The country offers in the open America section for its daily and global informative contribution to sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.
Brazil was the last country in America to abolish slavery, on May 13, 1888. On that same date of the following year, the black community of Santo Amaro da Purificão, a small town in the state of Bahia, celebrated it in a cheerful and brave way: taking to the street its religious holidays, until then relegated to hiding. That celebration, the ‘Bembé do Mercado’ is the only one of his typology that survives in Brazil. In recent years, it has been traveling from marginality to recognition that already calls the doors of UNESCO.
For the photographer and visual artist Roque Boa Morte, the memories of the party date back to his childhood, when his godmother took him by the hand, and he lost between the huge and white dicks Baianas of the Terreiros From Candomblé, the centers of worship of the Afro -Robrasileña religion predominant in the area. Until the 50s, there were hardly any photographic records of the party and, when there began to be, they were marked by a look that sought the exotic, folklore, and stayed on the surface, says Boa Morte in telephone conversation. After five years of work and efforts to get rid of a “Eurocentric” training, Boa Morte has built a archive of more than 9,000 images, which will be part of the Afro -Digital Museum of Aphrodiasporic Memory, linked to the Federal University of Bahia.
The Bembé do Mercado was promoted by João de Obá, an ex -squeal Malé (as Africans of Muslim origin were designated), but also practiced the candomblé. Over time, his decision to celebrate on the street the abolition of slavery and value the struggle of blacks for freedom, it became a cry that faced the official story: for many years, the history books have ignored the struggle of the black movement and used to give all the prominence to Princess Isabel, daughter of Emperor Pedro II, who was the one who signed the late and brief with which it ended with almost 400 years of slavery.
Today, the Bembé is a leafy representation of culture and black resistance: in addition to religious leaders, dancers from Samba de Roda and Maculelle, Capoeiristas and other groups, such as the fughed business and its hundred theatrical performances, participate that revive the struggle of the enslaved. The Bembé has the participation of more than 60 Terreiros of the area, it lasts several days and has its peak in the Xirêthe ritual in which the songs and sacred dances are carried out in tribute to the Orixás, in particular to Xangô, the Yoruba God of Justice. After the party, in the Plaza del Santo Amaro, a parade begins through the streets of the city to a nearby beach, where the faithful and fishermen join to deliver an offering to the sea, in gratitude to the divinities of the waters, Oxum and Yemanjá.
The administrator of the party for years is José Raimundo Chaves, better known as El Babalorixá (Priest) Pai Pote. Account by phone that he is delighted that a son of the city has become the great ambassador of the celebration: “You see the photographs and see suffering, joy, the work behind … Roque’s investigation is very important, he values the entire black town and the legacy of Santo Amaro,” he says proudly. Part of those photographs can be seen these days in the exhibition A Festa Two Olhos do Reiright in the market square where everything happens. The photographer tells that to perform them, he immersed himself in the Andean methodology Ch’ixiwhich proposes a non -dichotomous vision to decolonize the look. “A process of empathy is sought with the person who is being portrayed. Sometimes, not photographing is an act of getting up against that fury of the images,” says Boa Morte, who regrets the process “practically picolio” of the clouds of dozens of photographers from outside the city that come to the party every year.
How to reconcile the growing interest with the preservation of the mysticism of the party is one of the dilemmas that the Bembé faces at the moment, although one of the most feasible roads may be to let it be its neighbors who tell it. In addition to Boa Morte’s work, this year’s Bembé also hosted the premiere of a documentary about the PAI Pote, (‘Pai Pote, or Filho de Ogun’), directed by Laís Lima and produced by Nathália Ribeiro, two other Santamarenses. The visibility at the national level will take a scale from February of next year, when the abolitionist celebration will be the honoree in the monumental parades of the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro, by the Samba Samba School of Beija-Flor.
In the town, famous in Brazil for being the homeland of Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia, the moment is lived with pride, but also with some suspicion. Boa Morte assumes that the greater the dissemination, the greater the risks, but it is difficult for the Bembé, a celebration tanned in the resistance and that it still suffers with the intolerance (especially of evangelical fundamentalists) succumbs to the honeys of success: “The important thing will always exist. What is essential of magic, of Macumbait is not visible to everyone, ”says Boa Morte. It is not a way of speaking. It refers to one of the best known and at the same time most cryptic moments of the celebration: in the previous days, religious leaders invoke exú (the Orixá Protector of the roads and crossroads) to“ block ”the accesses to the city, so that there are no problems and so that during the party the parishioners do not incorporate. At the time it was a mechanism to guarantee physical integrity to intolerant looks. There are things that are not there to be registered, ”he says convinced.
For more updates, visit our homepage: NewsTimesWire
