Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous-Influenced Religions

chapter 8 Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous-Influenced Religions

Steven Engler and Ênio Brito*

Introduction

Afro-Brazilian religions are those that originated in traditional African beliefs and practices brought to Brazil by enslaved people. They manifest a history of resistance and of the construction of black and afro-descendant identities, as a wide variety of African nations reorganized themselves in the diaspora in order to support daily life in a slave regime. Certain Afro-Brazilian religious traditions have been privileged by scholars for a variety of historical, academic and ideological reasons. Others are ignored or granted secondary status. Brazil’s many indigenous peoples have also contributed to a range of religious traditions, in addition to preserving and transforming their own cultures. These processes are also inseparable from the politics of identity. And again a case can be made that scholarship has neglected indigenous elements in Brazil’s religious landscape. This chapter first discusses two prominent types of supernatural entities, then offers brief overviews of three indigenous-influenced traditions (Jeruma, Toré and Pajelança) and three Afro-Brazilian traditions (Tambor de Mina, Batuque, Candomblé de Caboclo) and ends with a discussion that problema- tizes the boundaries between and among these “other” Brazilian religions. The list of Afro-Brazilian religious expressions could be enlarged by others: for example the diffuse tradition(s) of Macumba in the southeast, the terreiros (ritual ‘grounds’) of Babassuê in Amazonia, the (allegedly) extinct traditions of the Xambá nation in the northeast, Terecô or Tambor da Mata in Maranhão, or the rites of the Xangô nation in Pernambuco. Within its limitations of space, this overview invites and challenges readers to see a fuller constellation in the complex African- and indigenous-influenced mandala that has enriched the religious universe of Brazil.

* Brito wrote an initial draft of this chapter, but was unable to revise for health reasons. Engler edited, translated and expanded that text, wrote four additional sections (“Caboclos and En- cantados,” “Tambor de Mina,” “Candomblé de Caboclo,” and “Why Study These ‘Other’ Reli- gions?”) and provided the majority of citations and references.

Caboclos and Encantados

Caboclos and encantados are two important types of supernatural entities that incorporate in mediums, healers and other practitioners in many Brazilian spirit-incorporation traditions. They are prominent, with varying characteristics, in several of the religions discussed in this chapter. As a first approxima- tion, caboclos are formerly incarnate and spiritually evolved indigenous spirits (though seldom associated with any particular tribe or culture); and encantados (‘the enchanted ones’) are invisible, immortal beings, distinct from spirits in that they have never died, and often associated with specific features of the local landscape. Caboclos—indigenous spirits—are common to many Afro-Brazilian religions (see Boyer 1992; Santos 1992; 1995; Concone 2001; Harding 2005: 122; Prandi 2005: 121–138). They play a larger role than is generally recognized—or admitted—in ‘traditional’ terreiros of Candomblé of Bahia (Tall 2012; Trom- boni 2012): caboclos are sometimes associated in Candomblé with the orixá Oxossi or with the morally ambivalent, trickster figure of Exu (Santos 1995: 135–146). Caboclos play an especially prominent role in Umbanda (see Engler, “Umbanda,” this volume). In Brazilian Portuguese, ‘caboclo’ is a term used to refer to rural residents of the north, usually signifying indigenous-european racial mixture (Pace 1997; see Maués 2005). It often has a disparaging tone, comparable in sense to the Engish expression ‘country bumpkin.’ As a type of spirit, caboclos—found in many Afro-Brazilian religions and in Umbanda—are powerful, highly evolved indigenous spirits:

the caboclo spirits are the ‘owners of the land’; they represent the Indi- ans who lived here before the arrival of the whites and the blacks. When they descend [incorporate] in the terreiros, they wear feather headdress- es, dance with bow and arrow, smoke cigars and drink wine. … When they tell of their their origin, they present themselves as inhabitants of a ‘mythical village’ … not locatable in time and space. v. silva 2005: 87–88

Though this citation has broad validity, caboclos vary more than it suggests. Caboclas—feminine caboclos—are prominent in many terreiros. Sometimes caboclos are indigenous-European mestiços. Their specific characteristics re- flect regional conceptions of identity (Pordeus 2006: 123–124). And forms of dress and ritual objects associated with caboclos can vary widely between traditions and even between terreiros within a tradition—as is the case with