African-Brazilian Culture and Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil

3. Performing Bahia: Public Festivals, Samba, and African-Bahian Agency

3 Performing Bahia Public Festivals, Samba, and African-Bahian Agency At dawn on Thursday morning, the ninth of January 1941, up to one thousand Salvadorans from all walks of life converged on the space in front of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Praia in Salvador’s commercial district. They had come wearing mostly white to participate in the procession for Bahia’s “patron saint,” the Senhor do Bonfim (Our Lord of the Good End, or Christ on the Cross), and to witness or participate in the climactic ritual washing of the steps of the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim.1 Gradually they organized themselves, and at the sound of clarions or a mortar salute, they set off on a long, snaking procession of over four miles that ended at the steps of the church on the Peninsula of Itapagipe, which jutted out into the blue-green waters of the Bay of All Saints. Among those participating were politicians, politicians’ wives, and journalists (all typically in a car); a military band; and any number of “humbly decorated,” mule-driven carts, while many poor, devout Salvadorans walked. The procession took up to three hours at the height of the Brazilian summer, which entailed both a physical and symbolic hardship that many Salvadorans regarded as fundamental to the passion for the Senhor do Bonfim. The procession illustrated the depth of their devotion and recalled the sacrifice and suffering that Christ endured on the cross, the most potent symbol of Christianity. Moreover, as a penitential procession, the march resonated emotively with the community’s deeply rooted traditions from Iberia, where such processions were organized in times of distress such as during droughts or epidemics. Yet for many involved in the procession and those who would participate in the ritual washing of the church steps, these public rituals were not done (or were not only done) to commemorate Christ on the cross. They 6 7 6 7 72 · African-Brazilian Culture and Regional Identity in Bahia, Brazil were also ritual obligations to Oxalá, a Candomblé deity and an important and powerful figure within the hierarchy of Candomblé cosmology (especially within the Nagô-Ketu tradition). Tellingly, no Catholic priests led in organizing the procession from the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Praia to the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim. Most of the spiritual focus and leadership for the procession instead came from the mães-desanto , filhas-de-santo, and a few pais-de-santo of the Candomblé community . The women in particular were dressed in their all-white ceremonial finery, some transporting vases of water and flowers to the church for the ritual washing. Thus the procession that made its way from the commercial district and down the peninsula of Itapagipe was syncretic, deeply imbued with traditions and meaning from both Catholicism and Candomblé.2 Meanwhile, hundreds of onlookers gathered along the route of the procession and hundreds more at the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim awaiting the arrival of the procession and the Baianas. Rockets or mortars were fired to mark the progress of the procession over the last leg of the journey, further exciting the crowd. As the procession arrived at the church and the Baianas climbed the steps to place their flowers at the altar (or at the top of the steps, if the priest refused to open the church doors, as sometimes happened), the crowd closed in, clapping their hands and shouting, “Long live the Senhor do Bonfim!” A passage by the exiled Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who witnessed the Washing of Bonfim in 1941, is worth reproducing here to complete the description of the ceremony: At last the long-awaited moment had arrived. . . . Several policemen pushed the crowd back from the nave to clear the floor whose tiles were to be scrubbed. Then, under a continuous barrage of applause from the crowd, water was poured from the jugs onto the floor, and a moment later the brooms were seized. . . . The impatience of waiting , coupled with the incessant shouting and the jubilation, had made them wild. And suddenly it seemed as though a riot of a hundred black spirits had been let loose in the middle of the church. One snatched a broom from another; a second later two, three, then as many as ten were holding on to a single handle at the same time, scrubbing rhythmically and more and more rapidly. Others, without brooms, threw themselves on the floor...