This panel considers how early modern Catholic communities in South America carved out a place for themselves in colonial societies through festivals. Catholic brotherhoods and the Society of Jesus hosted religious feasts in which participants created new narratives about themselves. In eighteenth-century Brazil, Black and pardo confraternities re-negotiated their identities by strategically associating with certain saints, in some instances bypassing the social categories imposed on them by colonial administrators. Jesuit missionaries used theater to promote redemptive narratives about the missionary villages known as aldeias, many of which were unraveling in the late sixteenth century. In seventeenth-century Chile, Indigenous and multi-ethnic groups, as well as people of mixed social statuses, participated in religious feasts and used material culture, including candles, flowers, and images, to re-negotiate their social privileges. In all of these regions, Catholic communities, especially those comprised of oppressed or marginalized groups, sought to control their image in these festivals by keeping meticulous archival records and producing festival accounts.

The past decade has seen a resurgence of studies dedicated to festivals in the colonial Americas (Lisa Voigt, Miguel Valerio, Barbara Mundy), which has dovetailed with a resurgence of studies dedicated to the cultural history of African and Afro-descendant populations in the colonial Americas (Herman Bennett, Matthew Restall, Miguel Valerio/Javiera Jaque). Nevertheless, the tendency of scholars in the U.S. to focus on the Spanish Americas and overlook Colonial Brazil has resulted in less engagement with the latter, which had a rich festival culture in colonial times (Marina de Melo e Souza, Elizabeth W. Kiddy). This panel explores South American colonial festivals with a particular focus on Brazil, in the hopes of pushing this field forward in the U.S. It also proposes new angles to festival studies in the Americas writ large. These include specifically literary approaches to festivals and analysis of the relationship between festivals and archival sources; an expanded notion of self-fashioning in the sense of collective and racial (re) self-fashioning; consideration of how groups re-created and participated in crucial moments of Catholic history through theater; and the study of how the material culture of festivals mediated social conflict and social change.

The panel consists of four panelists who will collectively speak for no longer than one hour, leaving at least 15 minutes for discussion. Javiera Jaque will kick off the discussion analyzing Alonso de Ovalle’s vivid descriptions of rituals enacted by black and indigenous people during religious processions in Santiago de Chile in his Histórica relación del Reyno de Chile (1646). Indigenous, Black, Spanish, and multiethnic groups from diverse social statuses paraded in the streets with religious fervor.

The panel continues with Nicole T. Hughes, who will explore a Jesuit drama composed and staged in the late sixteenth century at a time when the Jesuits in Southern Brazil reported a dizzying number of problems. The Jesuit missionary José de Anchieta interpreted numerous disturbances—Indigenous enslavement, pirate attacks on the coast, political infighting among settlers—in theatrical productions performed in the colonial enclave of Espírito Santo. In one of these works, the Auto of St. Maurice, Anchieta re-interpreted Southern Brazil’s many troubles as manifestations of an all-encompassing clash between Catholicism and Heresy.

Next, Miguel Valerio will examine a lavish three-day festival organized by some of Salvador’s (Brazil) mixed-race pardos lay Catholic brotherhoods in 1746. The festival was in honor of St. Gonçalo Garcia, a mixed-race Indo-Portuguese lay Franciscan brother executed in Nagasaki in 1597, who the Franciscans were then promoting—and the pardos had embraced—as a saint of the pardos’ “same color and accident.” Valerio will analyze Salvador’s pardo festival to explore how pardos: 1) engaged in (racial) self-(re)fashioning through religion, particularly saintly devotion; 2) competed for sacro-social prestige through several confraternal practices, including festivals and architectural and artistic patronage; and 3) created public memory through print.

Finally, Rebecca Janzen will close the formal presentations with an exploration of the celebrations for Our Lady of Mercy that took place in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, organized by the Brotherhood of Mercy (Irmandade da Mercê) in the late 18th century. This was a group largely comprised of free Black men and women, who had separated themselves from the Irmandade do Rosario, which was primarily comprised by enslaved Black people. She will employ methods of literary analysis to consider the Irmandade’s meticulous records, including articles of incorporation and lists of annual expenses. Significant sums were spent publicizing the events, publishing materials for participants, as well as for fire during the festival and laundry once it concluded.