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chapter ten The “Nagôization” Process in Bahian Candomblé Luis Nicolau Parés Candomblé is the name given to the regional development of Afro-Brazilian religion in the state of Bahia. Like other religious practice that originated in African traditions brought into Brazil by slaves, Candomblé involves the worship of a series of spiritual entities, often associated with forces of nature, who receive periodic ritual offerings in their shrines. Candomblé is also a spirit possession cult where some devotees, by different initiation processes, are prepared to embody or to impersonate these deities, who during public ceremonies will dance for hours to the sound of the drums. Regular interaction with the gods is supposed to bring fortune to the religious group and to defend it against misfortune. Beyond the shared liturgical aspects and conceptual consensus that allow Candomblé to be considered a religious institution (i.e., divination, initiation, sacrifice, spirit possession, healing, celebration, etc.), cult groups often resort to the discourse of “nations” to negotiate, construct, and legitimate their ritual differences and collective identities. Today Candomblé cult houses generally claim to belong to one of the three main nations, Nagô, Jeje, and Angola, which are characterized by the worship of different kinds of spiritual entities. The Nagô worship the orixás, the Jeje the voduns, and the Angola the enkices. There are also the caboclos, although cult houses exclusively worshiping these Brazilian spiritual entities seldom claim to constitute a nation.1 Each of these groups of African deities is usually praised in the corresponding ritual language (Yoruba, Gbe,2 and Bantu-derived dialectal forms) and has its own ritual particularities (drum rhythms, dances, food offerings, etc.). Hence, despite the creative eclecticism and movement of values and practices across nation boundaries, certain key ritual features are considered important as diacritical signs of a real or imag185 Falola_Childs,Yoruba Diaspo 2/2/05 1:34 PM Page 185 ined continuity with a distinct African past and religious tradition. However, beneath the inclusiveness inherent in the concept of nation, the basic unit of collective identity and pride is the cult group itself, and congregations belonging to the same nation, despite their possible solidarity and cooperation, are not above engaging in a competitive dynamic. During fieldwork in Bahia between 1935 and 1937 American sociologist Donald Pierson recorded an often-quoted sentence by Eugênia Ana dos Santos, mãe Aninha, founder and leader of the Axé Opô Afonjá and one of the most famous priestesses of Candomblé in Salvador at that time. “My sect is pure Nagô, like the Engenho Velho. I have revived a great part of the African tradition which even the Engenho Velho has forgotten. Do they have there a ceremony for the twelve ministers of Xangô? No! But I do.”3 The quote is significant for two reasons. First, as Vivaldo da Costa Lima notes, mãe Aninha’s identification of her “terreiro ”4 with the Nagô nation derives from her religious affiliation to a Nagô cult house—the Engenho Velho where she was initiated—and not from kinship, since Aninha’s parents were known to be Grunci, an ethnic group from present-day Ghana with no cultural ties to Yorubaland. Hence, at least since the early twentieth century, Bahian Creoles could identify themselves as Nagô by virtue of their religious initiation, regardless of their ethnic ancestry. Lima remarks how the concept of nation gradually lost its political connotation, becoming an almost exclusively theological concept.5 In the first part of this chapter I examine the historicity of the expansive-inclusive dynamic of the Nagô ethnonym and whether—once restricted to the area of religion—it ever did in fact lose its political connotation. Second, Aninha’s words also establish an explicit conceptual association between the notion of “purity” and the Nagô religious tradition preserved in her cult house and the Engenho Velho—“the eldest Brazilian candomblé,” according to oral tradition. Implicit in her remark is an opposition between “Nagô purity” and other “impure,” “mixed,” or “syncretic” traditions. Furthermore, Aninha claims to have “revived a great part of the African tradition” which even the Engenho Velho had lost, implying a greater closeness and fidelity to Africa which resulted in a surplus of “traditionalism” and authenticity. As several authors have shown, the institution of the twelve ministers, or “obás,” of Xangô (male dignitaries who support the leadership of the high priestess) introduced by Aninha and her close friend, the babalawo Martiniano Eliseo do Bomfim, was inspired...

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