p2391 -
African Symbolism, Catholic Celebrations: Black Women, Personal Adornment and Religious Festivals in São Paulo, Brazil, c.a. 1850-1890
Submission Track: Performance Studies and Visual Culture
Abstract: Our Lady of the Rosary, an incarnation of the Virgin Mary, represented a popular patron saint for black lay Catholic brotherhoods across colonial and imperial Brazil. This paper analyzes the use of West Central African symbolism in the bodily adornment of participants commemorating the festival of Our Lady of the Rosary in late nineteenth century São Paulo, Brazil. Evidence from a local city chronicler, A. E. Martins, and local municipal newspapers suggest that African and African descendants adorned themselves using conventional symbols of Catholicism, such as crosses and rosary beads, but also with locally sourced material objects including pacová, olha de cabra, and jaguar teeth, which referenced symbols of fertility and authority in West Central Africa. African and Afro-Brazilian female confraternity members literally dressed themselves and their children utilizing non-Christian symbols composed of plant and animal based materials approximating items found in Kongo hinterlands. Africans and their descendants informally integrated ritually significant colors as well as symbols in black confraternal festival apparel well into the nineteenth century across southeastern Brazil beyond Atlantic port cities such as Salvador, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This paper demonstrates that black administered churches and their affiliated spaces functioned as sites in which Africans and their descendants sought to display wealth, perform pity, and assert their African heritage in late nineteenth century São Paulo, Brazil.