial consciousness
is more complicated than a simple dichotomy between Candomblé antiracist
activists and the evangelical race traitors. Later in our interview, for example,
the Candomblé practitioner I quoted above admitted that none of the other
members of her terreiro were involved with antiracist politics. Furthermore,
while I was in Brazil I worked closely with evangelical Christians in Bahia who
are passionately devoted to the struggle against racism. In fact, my research
suggested that in general, involvement with one or another religious group was
not significantly associated with more or less concern about racism. Neverthe-
less, Candomblé remains a potent emblem of racial consciousness. This book
explores this puzzle by examining the role of religion in the politics of Afro-
Brazilian identity.
The anthropological fieldwork upon which this book is based took place
 2 Chapter 1

in the northeastern state of Bahia, known for its rich Afro-Brazilian traditions
and as a center of racial consciousness in Brazil. Activists in Bahia today are
confronting racism and racial inequalities that until recently many Brazilians
refused to acknowledge. Many groups engaging these problems are religious,
and ethnic affirmation based in African-derived religion is at the heart of the
antiracism movement in Bahia. Christian organizations, however, vary widely
in their views about such affirmations of Afro-Brazilian culture.
An estimated 15 percent of Brazil’s population is Protestant, about two-thirds
of which are Pentecostals, the fastest growing religious group in Brazil today
(Freston 1994). While most Brazilians still identify themselves as Catholic,
many people are at the same time involved with African-derived religions such
as Candomblé. My fieldwork centered on the capital of Bahia, Salvador, con-
sidered “the Rome of Afro-Brazilian religion,” and on a smaller town in the
interior of Bahia called Cachoeira, widely known for its deeply rooted Afro-
Brazilian traditions.
For many Bahians involved with the antiracism movement, activism goes
hand in hand with affirming one’s ethnic identity through the practice of Can-
domblé. While some groups in the Catholic Church encourage such cultural
affirmations, involvement with Candomblé is forbidden for the growing num-
ber of Pentecostal Christians in Brazil. In fact, only a small percentage of Bra-
zilians report being involved with Candomblé (Prandi 1995). Yet many of the
images publicized by cultural organizations, international tourist agencies, and
the media suggest a single, uncontested way of being “Afro-Brazilian” based
in traditional Afro-Brazilian culture. Bahian communities are in fact divided
largely along religious lines on questions of Afro-Brazilian identity.
Accordingly, J. Lorand Matory (2005, 81) argues that Afro-Brazilian identity
politics provides a counterpoint to the emphasis on homogeneity in discussions
of the construction of national and ethnic “imagined communities” (Anderson
1983). In other words, Afro-Brazilian identity is based on multiple and overlap-
ping imagined communities that are themselves based on different religions
(Catholicism, Protestantism, Candomblé) and national identities (Brazilian,
Jejê, Nâgo, etc.). In fact, Protestant, Catholic, and Candomblé organizations
assign radically different meanings to traditional Afro-Brazilian symbols and
practices. This book explores the ways Bahians of African descent engage these
religious meanings as they construct their identities and how these identities
articulate with discourses about anti-racism and Afro-Brazilian culture.
In the following pages I advance three main arguments about the relation-
ship between religion, Afro-Brazilian ethnicity, and identity politics in Bahia.
 Introduction 3

First, as I have already indicated, I stress the heterogeneity of Afro-Brazilian

ethnoreligious identities. The focus on “Afro-Brazilian culture” among anthro-
pologists, activists, the tourism industry, and others has implied that there is
a well-bounded and stable set of traditions that people of African descent in
Brazil share. By contrast, I focus on competing representations of what it means
to be Afro-Brazilian. As I explore in this book, this multiplicity of identities
complicates—and in a sense drives—mobilization efforts in the black con-
sciousness movement.
Competing discourses about mixture and purity are central to debates about
black identity in Brazil, particularly the opposition between discourses of mes-
tiçagem (hybridity) and ethnic absolutism and, as I explore in this book, the
parallel opposition between syncretism and anti-syncretism. My second argu-
ment is that although hybridity is at the center of representations of Brazilian
identity, discourses of difference have long been a part of the landscape and have
entered the realm of public discourse in Brazil in the past decade or so through
discussions of racism and debates about affirmative action. This, along with the
recognition that Brazilians regularly employ distinctions between white and
nonwhite in their everyday speech (Sheriff 2001), should lead us to explore the
complementary rather than mutually exclusive relationship between discourses
of mixture and opposition.
Finally, I argue that we need approaches to understanding Brazil’s black
movement that directly engage, rather than attempt to explain away, the mul-
titude of competing ways of being Afro-Brazilian. Much of what has been
written about the black movement in Brazil has, on the one hand, relied on too
sharp a distinction between culture and politics and, on the other, presented the
movement as something more unified than it actually is. I argue that the black
movement consists of a whole host of overlapping networks of cultural and
political practice in which various notions of what it means to be Afro-Brazilian
compete, and in so doing I hope to contribute a more nuanced perspective to
ongoing discussions of Afro-Brazilian identity politics.

Race and Religion in Brazil

Much of what has been written about Brazilian race relations over the past few
decades has focused on establishing that racism and racial discrimination exist
in Brazil. It is clear that they do. In some sense, then, this research has helped
to debunk the Brazilian “myth of racial democracy,” the long-standing fiction
that Brazil is a place free of racism. Yet this is a complicated issue: as a Brazilian
 4 Chapter 1

colleague of mine often says, “The myth is a myth.” That is, much of the writ-
ing about the ideology of racial democracy has downplayed the extent to which
Brazilians are aware of how racism operates in their own country and in their
daily lives. Thus, one of the aims of this book is to address the distinctive ways
that Brazilians conceive of and struggle against racism and racial discrimina-
tion. Often, these ways are not as explicit or as confrontational as those of the
American civil rights movement, but that does not mean that Afro-Brazilians
are passive dupes of the dominant racial ideologies.
A considerable amount of what has been written about race relations in
Brazil takes a comparative perspective, often emphasizing Brazil’s parallels and
contrasts with the United States. Recent debates about the study of race in Bra-
zil have emphasized the importance not only of examining racism in Brazil, but
also looking at what is distinctive about race and race relations there. Some have
argued that the very notions of “race” and “race relations” used in many studies
are specifically American concepts that obscure the way such things are done in
Brazil. (While teaching a course entitled “Race in Brazil,” I half-jokingly sug-
gested to the class that we modify the title by adding punctuation: “‘Race’ in
Brazil?”). Brazilians often deny that separate races exist in Brazil—only shades
of color. Although I disagree with the contention that the Brazilian black-
consciousness movement is a result of U.S. intellectual imperialism (Bourdieu
and Wacquant 1999; cf. Hanchard 2003; French 2000), I agree that we need to
understand Brazil on its own terms.
Partly because separate racial identities are not generally understood as pub-
lic and political in Brazil in the same way that they are in the United States, for
example, Afro-Brazilians do not tend to link race and politics. Voting patterns
do not conform to racial lines as they often do in the United States, and the
black-consciousness movement has not gained wide popular appeal in Brazil.
As I explore here, Afro-Brazilian identity in Bahia is largely constituted through
culture rather than through ancestry or politics, and religion has a particularly
important role to play in this respect (cf. Sansone 2003; K. Butler 1998a).
Although I am skeptical about unqualified comparisons between the United
States and Brazil, I believe that recognizing what people of African descent in
the New World share is crucial. On this issue, anthropologists, especially those
who have conducted ethnographic studies in Bahia, have a long history of
focusing on African “cultural survivals” in the New World (Herskovits 1941).
While such work has been commendable in a number of ways, this book moves
sharply away from this approach. I do not discount cultural continuities, yet I
stress that they are not simple artifacts passed down from generation to genera-
 Introduction 5

tion (cf. Mintz and Price 1992). That is, I focus on how cultural continuities
are constructed in the cultural imaginations of people of African descent rather
than on how they are rooted in some primordial cultural substrate. Ultimately,
then, my emphasis is more on the common conditions—historical and cur-
rent—that people of African descent share rather than on any specific cultural
content. Although these conditions are often difficult to specify, people of Af-
rican descent have commonly been affected by and/or involved with processes
such as geographical dislocation, sociopolitical marginalization, and, more re-
cently, ethnoracial mobilization.

Bahia, Brazil
My ongoing anthropological fieldwork in Bahia began in the summer of 1998
when I made my first trip to Salvador to study Portuguese. I returned to Bahia
to conduct extended fieldwork between 2000 and 2002, and I spent my first
eight months living in Cachoeira, a quiet town located in the interior of Ba-
hia. I chose to work in Cachoeira mainly because it is regarded as a center of
traditional Afro-Brazilian culture; in addition, it was also a relatively easy and
friendly place to live while I improved my Portuguese and got used to living
in Brazil.
Eventually I moved to Salvador, Bahia’s coastal capital, where I lived for the
remainder of my extended fieldwork. If Cachoeira is the home of traditional
Afro-Brazilian culture, then Salvador is the center of Afro-Brazilian modernism
and social activism. My work in Salvador focused largely on the black-con-
sciousness movement, which, at least in its explicit manifestations, was virtu-
ally nonexistent in Cachoeira. A notable exception to this lack of activism in
Cachoeira is the festival of the Sisterhood of Our Lady of Good Death (Boa
Morte). This yearly celebration draws cultural and political activists from Sal-
vador and beyond and thus forms a “bridge” between rural Cachoeira and
urban Salvador. For this reason, the festival of Boa Morte became central to
my research, and I returned to Bahia in the summers of 2004 and 2005 to at-
tend the celebration, which I have described in detail elsewhere (Selka 2003).
This book, however, focuses primarily on my work in Salvador, and my focus
is mainly on religious practitioners involved with the various expressions of the
black movement in that city.
During my fieldwork I employed a multi-methodological and multi-sited
approach to ethnographic research that involved engaging in participant ob-
servation, conducting interviews, and administering questionnaires among the
 6 Chapter 1

members of different religious communities. My interviews and questionnaires

concerned how people perceive racism in Brazilian society and in their own
lives, how they relate to anti-racist organizations, and how they interpret differ-
ent religious discourses about these issues. Most of my research activities took
place in churches and temples, in people’s homes, and at public religious events
and festivals.
Between 2000 and 2002 I taped thirty-one formal interviews and con-
ducted an additional thirty informal interviews in Bahia during my extended
fieldwork. These focused on leaders and members of religious organizations,
activists, tourism workers (in addition to tourists themselves), as well as Bahi-
ans with no particular religious or political involvements. I also administered
questionnaires concerning demographic information, past and present patterns
of religious practice, different views of Afro-Brazilian ethnic identity, and the
ways in which people experience racism. I attempted to divide the question-
naires proportionally among Catholic, Protestant, and African-derived reli-
gious organizations. With the help of local assistants I administered fifty-eight
in Cachoeira and Salvador. Most of the questionnaire was developed from my
preliminary fieldwork, and additional sections were adapted from the Multi-
group Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) (Phinney 1992) and the Racism and
Life Experience Scales (RaLES) (Harrell 1997), which are surveys designed to
measure how African Americans perceive their ethnic identities and experience
racism.

Religion, Identity, and Politics

This book ultimately concerns the relationship between identity and politics.
Provisionally, we might understand identity—or, more precisely, social iden-
tity—as the intersection of our personal selves and the social order. Often, we
imagine our selves in terms of our desires and dispositions, and we think of the
social order in terms of the possible paths we can follow or the roles we can play
in life. In this view, our actual identities are formed where these intersect; for
example, Afro-Brazilian identity can be understood as the interface of certain
kinds of subjectivities with participation in certain kinds of cultural practices.
Yet neither our selves nor the social order are fixed or given. Thus, I contend
that we have a hand in defining who we are and that we exercise some agency in
shaping our lives. My approach is centered on practice theory, which mediates
between two extremes in anthropological studies of identity. At one extreme are
studies that focus on individual life histories without situating these narratives
 Introduction 7

within the context of social processes. At the other end are those that center
on how the social order is inscribed onto subjectivities while neglecting human
agency.
In this book I focus on how processes of identity formation are intertwined
with politics. That is, in the process of self-definition and identity construction,
agents can work with or against the status quo, and our habits and daily prac-
tices tend to reproduce or resist the social order of which we are part. Seen in
this way, the construction of identity is at least indirectly political. In fact, iden-
tities that may have previously been considered personal are now at the center
of politics, as expressed in the dictum “the personal is political.” For example,
practices or “strategies” such as buying or boycotting certain products, openly
affirming one’s sexual orientation, or affirming one’s ancestry have moved to
the center of many social movements. This politics of identity, sometimes la-
beled by detractors as “political correctness,” is an important characteristic of
contemporary social movements that I will focus on in the following chapters
in my attempt to understand the relationship between religion, Afro-Brazilian
identity, and the struggle against racism.
In practice, of course, much of what we do straddles the fence between the
reproduction of and resistance to the status quo; any particular action may both
resist and reproduce the social order at the same time. A vote for a third-party
candidate, for example, is a vote against the current administration, but the act
of voting itself endorses the current political system as a whole. Even when so-
cial action explicitly aims at overturning the social order, it may ultimately end
up reinforcing the status quo. Revolutionary movements in which the vanguard
becomes as repressive as the regime it overturns are a good example of this.
The paradoxical interconnection of reproduction and resistance is appar-
ent in the arena of Afro-Brazilian identity politics. In Bahia, debates about
the formation of Afro-Brazilian identity tend to center on struggles over clas-
sification: for example, mixture versus purity, hybridity versus anti-hybridity,
and syncretism versus anti-syncretism. Discourses of mixture, hybridity, and
syncretism represent Afro-Brazilian identity as a combination of African and
European practices and influences. The strength of this approach is that it de-
nies a categorical difference between blacks and whites; without this difference,
many argue, racism has no basis (Sansone 2003).
In fact, the ideology of mestiçagem has long been Brazil’s official stance
on race relations, and this ideology has worked to buttress the myth of racial
democracy. How could racism exist in a place where everywhere—in people’s
bodies, in the food they eat, in the ways they worship—one sees the melding of
 8 Chapter 1

the African and the European? As it turns out, however, racism has no trouble
existing in places where hybridity is the dominant model for race relations
(Hanchard 2003). The trouble is that racism exists in Brazil in spite of the
ideology of racial democracy and mixture. In fact, many observers argue that
the discourse of hybridity in Brazil obscures and directs attention away from
underlying, value-laden oppositions between black and white. In this view, hy-
brid identities and practices that intend to undermine the basis for racism can
end up masking it instead. In Brazil, then, discourses of purity, anti-hybridity,
and anti-syncretism transgress the dominant ideology of race relations, while
discourses of hybridity may reinforce such ideologies. Thus, many argue that in
Brazil, anti-hybridity—a process of separation in which one makes clear what is
African and what is not—and Afro-Brazilian ethnic affirmation form the basis
of the struggle against racism. Again, things are not so simple: the problem
is that the oppositional representations of blackness that emerge are often as
essentialist, and perhaps in some ways as constraining, as the racist representa-
tions of blacks that they intend to counter.
Here I explore this paradox through an investigation of the intersection of
religion, identity, and politics in Bahia. Along the way, I pay close attention to
alternative ways of thinking about and constructing black identities in Brazil
that are emerging in Afro-Brazilian communities, including those articulated
by evangelical Christians. I highlight anti-essentialist approaches to identity
and social mobilization that strive to affirm a multiplicity of possible ways of
being Afro-Brazilian. I hope that my discussions of these issues will be useful
not only to academics and students interested in the politics of identity, but to
those involved with movements for social justice as well.
 2

Religion and Race in Brazil

For a nation often cited as the most Catholic country in the world, Brazil’s
religious pluralism is particularly striking. While Catholicism still dominates
as the nominal religion of the majority of Brazilians, a significant minority
frequent Protestant churches, African-derived religious centers, and even Bud-
dhist temples. This chapter focuses on how people of African descent involved
with Catholic, evangelical Christian, and Candomblé organizations have en-
gaged issues of Afro-Brazilian identity and struggled against racism in Brazil.
In terms of numbers of members and relevance to the construction of ethnic
identity, these are the most important religious groups in Afro-Brazilian com-
munities today.
Brazil has often been referred to as a racial democracy. Proponents of this
view have cited as evidence Brazil’s lack of de jure segregation, seeming lack of
overt racial hostility, and the existence of widespread racial mixture and cultural
syncretism in Brazil. Since the 1970s, however, there has been increasing recog-
nition of racial discrimination and major differences between the life chances
of whites and nonwhites in Brazil. Especially in Bahia, those involved with the
black movement often use religious symbols and practices to affirm a positive
Afro-Brazilian ethnicity and to mobilize people against racism. In the chapters
that follow I explore some of the complexities and contradictions that arise
from the use of ethnic emblems in anti-racist campaigns.
The state of Bahia, where my anthropological fieldwork took place, is lo-
cated in the northeastern region of Brazil. Bahia is a poor state in the poorest
region in the country and is home to the highest proportion of people of Af-
rican descent in Brazil. Most Afro-Brazilians are concentrated in a coastal area
called the Recôncavo, once the home of Brazil’s booming sugar plantations and
the center of its slave trade. Today this area is an important focal point of racial
consciousness in Brazil.
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