Celebrações da diáspora negra na religião afro-atlântica: ritual e performance dos palhaços na Folia dos Santos Reis da Chacrinha (Valença-RJ)

Abstract

This work presents aspects used by the black Brazilians to build up spaces of belonging and resistance through the central African cultural heritage. We believe that the relationship established between this central African culture and the Portuguese Catholicism gave birth to what we may call the Afro-Atlantic religion, still vivid under devotional practices by the black Brazilians. More than just a submissive adhesion to a hegemonic religious system, this dynamic interaction combined with the enslaved Africans ability to resignify their beliefs and devotions was able to produce spaces of coexistence that were favourable to the rise of a new religious identity. Making efforts to analyse the repercussions of this Afro-Atlantic religion, we applied the ethnographical method on a group of Folia dos Santos Reis, in the city of Valença, Rio de Janeiro State. Folia dos Santos Reis is a ritual journey that occurs on many regions of Brazil on king’s day, 6th January, to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and the pilgrimage of the three wise men to his birthplace. On this research we analysed the performance of the clowns of the folia, understanding their performances as spaces of construction and maintenance of the black Brazilian memory. Furthermore, we also analysed the bibliographical production of some interpreters of the Brazilian social thought, specifically those ones which gave specific attention to the elements of the Brazilian black culture and its contribution to the built of a national identity.