A Cidade do Feitiço: Perseguição e Resistência na Belle Époque Carioca

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the resistance of Candomblé communities and black Muslims from the Belle Époque period, in Rio de Janeiro, from the perspective of the institutionalized persecution by the Republic, represented by the press. For that, I use the trajectories of some central characters for the history of the city's religious resistance and of paramount importance for the formation of Candomblé in Rio de Janeiro. The basis of the research is focused on the analysis of articles and newspaper reports of the time, mainly in the worK of João do Rio “As Religiões no Rio”, from 1904, to understand the vision that had of black religiosities in face of the European hygienist civilizing ideal. That in the search for modernity excluded and persecuted those who would be the legacy of the colonial period and represented the backwardness to the city's evolution. Because of these persecutions, blacks gathered around Candomblé terreiros, true multi-identity spaces where people of different ethnicities and identities coexisted, with the aim of re-signifying their customs so that religion could resist until today. The research was based on the notion that the African and Afro-Brazilian individual is permeated by the notion of pluriidentity, that is, at the same time that he attended Candomblé terreiros, he was committed to the Muslim faith and he attended Catholic churches.