RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – A Nigerian diviner dances and sings next to a Brazilian priest of the Candomblé religion, brought to this South American country by African slaves, that is now being rescued from oblivion in school texts on national history and culture.
He is Jokotoye Awolade Bankole, a 55-year-old tribal prince from Onpeu-Ogbomoso in the southwestern Nigerian state of Oyo, and a devotee of Ifa, a divination system of the Yoruba people that was declared part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2005 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Candomblé priest Alexander Rocha da Silva, or “Alexander de Oxossi” as he is known in his religion, has welcomed Bankole to his “terreiro” or temple. He is white, although as he told IPS, “who in Brazil can say he has nothing of Africa under his skin?”
Half of the Brazilian population is black or mixed-race.
This country, where over 50 percent of the population of 194 million identify themselves as black or “mulatto” in the census, has emphasised its European history, the Portuguese “conquest” and the practice of the Catholic religion.
According to the 2010 census, 64.6 percent of the population identify as Catholics, followed by 22.2 percent who profess evangelical, mainly neopentecostal, denominations.
Many of those who openly declare themselves to be followers of religions of African origin, like Umbanda and Candomblé, who represent 0.3 percent of the population, practise their rituals in the shadows.
“There is still a lot of discrimination, especially when someone at school or at university professes an African religion,” says Glaucia Bastos, an “iyanifa” (Ifa priestess).
Brought to Brazil by African slaves, Candomblé was subjected to more or less severe repression from colonial times, and had to disguise itself in order to survive.
“Candomblé did not suffer as much from the Catholic influence as other religions, because black people continued to worship their ‘orixás’ (deities) under the guise of Catholic saints,” Alexander de Oxossi told IPS.
Open persecution by the police of Afro-Brazilian religions continued past the mid-20th century.
Bastos, whose father is Portuguese but who identifies herself as black “because of her mother’s family tree,” tells IPS that “up until 27 years ago, people in the streets used to shout ‘macumbera’ at me,” a word of African origin used pejoratively to mean a practitioner of black magic.
Read more: IPS
