Cucumbis: entre funerais e carnavais

Abstract

The main goal of this work is to analyze the relation between the funeral processions of Rio de Janeiro's City, in the beginning of XIX century, which highlights the funeral cucumbis groups, with cucumbis carnivals groups at the end of the XIX century in the same city. These two cucumbis groups were made by black persons from Congo- Angola region and their descendants in Brazil. In this way, this work reorganizes the real social structures from central Africa, trying to understand the daily lives of these people, which were totally dedicated to the care of their ancestors.Through the black diaspora in Brazil, the bakongo people recreated the central african structures with their own memories, reinventing the funeral practices in Brazil as a real festivity, represented by the funeral processions of deceased black peoples in the city of Rio, known as funeral cucumbis. However, in the beginning of the XIX century, these funeral cucumbis groups had disappeared from the streets of the city, resurfacing at the end of XIX century as a carnivals groups, which paraded in the Ouvidor's Street and were extremely published by the journals at that time. Therefore, this work seeks to understand the relationship between these two groups of cucumbis, as well as the relationship between funeral and carnival.