Episode 8: Candomblé in Crisis: Confronting Religious and Environmental Racism in Brazil

Posted Date: December 24, 2020

Episode Description: In this episode, Irenae Aigbedion (LAC) welcomes Dr. Jamie Lee Andreson (Penn State) to the series to discuss the latter’s project, “Candomblé Temples in the Fight against Religious and Environmental Racism in Brazil.” Through her personal stories and case studies, Dr. Andreson takes us to the main site of her work: Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, where a fierce battle for religious freedom and antiracism is taking place. She examines the threats that candomblé temples face today and unpacks that ways that colonial history, contemporary global politics, and the ever present tension of the COVID-19 pandemic have complicated and even prevented their religious practices. Dr. Andreson shares the ways that temples themselves are nonetheless fighting back against oppression and mobilizing for their freedom to practice and their right to exist.

Guest Biography

Jamie Lee Andreson holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and History from the University of Michigan. Currently she is a postdoctoral scholar with the Africana Research Center at Penn State University. As a scholar she is committed to engaged research and pedagogy on the topics of African Diaspora Religions, trans-American comparative histories of slavery, identity formation through race, gender and sexuality, and the politics of cultural heritage with a focus on the Candomblé religion of Brazil. Her dissertation Mothers in the Family of Saints: Gender and Race in the Making of Afro-Brazilian heritage uses interdisciplinary methods including ethnography, archival research, interviews, and oral histories to show how Candomblé priestesses and “matriarchy” are ritually valued and externally recognized as key sources of African heritage in Brazil.

Project Title: Candomblé Temples in the Fight against Religious and Environmental Racism in Brazil

Project Description: As sites of worship in Brazil, Candomblé temples cultivate the land through historic, intergenerational practices dedicated to revering ancestral African deities as forces of nature. As historic communities utilizing land for religious purposes since the arrival of African captives in Brazil in the early 1500s, Candomblé families maintain ancestral knowledge through African indigenous methods of land cultivation and preservation. Religions of African descent have been consistently persecuted, targeted, and marginalized by the state and broader Euro-Christian society throughout Brazil’s history. Religious racism, expressed through the targeting of these religions on the basis of anti-blackness in a white supremacist state, has been on the rise since the conservative leadership of Jair Bolsonaro and the spreading discourses of hate from the evangelical political majority, enflamed by current U.S. politics. Within Brazil’s social geography, Candomblé temples are physically vulnerable to displacement due to structural economic and racial inequalities. Candomblé communities face eviction, invasions, land speculation, deforestation and pollution associated with greater urbanization. Religious leaders are also targeted by hate crimes; temples are vandalized and even destroyed, sometimes leading to death and/or permanent displacement. This talk presents case studies of religious racism in the city of Salvador alongside the religious movements to combat environmental racism to protect natural resources and fight for anti-racist religious freedom in Brazil.

Check out some of the resources Jaime referenced in our interview!

Below is a brief excerpt of a larger documentary project produced by the Department of Communications (FACOM) at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) to document the centennial celebrations of the Bate Folha Temple in Salvador, Brazil. Jamie edited and translated the excerpt in this clip (which won an award in the 13th Annual Postdoctoral Research Exhibit at Penn State!)

Here is a link to the virtual march, “Tembwa Ngeemba (Time of Peace),” organized by Terreiro São Jorge Filho da Gomeia (“The St. George, Sons of Gomeia Temple”) and referenced in our discussion.

Below is the original text of the Tembwa Ngeemba media release that Jaime partially translated in our discussion:

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Liberal Arts Collective at Penn State

Formerly the Race in the Americas Conference Committee

Episode 8: Candomblé in Crisis: Confronting Religious and Environmental Racism in Brazil