Resistence, Redemptionn, and Engendered Representations of Slavery PDF

preto velho: Resistance, Redemption, and Engendered Representations of Slavery in a
Brazilian Possession-Trance Religion

Author(s): Lindsay Lauren Hale
Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1997), pp. 392-414
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/646756 .
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preto velho: resistance, redemption,and engendered

representations of slavery in a Brazilian
possession-trance religion
LINDSAY LAUREN HALE-University of Texas, Austin
ThePretosVelhospresenta strikingcontrastto theCaboclos[theproudspiritsof BrazilianIndians].These

"OldBlacks"arethe spiritsof Africansenslavedin Brazil,generallyslavesfromBahia.All areelderly....
as humble,patient,long-suffering,
andgood.Umbandaleadersrepeatedlystressed
Theyarecharacterized
to me theirhumildade(humility),bondade(friendship),
andcaridade(charity)andtendedto characterize
themas subservient.... [theyrepresent]the FaithfulSlave,or moreprecisely,UncleTom.
-Diana Brown,Umbanda:Religionand Politicsin UrbanBrazil
Lookhere:No one messeswith me! Ifyou don't respectthe law of thisold nego [a colloquialtermfor
Black,withno acceptableEnglishgloss],leave, hitthe road,or stayso Ican breakyou. To fightwiththis
negao [a big nego] is no joke;I am the big machoof the slavequarters,I am in the path,I am in the dust
of the road.
-The pretovelho FatherSebastiao,stomping,muttering,glaring,and spitting
out his wordsas he dressesdown the personnelof the SpiritualCenterof FatherJoaquimfromAngola
the imageof [the]PretoVelho [as UncleTom]lends itselfas well to a radicallydifferentinterpretation.
-Diana Brown,Umbanda:Religionand Politicsin UrbanBrazil
The humble, kindly preto velho (old slave) is indeed open to a radically different interpretation. When Father Sebastian tells off the mediums and clients there in the senzala (slave
quarters),it is not the image of a Brazilian Uncle Remus or Uncle Tom that comes to mind. In
speech and bearing, Father Sebastian-at least in this moment, because Father Sebastian has
many moods-is threatening, accusatory, and committed to his law. Nor is his "brother,"Father
Joaquim, namesake of the SpiritualCenterwhere FatherSebastian railsagainst the lax, an elderly
Uncle Tom. My friend Ze1 tells me that FatherJoaquim did not die an old man, nor was he ever
a slave in Brazil: FatherJoaquim, it seems, died in the interior of Angola leading a guerrilla
campaign against the slave trade. Other consultants give a ratherdifferent but equally heroic
version: they relate that FatherJoaquim led a rebellion against his master. Captured, he refused
to give up the hideout of his followers and was tied to the trunk of a tree. As the whip came
down on his back, FatherJoaquim gave a mighty thrust, uprooting the tree and propelling it,
and himself, into the heavens.2
The old-slave spirits (pretos velhos) of the Brazilian Umbanda religion have
historically been dismissed as stereotypes supporting racist ideologies. While this
appears to be true in many cases, old-slave spirits also offer searing indictments of
racism and penetrating, critical explorations of the articulations of race, gender,
morality, and power in Brazilian society. I argue that, through these spirits,
Umbanda mediums embody conflicting representations of the moral dimensions
of Brazilianhistorythat relate to their contemporary concerns with self and national
identity. [Umbanda, Afro-Brazilian religion, Brazilian racial ideology, spirit possession, embodied representations of race, gender, self, and other]
American Ethnologist24(2):392-414. Copyright? 1997, American Anthropological Association.
392
american ethnologist

In this article I focus on the construction of the spirits of Afro-Brazilian slaves in the
spirit-possession religion known as Umbanda. Umbanda, which has its roots in the religions
brought from Africa during the slave trade, is practiced by millions of contemporary Brazilians
who seek out spiritsof "old Blacks" like FatherJoaquim, along with those of Indians, cowboys,
and other symbols of national identity in dealing with all kinds of personal problems. My
purpose in this article is not to settle the question of whether the pretos velhos, these "old
Blacks," represent abject submission or heroic resistance. As we will see, they can represent
both extremes and all points in between. Instead I will focus on pretos velhos as mediators
linking Umbanda bodies with key themes in Braziliancollective memory and religious ideology.
These spirits constitute sign vehicles through which Umbandistas interpretand explore themes
of racism, national identity, domination, suffering, and redemption within a moral framework
broadly informed by the values and motifs of popular Catholicism. At the same time, pretos
velhos work a reciprocal semiotic movement: through them, these cultural discourses and
collective memories constitute bodily experience by way of spiritpossession and spiritperformance. As Paul Stoller suggests (1994), it is the lattermovement that makes spiritpossession such
a potent vehicle for collective memory: enacted through the body, made present through speech
and movement, boldfaced by a tangible force taking over the body, a people's vision of their
past is saturated with affect and becomes the site of lived experience.
The model of spirits as sign vehicles mediating between cultural themes and bodily experience suggests an interpretivestrategythat moves in multiple directions. The major thrustof my
analysis is a movement from the bodily expression that is spirit possession toward stories,
legends, mass-media presentations, and other discourses concerning slavery, racism, and
domination. I seek to imbed spirit performances and talk of spirits in a wider web of Brazilian
discourses; in this sense my task is a hermeneutic that links performance, text, and talk. At the
same time, I sketch relationships between old slaves and the sociological contexts of mediums-for example, as women, as working-class individuals of Afro-Brazilian ancestry, as
upper-middle-class white individuals, and so forth, contexts that make their performances
readable through a grammar of social action. Again, the movement is outward, from discrete
moments of bodily expression and testimony toward wider, temporally extended parameters.
But there must be a reciprocal move, from cultural and social contexts inward to the possessed
body. Here I will make use of Paul Stoller's (1994) recent comments on the distinction between
"inscription"and "incorporation."Following the direction set by Foucault (1979) and Bourdieu
(1977), anthropologists emphasize the way that culture (or power) "inscribes"itself on the body
through habits of movement, gestures of submission or dominance, ornamentation, disciplines,
postures, punishments, and still other means. Of equal importance to bodily semiotics is the
fact that these inscriptions are experienced as sensual presences; in a word, they are "incorporated." Conversely, the inner, embodied experiences of persons inscribe themselves on the
surfaces of the body for others to read-as when, for example, we say that the lines on a face
tell the story of a life. My procedure will be to "read"-perhaps not an appropriate metaphor;
"feel" might be better-my way from spirit performances toward the bodies of mediums, and
from the bodies of mediums toward their representations of these old-slave spirits, as I travel
the more conventional route from performance to social and cultural context.
My interpretive strategy casts the pretos velhos as polysemic explorations of the moral
dimensions of race and domination. I worry, however, that my analysis, focused as it is on my
concerns with the inscription and incorporation of ideology and imagination, might give the
mistaken impression that Umbanda is mainly about working out deep ambivalences about
national identity. It is not; Umbanda is mostly about healing and spirituality.The pretos velhos
are, first and foremost, spirits who help people with the problems of life. But questions about
being, and being Brazilian, are the warp woven into the pragmatic and mystical woof of
Umbanda spirits: it is not only the ethnographer's presence that elicits the telling stories about
preto velho: resistance and redemption

393
a FatherJoaquim. As they carry out their imminently practical work, the pretos velhos speak to
recurring, unsettled questions of Afro-Brazilianexperience and national identity. It is in this
domain of questioning and exploring and expressing that the pretos velhos become significant
for us, in a way that is complementary, although not identical, to their significance for
Umbandistas.
What is most strikingabout the pretos velhos from a sociological perspective is the variety of
attitudes they express toward the historical figure of the Afro-Brazilian.This is not surprising,
however, when we consider the history of Umbanda and the diversity of its membership.
Although Umbanda makes its firstappearance in the state of Rio de Janeiro in the early decades
of the 20th century, its roots go back several centuries, while its specific beliefs and practices
place it within a broader family of Afro-Brazilian and African diaspora religions, such as
Brazilian Candomble and Xang6, the Santeriaof Cuba, and Haitian Vodou.3 Umbanda differs
(at least in degree) from these traditional Africandiaspora religions in its eclectic incorporation
of non-African beliefs and practices. As described by the turn of the century journalist Paulo
Barreto(1976[1904]), Rio de Janeiro seems to have been a fertile ground for nurturinga new
religion combining African, Spiritualist,and Catholic elements. A large Afro-Brazilianpopulation, a significant portion only released from slavery by the abolition of 1888, continued to
practice African religions devoted to the worship of nature deities known as Orixas and
cultivated the spiritsof the dead. Practitionersfaced considerable police repression and ridicule
from "respectable" society. The Catholic Church in particularobjected to these religions, not
only because their followers traffickedin spirits(an abomination) and worshipped Africandeities
in a strategy of accommodation, but also because, adding insult to injury,they identified their
Orixas with Catholic saints and utilized Catholic icons and holy water in rituals. While little
could be done to satisfy the Church on those counts, some practitionerssensitive to the charges
of barbarismand the stigma of Afro-Brazilianidentity set out to "whiten"their religion, ridding
it of such practices as animal sacrifice, drumming,the use of liquor in ritual,and so forth (Brown
1994; Ortiz 1978). At the same time, they redefined themselves as followers of a new form of
Spiritualism.Spiritualismhad been introduced to Brazil from France in the 1860s and quickly
developed a vigorous following among members of the white elite (Barreto1976[1904]; Bastide
1978; Brown 1994; Camargo 1961). While Spiritualistscommuned with the shades of eminent
scientists, statesmen, physicians, philosophers, and other paragons of elite culture, Umbandistas
received the spirits of plantation slaves, Indians, backwoodsmen, streetwalkers, and
rogues-the ancestors of the common people. This new synthesis-a more or less "de-Africanized" Afro-Brazilianreligion, suffused with the doctrines of the French spiritualistAllen Kardec
and retaining imagery and ethical precepts from Catholicism-became known as Umbanda. It
proved successful. Umbanda grew beyond its original base of working-class and impoverished
Afro-Brazilians (whence it still finds the bulk of its membership), attracting a considerable
following among the white middle-class. By the 1990s researchers estimated its participantsat
30 million (Brown 1994:xviii).
Umbanda is actually far more diverse than my thumbnail sketch indicates. While Spiritualist
rhetoric and practices and Catholic symbols and sentiments permeate Umbanda, the extent to
which Umbandistas de-Africanize their religion varies considerably. Practitionersat the Spiritual
Center of FatherJoaquim explicitly emphasize the Africanness of their Umbanda; they proudly
claim that their Umbanda is organically linked to Angola, growing from a root literally planted
in the dirtfloor by FatherJoaquim. At FatherJoaquim's,the drums and traditional Afro-Brazilian
styles of dancing are part of a yearly cycle of blood sacrifices celebrating the Orixas and the
African heritage. Meanwhile, my consultants at the House of Saint Benedict, who with equal
pride point to the "purity"of their Umbanda, so completely reject any identification with
Afro-Brazilthat one of the pretos velhos I interviewed there told me that Umbanda originated
on the planet Cabal and was the religion of Atlantis. The only thing "African"about it, he told
394

me, is its imperfections; it seems that when Atlantis disintegrated, its survivors washed up on
the Guinea coast. They taught Umbanda to the "primitives"they encountered there, who of
course got it wrong. The work of enlightened spirits, he went on, is to correct the mistakes these
"simple"but good people inflicted on the true faith. The contrast between this story of Umbanda
from outer space and the Angolan root of Father Joaquim captures the range of Umbanda
attitudes about race-a diversity and ambivalence embodied in the "radically different"
representations of the pretos velhos spirits.
The multiplicity of interpretationsof pretos velhos-a diversity that figures prominently in this
article-is not only a reflection of Brazil's historical ambivalence about race (Degler 1986;
Skidmore 1974) but also a function of Umbanda's diverse following. The medium whose preto
velho told me that Umbanda comes from Cabal and only accidentally (and unfortunately, in
his opinion) by way of Africa is a middle-aged white man of means. His colleagues at the House
of Saint Benedict are practically all of upper-middle-class standing and include the wives of
ranking military officers and businessmen. My friend Ze, who tells of FatherJoaquim's heroic
struggle against oppression, is the son of Afro-Brazilianand Afro-Brazilian-indigenous parents;
his skin is black, he lives in a hillside shantytown, and he is acutely aware of race and class
inequality. I worked most intensively with four Umbanda groups. Two of the groups were
composed almost exclusively of white participants who were of middle-class or higher status.
A third group was located in Rio's sprawling Rocinha slum; its members all lived in that
neighborhood and included mulattos, black Afro-Brazilians,and whites. The fourth group, the
Spiritual Center of Father Joaquim, draws its members from nearby shantytowns, distant
working-class and poor neighborhoods, and the wealthy condominiums of the South Zone of
Rio. As with the Rocinha group, racial categories are almost equally represented. While
ethnographic facts such as these provide contexts for understanding strikingly different ways
Umbandistas construct their pretos velhos, I hasten to point out that they only partiallyexplain
the shapes taken by these symbols of the Afro-Brazilian. Ambivalence about race runs deep
within individuals regardless of their circumstances (Degler 1986), and the slave's dilemma
admits of multiple (admittedly tragic) solutions. My approach, therefore, is to employ these
contexts of class and race not as reductionist solutions but rather as clues in working through
the interpretive puzzle.
My interpretive strategy casts the pretos velhos as sign-vehicles through which Umbandistas
speak to and embody Brazilian dramas of race and power. I focus on stories about and
representations of pretos velhos in terms of three recurrent, interrelatedthemes. These include
the inscription of power on the torturedbody of the preto velho; the sexualization and gendering
of unequal power; and what I will call the quasi-Hegelian dialectic of master and slave and the
slave's struggle for a full humanity, which in the emic perspective takes the form of a dialectic
between rebellion and an explicitly Christianethos of spiritualtranscendence. I must firsttake
a moment to outline the lattertheme, as it is the key to the others in my analysis.
According to Hegel, the moral problem of the slave is that he has relinquished a measure of
his humanity by submittingto the master, instead of (as the master was willing to do, and as the
rebel FatherJoaquim did) risking his life in a bloody battle for dominance. He has chosen life
over freedom. There is a moral stigma attached to this choice, and it is not only Hegel who sees
the slave diminished: according to Roger Bastide, a French sociologist who spent most of his
professional life in Brazil grappling with the sociology of race and religion and who was in fact
an initiated member of an Afro-Brazilianreligion, Brazilian ideology elevates the Indian over
the African, because the Indigenous population-at least in folk theory-resisted and did not
submit to slavery (Bastide 1978). Indeed, some Umbandistas maintain that the spiritsof Indians
are more "advanced" or "evolved" than those of Afro-Brazilian slaves, and it is a fact that in
Umbanda spirit performance, as in Romantic Brazilian fiction, the Indian embodies physical
courage, pride, and nobility-precisely the qualities negated by enslavement. This suggests one

395
option for slaves seekingto transcendtheirdegradedcondition:they can rebel, at the riskof

theirlives;no matterthe outcome,theywill live or die freeand full, like FatherJoaquim.Aswe
shallsee, this is a recurrent,althoughnotthe mostcommon, resolutionof old-slavelives.
Anotheroption, diametricallyopposed in theorybut frequentlyentwinedwith rebellionin
fact,chooses life and finds redemptionin two ideologicalmoves associatedwith Christianity.
One of these is to assertthathumanvalue is an inherentcondition,with which all areequally
endowed and that cannot be obtainedor forfeitedthroughpower;the slave's humiliationis
as the master'sbrutalsin, irrelevant
to the slave'smoralcondition.Theothermove
reinterpreted
redefineslife, not as somethingthat one risksin a bloody strugglefor recognition-indeed,
withinthis ideology,thatconstitutespridefulsin-but ratheras an arenaforwork,suffering,and
demonstrationof the core value of humility.Thiswill be rewardedbeyond the grave in an
egalitarianutopiaepitomizinghow the worldshouldbe;while in the sphereof earthlyexistence
slaves realize their selfhood through labor (Hegel 1967:238-239) and learn moral truths
essential to humanity'sprogresstoward species realization.4Slaves do not transcendtheir
conditionthroughconfrontationbut by the selflessconstructionof a moralcommunity.This
option,which at a superficiallevel mightgive the old slavethe appearanceof an "UncleTom"
but actually involves its own formsof heroism,is far more common in the storiesof these
Umbandaspiritsthanthe bloodyrebellionsof FatherJoaquimandotherslikehim.Eitheroption
opens spaces for deep and variedexplorationsof dominationand the moralsignificanceof
possible responsesto it-explorations, it should go without saying, relevantnot only to the
folk-historical
contextsof spiritperformanceand narrative,butalso to the contemporaryissues
of powerfacing Umbandistas.
of slave days,these characterizations
of
Whatarethe themesof these dramasand narratives
victimization?FatherJoaquimexemplifiesone theme: rebellionand the price of resistance.
Pretosvelhos also expound on the sexualityof oppression;we will hearthe storiesof slave
women spiritswho were abused by lustfulmasters,with the testimonyof spiritswho were
deprivedof theiroffspringandof the rightto choose in mattersof romanticlove. The hypocrisy
of kindmastersis anothertheme, as is the dreadedpowerof sorcery.Butmost commonof all
is the theme of torture.I thus beginwiththe matterof physicaltorment.
the body inscribed
Inthe opening scene of Quilombo,the enormouslysuccessfulepic movie concerningthe
runawayslave communityof Palmares,BraziliandirectorCarlosDiegues presentsa scene of
terriblydarkcomedy. A Portuguesematron,the ladyof the manor,is seated in a sedanchair,
beingattendedby severalslaves,ina vastfieldof sugarcane.She is readingaloudfroma manual.
At herfeet, a slave is beingtorturedin a device knownas the tronco(trunk),which is actually
a kindof stocks, in this case with holes forthe neck and wrists.While anotherslave tightens
the device on the screamingvictim,ourreadertells us thatthe ringcan be tighteneduntilblood
spurtscopiouslyfromthe miscreant'smouth,inflictingconsiderablepain but doing no lasting
damageto the valuableworker.Atthis point,the slave screamsone lasttime beforegivingup
the ghost."Damnit! How could he do thisto me!"5 the mistresshisseswhen she realizesthat
her disciplinarytechnologyand instructionmanualhave just cost her a considerablecapital
investment.
Diegues's bitterjest points to one half of the curiouslyschizophrenicnationalview of
Brazilianslavery.On the one hand, there is the notionthat Brazilianslaverywas somehow
benign,full of cases of kindnessand affectionbetween masterand slave. On the otherhand,
there is a fascinationwith the crueltyof slavery,especially in regardto physicaltorture.The
opening scene of Quilombois one example of the imageryof slave torturethat permeates
Umbandistas'constructionsof theirpretosvelhos' lives;othersare thereto be seen in starkly
396

disturbing exhibits of torture instruments such as those at the Museum of the Negro or in
magazine commemorations that appeared in the 1988 centennial of emancipation day.6
I never interviewed a preto velho who did not suffertrauma. These experiences are inscribed
not only in discourse, but, more eloquently, on the body itself. Most pretos velhos exhibit
characteristic signs of crippling and old age; pretos velhos walk hunched over their canes, their
joints stiff, their movements labored and palsied. Many need to be helped to the little white
benches-said to be typical of the rustic furnishingsof the slave quarters-at which they sit to
consult their clients. They look at their interlocutors with watery eyes, suggesting the failing
vision of age; their discourse wanders, touched with senility, and their voices are often
high-pitched and raspy.
Their difficulties are not just a function of age. Their bodies are worn-out from hard labor,
torture, hunger, and accident. This is understood; most of the time, the physical signs stand as
a mute reproach for the suffering inflicted by the allegedly benevolent system of Brazilian
slavery. One preto velho with whom I worked, Rei Congo (Congo King),stuttered and suffered
strong facial tics, although his medium displayed neither symptom. Despite our close relationship, Congo King would always change the subject and suffer worse nervous symptoms when
I asked about this. Clients and other pretos velhos explained to me that Rei Congo King's
difficulties were the resultsof head injuries sufferedduring beatings meant to break the enslaved
king's spirit.
Another Congo King I know suffers convulsions when he prays over clients. His story is
essentially the same, and he, too, leaves it for others to tell. It seems that the stories of torture,
although inscribed on the body, evoke memories too bitter for speech, memories that might
upset the ethic of forgiveness and gentleness that predominate in preto velho representations.
A song that evokes these spirits alludes to the pain of memory:
vov6 nao quercascarade coco no terreiro
porquefaz lembraro tempono cativeiro
grandmother
doesn'tlikecoconutshellsin theterreiro
becauseit remindsherof the time in captivity
Another such song expresses an aversion to conflict, which all too often had disastrous
consequences for slaves:
La,no cruzeirodivino
e onde as almasvao passear
eles estao felizes
quandoas pessoascombinam
e choramquandoeles discordam
there,in the divinecruzeiro7

is wherethe soulsgo passingby
they arehappy
when peopleget along
andcrywhen they disagree
Physical violence is only one of the tortures inscribed by slavery on the pretos velhos. I recall
the feast at FatherJoaquim's in celebration of the pretos velhos, held every year on the weekend
nearest Emancipation Day on May 13. The high point of the celebration was the feast. To the
sound of a solemn African hymn to the supreme deity, Olorum, mediums brought great baskets
of food-fruits of all kinds, fish, corn, vegetables-into the terreiro, balancing the abundance
on their heads as they circled the open floor. Two huge pots, one of rice, the other of black
beans-each holding perhaps 20 gallons of food-were brought from the kitchen9 and set out
on straw mats on the floor. The senior mediums received their old-slave spirits and sat around
the enormous feast. Many seemed content, some were smiling, while many had tears running
down their faces. It was explained to me that the slaves came from an Africa where there had
always been plenty to eat. Perhapstheir worst pain in Brazilwas chronic hunger. So, every year,
Umbandistas prepare the pretos velhos a magnificent feast, a living reminder of their suffering
and its passage. That, my interlocutor went on, is why we do this and why the pretos velhos
smile and cry tears of joy and pain.
Afterthe pretos velhos consume the spiritualessence of the food, what remains is shared by
all present. Nearly 200 people attended this particularpreto velho festa (in 1991); most were

397
poor, the majority black and resident in nearby favelas (shantytowns). Many bore the marks of
malnutrition.These histories, it seems, are lived literally, not just figuratively.
While in Umbanda theory the pain embodied by the medium's performance comes from
outside-it is part of the spirit's life experience of terrorand tragedy-we can see, more clearly
in some cases than others, that the medium's own experience provides a model for the suffering
enacted through the preto velho. The collective memories constructed and evoked by spirit
performance coincide with mediums' personal, body memories. In strictlyphysical terms, none
are immune to illness and injury,especially as they reach middle age and later.Arthritis,varicose
veins, chronic backache, broken bones and sprains, menopause, the gradual waning of strength
and the accumulation of aches and pains: those real-life physical complaints are an ubiquitous
subject of conversation among my interlocutors; mediums can knowingly embody the pretos
velhos' pains because they have felt similar pains in their own bodies. A key dimension of preto
velho suffering-hunger-is a bodily memory shared by pretos velhos and all too many
contemporary Brazilians. Emotionally,the medium's own body memory is a reservoirof feelings
shared with the preto velho. The robust motherliness, which we will see is characteristic of the
old slave woman, is already partof most female mediums' experiences: if they are middle-aged
orolder, they have been mothers (and usually grandmothersas well). The pretavelha's (feminine
counterpart to the preto velho) maternal love-culturally styled as warm physicality and
indulgent, forgiving, sentimental concern-embodies feelings already sedimented within mediums' lives as women. Many Umbandistas are of Afro-Brazilianphenotype and have known
the sting of racial prejudice. My friendJorge,talking about his (Afro-Brazilian)wife and the preta
velha she receives, explained in these terms: both have felt the whip-Maria Redonda (the preta
velha) has experienced the lashings of leather whip; Deolinda (Jorge'swife) has experienced
the lashing of cruel words, slights, and betrayals by those who pretended not to be racist but
really were. The bodily metaphors accrue: the psychic pain of being silenced or, rather-as in
Deolinda's case, as a woman of color-the pain of not having someone to listen is graphically
materialized in Anastacia's muzzle, while the convulsions of the Congo Kings physically
represent the psychological suffering imposed by poverty and prejudice on their respective
mediums. Even those whose phenotype prevents them from sharing the preto velhos' racial
victimization still must know from bitterexperience what it means to be mistreated, humiliated,
bullied, and treated as less than a full person. These memories, often stored in the body since
childhood, resonate with the spiritthat is thought to come from outside. We might even say that
these memories constitute the emotional raw material from which Umbandistas form their
old-slave spirits. It is no wonder, then, that mediums display a markedly emotional attachment
to their old-slave spirits, and that these representations of history and national identity are so
often saturated with an affective immediacy that we might not expect of characterizations of
obscure personages from centuries ago.
Crippled, exhausted, broken by beatings and hunger, most pretos velhos exhibit the submissive, humble, forgiving personalities exemplified by the two Congo Kings. But it would be a
mistake to interpretthem as Uncle Toms, even were Uncle Tom not a damning indictment of
slavery, as he is in the original novel (Stowe 1852) if not in usage. Firstof all, the wounds
inscribed on their bodies constitute mute-but eloquent-accusations against the system; their
injuries lay bare the truth beneath the national myth of a more "benign" Brazilian institution.
Their names (Congo King,Joaquim from Angola), like the biographies of most pretos velhos and
the storyof the Abolition Day feast, allude to a precapitalist, pre-BrazilianAfrican utopia, against
which Brazilian historical (and by extension, contemporary) reality appears a purgatory,even
an inferno. Finally,the submissiveness of (some, not all) pretos velhos must be understood within
the deeply Catholic context of Umbanda ethos. The point is eloquently made by Roger Bastide:
And here againthe blacks have the advantageover the whites because spiritualizationis produced
primarilyby suffering,especiallyunjustsuffering.Theslavewas tortured,beaten,and cursed,likeJesus
398

Christ.Hisearthlyexistencewas a second Passion,a secondcrucifixion.Yethe does not answerwrong

withwrong.On the contraryit is he who, in the sweatof his brow,has createdall the wealthof Brazil,
the fortunesof his masters,the greatnessof his new homeland... a new mythemerges-the mythof
messianicsalvationthroughthe blacks,the mysteriousalchemythat makesgoodnessout of injustice.
[1978:309]
The indictment of slavery, the depiction by ruined bodies of its real horror as a second
crucifixion notwithstanding, and the stories and performances of pretos velhos in many cases
all critically depict and explore the ambivalences and ambiguities of the "benign" myth of
Brazilianslavery and race relations. The epic skeleton of a Congo King's story-born high and
free in Africa, broken by torture in Brazil, redeemed by a Christ-likemartyrdom,a history lived
according to the Hegelian paradigm of the slave's dilemma-or the equally black-and-white
tale of FatherJoaquim's resistance, gives way to more nuanced explorations of the complex,
ambiguous space of Brazilian conceptions of slavery. Salient in these more richly articulated
representations are such themes as betrayal, sexual exploitation, and ambivalent sexual
relations between master and slave, as well as temporary evasions of the inexorable logic of
domination by way of treacherous friendships between slave and master-in short, the themes
of a morallycontradictory social space as conceived through characters whom we can no longer
comfortably describe as stereotypes.
big house and slave quarters: the plantation as moral space

Before we get to these more richly articulated, novelesque representations, some background
is in order. The examples I will present-two preto velho life stories-are moral odysseys staged
within the context of the paradigmatic constructed space of Brazilian conceptions of slavery.
This is the domestic space of the plantation; it is divided between the master's dwelling, known
as the casa grande ("Big House"), and the slave quarters (senzala), the space that Umbanda
reconstructs when spirits such as Congo King sit on their little white benches consulting with
their clients. The Big House is the center of power, the fountain of terror-but it also represents
freedom from the crushing labor and privation of the field for those slaves privileged to enter
the household staff. It also represents a higher cultural station, its white "civilization" starkly
contrasting with the rustic senzala. The senzala, in its turn, is also an ambivalent space: on the
one hand it is a rude, hungry space where bodies recuperate from labor and torture; on the
other, the senzala represents the higher moral space-indeed it represents an ideal moral
community, a place suffused with the combined ethos of Afro-Braziland the Christian charity
engendered by the slave's "second passion, second crucifixion" (Bastide 1978:309). The two
preto velho biographies I present here explore this contradictory space of the plantation by way
of histories lived within and between its two poles: those of the senzala and the Big House.
Underlyingthe ambivalent space ofthe senzala is a theory accounting forthe allegedly benign
aspects of Brazilian slavery. Now thoroughly embedded in popular representations, the theory
emerged in scholarly discourse through the writings of the pioneering Brazilian social historian
Gilberto Freyre, first published in the 1930s. Freyrepleaded for "special" conditions that (he
claimed) had made Brazilian slavery less dehumanizing and cruel than its North American
counterpartand that had led to the development of a markedly less racist society. His argument
hinges on the incorporation of (mostly female) slaves into the Big House. Sharingphysical space
in itself worked to reduce social distance and foster human connections, as opposed to the
merely instrumental relationships of the fields; but far more significant, Freyretells us, was the
specific configurations of two roles played by Afro-Brazilianfemales in the Big House (Freyre
1956).
One of these was the nursemaid, who assumed the role of surrogate mother, forging deep
bonds of maternal affection with the master's offspring; the latter retained strong, lifelong

399
emotional attachments to, and identifications with, their Afro-Brazilian "mother"whom they
called aunt or grandmother-fictive kin terms that, by adding the distance of a sibling or
generational link, clearly imply that the maternal relationship is metaphorical and affective and
not biological (cf. Montero 1985:210-213). (In Umbanda, this figure and its attendant affective
complex is evoked by many female pretas velhas in dealing with clients who seek a warm,
forgiving, understanding "motherly" bosom of comfort and counsel for their problems.) In
addition to the nursemaid, the domestic staff provided other roles conducive to relatively
humanized, affectionate relations between master and slave; these included that of the elderly
manservant, retired from decades of loyal service, living out a pleasant dotage, puffing on his
pipe, sipping wine, and telling stories-a kind of Brazilian Uncle Remus not infrequently
encountered among Umbanda's pretos velhos.
The other Big House role for Afro-Brazilianwomen, one that Freyreargues led to a milder
form of slavery and weaker racism in latertimes, was that of sexual partner. The masters were
not racist to the point of exhibiting a sexual disdain for African women. In Freyre'swords, "the
Portuguese always [were] ... inclined to a voluptuous contact with the exotic woman"
(1956:185). Indeed, Freyre indicates they preferred slave women to their own wives, whose
"charms"were prematurely exhausted by climate, diet, sloth, and childbirth. This preference
was repeatedly cited by literaryartistsand intellectuals as a key factor in breaking down racism,
and is still part of popular-but no longer of intellectual-historical discourses. The argument
was that miscegenation blurred biological boundaries between races (an argument that assumes, incorrectly, that social constructions of race follow genetic facts). Second, more relevant
to our material, they contended that sexual relations, even within contexts of gross inequalities
of power, were essentially human and humanizing.10
The role of sexual object would seem to be decidedly absent from the representationsof and
by pretos velhos. Pretas velhas are invariably old, and most follow the model of the elderly
surrogate "mother."Paula Montero (1985) suggests a crucial motive behind this exclusion: the
preto velho, male or female, is a desexualized being, a resolution of fears and anxieties
concerning Afro-Braziliansexuality. The "aunt"or "grandmother,"the erstwhile nursemaid, is
an emotional, not a biological, "mother";her generative, sexual powers are sublimated to the
nurturancerole. The possibility of a genetic link is implicitlyobviated bythese constructions-as
if the "drop"of African blood were a stain, not a markof national identity. The male preto velho
is equally neutered; typically, he is old and broken-down-again, a sexually nonthreatening
figure. Likethe "grandmother"who did not want coconut shells that reminded her of the time
in captivity, Umbanda, Montero's argument suggests, does not want its pretos velhos to remind
it of the threatening, ambivalent issues of (especially) Afro-Braziliansexuality.
Montero's argument can be convincingly applied to many-perhaps most-representations
of pretos velhos. Even in cases where pretos velhos fall outside the desexualized stereotypes,
its insights are highly suggestive. They will prove useful as we look at two preto velho life stories
in which the issues of sexuality and power are highlighted as they play against the social space
of senzala and Big House.
the crucifixion of Father Geronimo

It is not difficult to relate the spirits of the Congo Kings and Father Joaquim to the life
circumstances of the mediums who receive them and the Umbandistas who seek their advice
and celebrate their martyrdom.The Congo Kingwho stuttersis the preto velho of a dark-skinned
man who has every reason to feel that his moral and intellectual qualities-symbolized, perhaps,
by Congo King'snoble ancestry-have not been rewarded because of his color. Mario, medium
for the Congo Kingwho prays convulsively over his clients, is an elderly man whose white skin
has done no more for his life chances than Congo King's royal lineage: Mario lives in a
400

shantytown, most of his teeth are missing, his eyes are failing, and his body is wracked by a life
of hard labor, disease, malnutrition, and psychic traumas and emotional sufferings of which I
heard hints but never an explicit account. As for their clients, most display the phenotypic signs
of a greater or lesser degree of Afro-Brazilian ancestry and, like the Congo Kings (albeit less
graphically), live the economic and social consequences of that fact.
It is not so easy to see how the personnel at the Temple of Prayersidentify with the sufferings
of their pretos velhos. With few exceptions, most who come there would be emically identified
as white and middle-class. Despite its official self-designation as a temple, it is actually a very
small group of Umbandistas who meet weekly in the apartment of its leader, a woman in her
late seventies. Dona Marta, as I will call her, makes no claim to the "drop of African blood"
found in the myth of Brazilian identity; she is white, the daughter of Portuguese immigrants.
When she receives her main preto velho, FatherGeronimo, she embodies many things-virility,
or a kind of rustic, innocent goodness (Dona Marta's imaginings about one of the many
stereotypes of Afro-Brazilians)-but she does not embody her own ancestry. Racial and
economic insults are not part of the experience lodged within her body; she does not suffer
those specific pains of racial oppression so fluently and palpably articulated by a Congo King's
language of stutterings and convulsions. That language brings forth a response from within;
Dona Marta'sFatherGeronimo, on the other hand, must mediate outward, bridgingthe distance
between middle-class white experience and the profound otherness of the Afro-Brazilian,while
making the latter speak in some way to the former. Many Umbandistas in Dona Marta's racial
and social position decline this challenge and resortto the stereotyped performances to which
Diana Brown (1994) alludes, cutting short the preto velho's potential as a vehicle for knowing
self and other. We would not expect mattersto be otherwise; unlike those persons of color and
poverty who seek the protection and heroic example of a FatherJoaquim, the white middle-class
does not experience the questions of race and identity as pressing issues. Others transcend these
narrow interests,fleshing out the stereotypes in nuanced explorations. Dona Marta,for example,
uses her considerable talents as a raconteur to construct a preto velho whose story at once
explores the moral dimensions of the suffering of others while metaphorically expressing her
(and her mostly white clients') experiences through those of FatherGeronimo.
Torture and privation are not inscribed on the body of the preto velho Father Ger6nimo.
Although Dona Martais a small woman, when she incorporates FatherGer6nimo the impression
is one of strength, physical robustness, virility, and a quick, cheerful mind.11 FatherGeronimo
does not limp, his voice is firm, and he gives no sign of age or trauma. That is because Father
Ger6nimo, although a slave, lived a charmed life between senzala and the Big House until that
fateful day when, in the prime of his life, he learned the truth underlying the appearances of
friendshipand sexuality in a regime of domination. Here follows the story of FatherGeronimo's
life and death.
Father Geronimo was born in the senzala of a large plantation in the northeastern state of
Bahia, nucleus of the slave-driven sugar economy. The state's chief city, Salvador, was once
the colonial capital and is today synonymous with Afro-Brazilianculture and religion. Young
Ger6nimo, of course, was never aware of these facts, nor even of the century in which he lived.
He had a bucolic, pleasant childhood that Brazilian novelists describe as fairly common for
plantation children of both races-before adolescence. With the onset of adolescence black
children became the objects of labor and sexual exploitation. Ger6nimo was fortunate to have
the master's son as his playmate. They bonded into a deep friendship; at an age when other
young slaves took up labor in the fields, Geronimo was given the far pleasanter offices of groom
in the stable and squire to his friend. When the latter became master, Ger6nimo's lot became
even happier: because he was unusually strong, robust, and blessed in appearance and
disposition, he was given the role of reprodutor(reproducer).That meant that he was assigned
to father children of the plantation's most desirable slave women, on the theory that these

401
offspring would fetch a premium at market. Ger6nimo, who does not count beyond his fingers,
could give no precise number, but told me that he had fathered many, many children. His life
as a reprodutor, he said, was ideal, except for two problems. First,it pained him greatly when
his children were sold away to other plantations, never to be seen again. Second, his friend and
master, who otherwise treated him like a brother, had denied him one thing. He could have all
the slave women he wanted-except for a certain Catherine, a Creole slave assigned to the Big
House as a servant. Catherine, who must have been some 20 years younger than Ger6nimo
and the master, had been brought up in the domestic circle. She had been taught to read, play
music, and dance in the Europeanstyle; in short, she was a young, white lady in dark skin.12It
seems that the master (now in early middle age, perhaps about 40, as best I can gather from
Ger6nimo's numberless descriptions) was enamored of Catherine; he intended to make her his
own and live out his declining years in her company. But as it happened, Geronimo, too, was
smitten by Catherine, and Catherine by him more than by the master. Discreet though they
were, the affairwas discovered. The master had his lifelong friendtied to the stocks and whipped
to death.
This story of Father Ger6nimo resonates and dissonates with Montero's observations about
preto velho sexuality and the Hegelian paradigm of the master-slave relationship in some
interesting ways. Most obvious, in regard to Montero's argument, is the fact that Father
Ger6nimo does not fit the stereotype of the weak, feminized old male slave. Butthere is a sense
in which his virility and his career confirm her larger point about the threat of Afro-Brazilian
sexuality in the construction of preto velho characters. According to Montero, the old slave is
desexualized to allay anxieties over the stereotypical sexual potency of Afro-Brazilians:the old
slave is nonthreatening because that slave is controlled. FatherGer6nimo's virilityis controlled;
indeed, it is an economic asset of his master. But when it exceeds the master'scontrol, when it
becomes threatening, FatherGeronimo is obliterated. His case is an exception that, even if does
not prove the rule, surely affords a deeper appreciation of its valid foundations.
The story asserts the primacy of a power structure relating master to slave over ideology and
sentiment. Brotherlylove gives way to a bloody reassertionof the master'sclaim to power when
Father Geronimo's transgression threatens his sexual prerogative. There is an understanding
here that good intentions and liberal ideas are ultimately feckless when fundamental inequalities
of power are in play. In the end FatherGer6nimo learns who the boss is and what that means.
But is there something more, or different, than a threatened sexual prerogative behind the
master's rage? I returnto the Hegelian idea that the master's sense of being fully human rests
on his moral victory over the slave: the slave declines the bloody contest and acknowledges
the master's authority and his own degraded condition. Benevolent, even affectionate though
the master may be toward Ger6nimo, his ultimate authority is tacitly recognized: Ger6nimo
owes his good life to him; the master is in control even of Ger6nimo's reproductive forces. The
crisis occurs when Ger6nimo bests his master in this sexual contest for recognition as a man-no
less primordiala venue than the bloody contest postulated by Hegel. (Thathe contests the master
without wishing to-caught out, as it were, as opposed to calling out a challenge-suggests the
novelesque dimension of this representation:unlike FatherJoaquim, Geronimo is no epic hero,
only a man caught up in the self-revealing twists of his own character and of fate.) It is then that
the master revertsto archetypalform, although in a show of violence that ultimatelyfails because
it can signify overwhelming power but cannot restore honor.'3
Again in line with Montero's argument, the preto velhos, whether or not desexualized, are
tragically alienated from their reproductive forces. The nursemaid is a mother-but to someone
else's children. Father Geronimo is a genitor-but not a father, his name and his intentions
notwithstanding. His children are sold away from him. His is a sexuality cut off from itself,
fragmented by the institutionof slavery. The master's prohibition concerning Catherine further
atomizes what should be whole, by denying Geronimo a unified sexual and romantic expres-
402

sion, while allowing him (with one exception) unlimited genital freedom in emotionally
unmarked (but economically productive) liaisons.
The fact that the medium who receives FatherGeronimo and most of the persons who seek
his advice and intervention are white suggests that his story and character lend themselves to
questions other than race. Indeed, Father Geronimo is a versatile figure, an apt metaphor for a
great variety of situations. For example, when Mario, fed up with his dead-end job, wanted to
quit and devote himself full-time to the computer consulting business he and a partner had
launched some months before, FatherGer6nimo pointed to his own experience as a caution: I
too was over-confidentonce and leaped without looking.... Be careful;your desires can
destroyyou.... And what about this friend,yourpartner?Youtrusthim now, but look what
happenedto my friendwhen love (whichis like money)got in the way.... Infact,mostof the
timepretosvelhosaremoreconcernedwithpracticalproblemsthanwiththe moraldimensions
of Brazilianhistory;the historyis invokedas a way of talkingaboutmorality.
FatherGer6nimo's exuberant sexuality and its tragic consequences are perhaps more relevant
to his role as a counselor than is his ethnicity. Inthe largely white, female context of the Temple
of Prayers,sexism, not racism, is often at the root of client's complaints. Here FatherGer6nimo
can be seen as reinforcing certain hegemonic structures. Forexample, women frequently seek
his help in dealing with adulterous husbands, an endemic problem in this macho society. Father
Ger6nimo-who, like pretos velhos generally, favors accommodation in resolving domestic
disputes-plays on the cultural stereotype of men as naturallypromiscuous; there is a sense in
which the thoroughly good, beloved Father Ger6nimo's happy-go-lucky promiscuity is not so
different than that of the straying husband. Better to forgive and accept this aspect of men's
character than to precipitate the violent rupture of a long-term relationship, as the master did
at the whipping post. At the same time, Father Ger6nimo's tragic end reinforces the message
that illicit sexual expression, naturalfor men, is dangerous for certain types of people-for slaves,
of course, but by metaphorical extension, for women. LikeAfro-Brazilians,women are at once
structuralinferiorsand culturally constructed as possessors of a potentially intractable, dangerous sexuality. Women's sexuality, again like that of Afro-Brazilianmen, is a threat, and when
its expression escapes patriarchalcontrol, husbands or lovers are liable to turn on their erstwhile
intimate friends with the fury displayed by FatherGer6nimo's boyhood companion. Paradoxically, by standing as a graphic example of the consequences of transgression, FatherGer6nimo
reinforces the structuresof domination against which his life story speaks so eloquently.
Anastscia and Catherine: distaff modes of resistance and redemption

So farwe have focused on explorations of the moral dimensions of slavery (and more), carried
out through the vehicles of male characters. Congo King,FathersJoaquim and Geronimo-these
are male characters, whose odysseys signify within culturally given understandings of masculinity, as, indeed, the quasi-Hegelian paradigm of bloody conflict and mastery is thoroughly
engendered. What of resistance, redemption, suffering, the slave experience, as explored
throughthe charactersof Umbanda's old slave women? What are the moral parametersexplored
and expressed through female biographies and embodiments of Afro-Brazilianslavery?
I found this question more difficult to investigate than the struggles of male pretos velhos.
Female spiritstended to speak of captivity in vague terms-difficult times, privations, hard labor,
cruel overseers, and masters-and with rare exceptions produced neither the dramatic signs of
a Congo King,which elicited (fromothers) histories of agony and torture, northe cohesive moral
tales of FathersJoaquim and Geronimo. In part this can be attributedto chance; relatively few
people are gifted storytellers, and this holds as true for Umbanda mediums and spirits as for the
remainder of the population. I was fortunate to have found a Father Geronimo. But I believe
that there is more to the reticence of the women spirits, and it has to do with the gendering of

403
domination. Where Hegel would have the bloody battle of master and slave as the archetypal
scene, that is clearly a male avenue. For women, the salient field of resistance and submission
was sexual; the rape, not the beating, the primordialinsult. Itis understandablethat there would
be a greater reluctance to let either the anthropologist or the coconut shells of the song evoke
these memories. Sexual violation leaves the victim with a culturally constituted stain of guilt
and shame, all the more silencing when the would-be listener is, as I am, a man. That, at least,
is my theory, and I find tenuous support for it in two stories of slave women-both of which,
significantly enough, came to me by way of male interlocutors.
The first I need outline only briefly. In the course of my interviews with Congo King, he
directed me to the legend of the slave woman Anastacia-a story that, he said, captured the
essential truth of preto velho experience. The legend, which has numerous variants, is widely
disseminated through Umbanda literature and the mass media (including a miniseries that I
viewed in the company of Umbanda friends). It begins in Africa with the birth of a blue-eyed
girl, variously identified as a princess and as an emissary, who is chosen by the deities. It is her
mission to bring the spiritual force of African religion to the New World. She is captured by
slave-raiders and sold to a plantation in Brazil. Extraordinarilybeautiful, she becomes the object
of her master's lust. He brings her into domestic service, the more effectively to seduce her. She
steadfastly refuses his advances and is banished to the senzala. In one version, the rejected
owner allows her to be raped by his white visitors and sons, producing numerous blue-eyed
offspring;this is perhaps symbolic of the miscegenational Brazilian people. In another variant,
she somehow succeeds in remainingchaste. In both cases, her refusalto submit, combined with
the jealous intrigues by the master'swife against her, lead the overseer to place an iron muzzle
over the lips that refused to kiss those of her tormentors (cf. Teixeira n.d.:13) She lives out her
years in the senzala, serving the spiritualand moral needs of the slave quarters, and, using the
powers vested in her by the deities, she cures illnesses. She contracts gangrene fromthe muzzle.
As she lies dying, the master's child takes ill, and, as a last resort, is brought to Anastacia. The
parents beg her forgiveness. With her last strength, Anastacia cures the child. She gives up the
ghost, and the master and his wife repent of their cruelty and seek redemption for their sins.
The legend of Anastacia is, as Congo King indicated, a paradigmatictale of preto velho ethos
and experience. As a legend (like FatherJoaquim), Anastacia does not exhibit the ambiguous
humanity of a FatherGer6nimo; she instead emblazons the moral lessons to epic clarity. There
is brutality and defiance, the latter eventually sublimated toward the nurturance of a moral,
quasi-Christian community represented by the senzala. Anastacia's body suffers mortification
but she forgives her tormentors,who are (as she is) redeemed through her Christ-likemartyrdom.
What is most striking about Anastacia is the sexualization of her struggle-the pursuit of the
master, the emphasis on her physical beauty, the jealousy of the wife, and the rapes and the
threat of rape. The values expressed in this paradigmatic tale are at once crucially engendered
and boldly highlighted.
Anastacia is larger-than-life-pure good in an evil world-but preto velho spiritsare always
drawn on a human scale. Even FatherJoaquim, hero that he is, describes himself as a sinner
like the rest of us; indeed, I heard on numerous occasions that one feels comfortable talking to
the pretos velhos because they understand human frailty from their own experiences. In the
following biographical sketch of GrandmotherCatherine, which I pieced together from numerous conversations with the spirit, her medium, and individuals who have consulted with her
over the years, many elements famiIiarto us from Anastacia's legend appear, but they are woven
around the story of a woman caught up in moral weakness.
Grandmother Catherine, like FatherGer6nimo, is a regular visitor at the Temple of Prayers.
Her medium, a middle-class white man, is the nephew of Father Ger6nimo's medium; his
Grandmother Catherine, like his aunt's Father Ger6nimo, is a rather complex character who
resonates with the romantic literaturethat both mediums read as parochial school students.
404

There are interesting structural parallels: Father Geronimo, a youngish-to-middle-aged man,

works through the body of an elderly woman; GrandmotherCatherine, who is very old indeed,
is received by a man in his late thirties. In both cases, the juxtaposition of spirit and medium
gender identities has strategic implications for the practical work of consulting: Ger6nimo's
masculinity mediates between women and theirtroublesome husbands; femininity, on the other
hand, constitutes a bridge between Catherine's male medium and the women who seek her
counsel, effacing what would otherwise be constraining impediments of shame and embarrassment in discussing intimate matters with a man. Her medium's relative youth-he is younger
than about half the people who consult her-is compensated by the wisdom of Catherine'sold
age; on the other hand, Geronimo, being young, has a more empathic grasp of the passions of
younger clients than would a preto velho of the age of his medium.
More important for our exegesis, Grandmother Catherine's story constitutes a discourse on
the moral dimensions of feminine sexuality as seen from a frankly conservative perspective. In
that regard it provides a telling complement and contrast to Father Ger6nimo's object lesson
concerning the consequences of transgression.
Grandmother Catherine (who was not the same Catherine with whom FatherGer6nimo fell
fatally in love) was born in the senzala but, in a gender-specific variation on Ger6nimo's story,
befriended the daughter of the master and was chosen, thanks to her appearance and manners,
to serve in the Big House as the young woman's maidservant. LikeFatherGer6nimo's Catherine,
this woman, too, learned music, dancing, and reading-in short, all the elite social skills. But
this Catherine was not protected by the master'sjealous infatuation;from adolescence, the white
boys and men of the household pursued her and she eventually became something of a
courtesan, entertaining visiting gentry. Catherine reported mixed emotions at this time of her
life. On the one hand, she had internalized the values appropriate to a young woman raised,
as she was, in an aristocratic, white, Catholic environment. Her ideal was a faithful marriage
resulting in numerous legitimate offspring-hardly a realistic goal, given her circumstances. On
the other hand, Grandmother Catherine described her youthful self as vain, coquettish, and
enamored of luxury. She felt both guilt and pleasure at the fact that her beauty and charm were
affording her a lifestyle far more exciting than if she had continued as a mere maidservant.
Eventually,of course, time and lascivious excess took their toll on Catherine's charms, and she
was banished to the senzala to live out her days. Itwas initially a terrible blow to be taken away
from a life of parties, gifts, and liaisons, but Catherine eventually found new purpose in life,
teaching her fellow slaves to read, attending to their ailments, and mediating on their behalf
with the master. She rediscovered her Catholic sexual morality as well, although by then it was
too late for her to have children. She lived out the rest of her long life in the senzala-as she
put it, she spent two years serving her people there for every year she had previously spent in
sinful dissipation. These-her later years-were spiritually rich, materially impoverished, and
physically barren, but she was surrounded by her surrogate children of the senzala.
Catherine's story directs our attention to the centrality of gender in the dialectic of master and
slave. According to Hegel, the slave falls because he will not risk his life in a fight to the death
with his master. This is clearly a male-centered metaphor and theory of power. It is a man who
submits and a man who vanquishes another through physical force or by threatening to use it.
But when men dominate women in slavery, the idiom of power is that of sexual possession, a
point richly developed by Gilberto Freyre. Unlike Hegel's slave, who (understandably)falls to
fear and is thus diminished but not guilty, however, Catherine is complicit in her own moral
degradation: she told me herself that she had enjoyed her earlier life with its lovers and luxuries,
and she speculated that her sterility-she wanted children-might have been a sign from God,
punishing and marking her guilt. Congo King, FatherJoaquim, and FatherGeronimo achieved
redemptions from-or, in FatherJoaquim'scase, rebellion against-domination. Catherine also
found redemption from sin, a redemption specifically tied to deep-seated cultural conceptions

405
of female sexuality. Iwill returnto this but would firstlike to point out the relationshipof agency,
gender, and preto velho-ness suggested by Catherine's story.
Confining our attention to the time before she returnedto the senzala, Catherine's life story
displays a strikingabsence of agency. Things happen to her: she is born attractiveand intelligent;
she is for that reason taken fromthe slave quartersand raised to have all the social graces; she
is desired bymen who reward her favors; age diminishes her charms and finally she is returned
to the senzala. (The agency she does exercise-coquetry, taking lovers, and so forth-largely
falls under the category of sin.) Congo King, who falls within Montero's category of the
"feminized" preto velho, is similarlya passive victim: slave traders capture him, his master beats
him, and so forth. Anastacia, likewise, is a victim, albeit one who is not defeated. Contrasttheir
patience with the masculine FatherJoaquim and FatherGer6nimo, both of whom are the agents
in their own tragedies and redemptions: FatherJoaquim rebels; Father Ger6nimo "steals"the
object of his master's desire.
It is in the moral dimension that Catherine possesses agency. Catherine is not a passive victim
of moral turpitude; indeed, she is a willing partnerin her descent from virtue, unlike Anastacia,
who remains chaste (even though violated) until the end. She indulges her vanity; she craves
luxury and ease; she excels at the game; and she enjoys her debauchery. Butthere is something
else within Catherine, certain moral concerns, that lead her to a tortuous crisis, a dark night of
guilt and suffering. When her master banishes her to the senzala, she is ready to take up the
cross of charity. With two years of good works for every one spent in dissipation and sin, she
redeems herself in the construction of the utopian moral community. It is Catherine who lays
herself low and lifts herself high. Catherine, like Congo King, another "neuter"or "feminized"
spirit,finds agency along with redemption in the senzala, where, instead of rebelling, she works
toward the construction of a moral community where forgiveness, egalitarianism, and charity
reign.
(There is something disturbing about this split between objective helplessness and moral
agency, a suggestion that the practice of men dominating other men [and women] is somehow
beyond control, like a fact of human nature; while at the same time the real, eternal rewards
can be obtained by focusing energy within-in this case on the community contained within
the walls of the senzala. One would hope that this split applied to the specific instance of
imagining slavery and not to contemporary reality-but, given the evolution of Braziliansociety
over the last several decades, perhaps the recognition by slaves of their objective helplessness
accurately mirrorsthe condition of their modern descendants.)
It is strikingthat pretasvelhas are almost always called "grandmother"and, less often, "aunt,"
but never, in my experience, "mother."They are invariably beyond childbearing age (Brown
1994; cf. Montero 1985). Pretos velhos, on the other hand, are very often called "father,"and
many-although only a minority-are, like Ger6nimo, in their vigorous middle years. The
implication is that female sexuality, like male rebellion, threatens the moral foundations of the
Christian utopia and must be extinguished by age as a condition of redemption, just as male
rebellion is extinguished by bloody death and violent beatings such as those endured by Congo
King.And, indeed, GrandmotherCatherine offers a revealing tale of the moral dimension of the
life cycle and female sexuality. Catherine is born innocent and dies redeemed. Her moral
descent begins in adolescence and ends with menopause, understood as the desexualization
of the body. Female sexuality, it seems, poses a moral threatto its vehicle-certainly not a novel
notion; in fact, the dangerous intractabilityof female sexuality is a recurrenttheme in Brazilian
culture. Perhaps it is not entirely her fault that she succumbs to this powerful force. The fact that
she does succumb places the stain of sin on her-while more or less equivalent behavior leaves
FatherGer6nimo morally untouched. In any event, menopause and then old age coincide with
her quest for redemption, suggesting that the female body, once activated, must close before
the spiritual road can open.
406

It is significant that Catherine's encounters are sterile. Catherine's sterility can be compared
and contrasted with FatherGeronimo's numerous progeny. In both cases, slavery is considered
in terms of sexuality cut off from itself, compartmentalized, and turned to wrongful purposes.
Father Ger6nimo generates offspring who cannot be his (indeed, his fertility is a factor in
production) and indulges in pleasures that cannot involve love; but, at least at the level of
biology, the natural condition of fertility is maintained. With Catherine the cut is more
fundamental. Her sexuality is radically unnatural, sterile. Unlike Father Ger6nimo, whose
behavior does not requireyears of redemptive labor-after all, he is a man, exercising his natural
urges-Catherine's promiscuity is marked as sinful. It involves a self-interested refusal of
feminine virtues and responsibility, an indulgence in dangerously heightened sensuality. By
prevailing standards, FatherGer6nimo is blameless. He boasts of his exploits. Catherine suffers
guilt, shame, and privation. She must redeem herself. And yet, when she speaks of her luxurious
years, there is a delighted, playful, pleasured innocence about it all, a gay vibrancy that subverts
any simple reading of this as a morality play. Instead, it is more like a playing with: a revealing,
speculative working out of such themes as the life process, prettiness, images of plantation life,
fine touches of elegance, luscious decadence, and selfless, serene old age.
the dark one

Whether they conduct themselves toward a bloody confrontation with the master or instead
chose the religious route to redemption, preto velho spiritsembrace a Christianethic that Hegel
identified as "slave religion." Even such stalwarts as FatherJoaquim advise their clients to be
forgiving, to set aside arrogance and anger, to serve others and the Lord,to live virtuously, and
to seek peaceful accommodation with power.14 Pretos velhos, critical though they may be in
their exploration of domination, ultimately work toward a strengthening and restoration of the
social fabric.
But the preto velho does not exhaust the possible responses to domination. There is another
type of Afro-Brazilian caught in slavery, one who radically departs from the Christian ethic.
Among the most compelling and enduring of the models of the Afro-Brazilian,the sorcerer, or
feiticeiro is a recurrent figure in Brazilian literature and folklore (e.g. Alencar 198711871];
Macedo 1869; cf. Sayers 1956). The feiticeiro is the Afro-Brazilianman or woman, the slave,
who commands the deadly power of African magic. During the slavery era masters are said to
have relied on the herbal medicines and knowledge of these sorcerers, but, at the same time,
lived in fear of them because the feiticeiros could translate their resentment into the deadly
magic of poisons and spells.
Renato Ortiz (1978) lamented the feiticeiro as a vanished species in A Morte Branca do
Feiticeiro Negro (The White Death of the Black Sorcerer). According to Ortiz, Umbanda, in
adapting itself to the values of the dominant white society (embranquecimento, or whitening,
as he calls it), has pulled the fangs from the deadly black sorcerer, leaving the nonthreatening
preto velho as the denatured image of Blackness. Butthe feiticeiro remains a living presence in
Umbanda. As Ortiz points out, the Black sorcerer is invoked in the black-magic double of
Umbanda known as Quimbanda;15indeed, much of the charitable work of the good spirits of
Umbanda consists of the discovery and undoing of evil spells performed against clients by the
shadowy practitionersand feiticeiro spiritsof Quimbanda. Moreover, the feiticeiro has not been
entirely banished from Umbanda itself. In one of the groups with which. I worked, special
sessions were held after midnight in which the spirits of powerful feiticeiros were called upon
to perform magic that was considered too "heavy"-and, I would add, too morally ambiguous,
given that the these magic performances addressed desperate conflicts in which the client's
victory entailed more or less dire consequences for the other party-for the good spiritsof pretos
velhos. Even with those Umbanda groups (the majority,in my sample) who would not consider

407
entertaining these spirits,the image of the feiticeiro remains a shadowy, threatening presence
within the otherwise humble, nonthreatening preto velho. A song that invokes the spirit of the
preta velha, known simply as "the Bahian Woman," tells us:
O! Bahiana,O Bahiana,
ela e velha feiticeira
(bis)
com sua toalhade la,
dela sorriam;
com sua pembana mao
ela Ihesdesafia.
O Bahianwoman,O Bahianwoman
she is an old sorceress
(bis)
with herwool towel
they madefunof her
[but]with herchalkin herhand
she defiesthem
(The wool towel that they laughed at was-according to one informant-the old woman's
woolly, white hair. Pemba is an instrumentof preto velho magic; it is the chalk that the spirits
use to draw their identifyingpontos riscados'6-and to make the designs that focus, direct, and
shape sorcery.)
Another song, again directed toward an apparently nonthreatening, humble old preta velha
assumes the voice of a client seeking the spirit'scounsel. The supplicant admits being frightened
of the old woman, because she knows that in the smoke of the preta velha's corncob pipe her
secrets will be revealed. The sorcerer within draws a line beyond which the preto velho's
patience and benevolence give way to potent magic. Even good-hearted, cheerful Father
Ger6nimo can be dangerous when pushed too far. Indeed, in one confrontation a woman
consulted FatherGeronimo several times concerning her brother,whose drinkingand carousing
were spoiling domestic tranquillity, to say nothing of constituting a real threat to his own
existence. The woman wanted the brother to stay at home, off the street, and to turn his life
around. Father Ger6nimo went through the usual preto velho procedures-good advice,
offerings, prayers-all to no avail. Finally, faced with the woman's growing doubts, the young
man's increasingly dangerous lifestyle, and his own impatience, Father Geronimo gave the
woman an option: he would do what is known as a "strong"work of magic, but she should be
prepared for the consequences. A few weeks later, the woman reported that her brother was
bedridden, the result of some accident, but that it was really a blessing in that he had seen the
light and was enjoying (enforced) sobriety. Some remarked that FatherGer6nimo was indeed
a feiticeiro with whom one had better not play games.
conclusion
The preto velho explores, at times deeply, the existential dimensions of an imagined, historical
moment that lasted nearly four centuries. Everyone of these stories depicts a working-out of the
fundamental existential dilemma of the slave: the loss or denial of full humanity under a regime
of domination. Domination is inscribed on the body as physical marksof chronic sufferingand
acute trauma. The crippling effects of labor and hunger, and the sadism written in the idiom of
convulsions and brain damage shape the preto velho's body, producing the posture of an
individual worn by accusation. Collective memory is embodied through these performances
and is given voice through narrativesthat speak to betrayal, sexual violation, and utter cruelty.
One could read such experiences as a warning about the consequences of challenging injustice
and their humility as an endorsement of submission. But such a reading would be misleading
because it ignores a root paradigm of the Umbanda ethos. Most Umbandistas identify themselves as Catholic and are all steeped in the Catholic traditions and Christianethos of Brazilian
culture. The mortification of the pretos velhos is thus to be understood in the context of
transcendent martyrdomepitomized firstby Christand then by the Catholic saints. I have quoted
Diana Brown's allusion to a "radicallydifferent interpretation"of the preto velho, one that she
associates with Afro-Brazilianconsciousness. She puts the matter very effectively when she
408

writes that "these figures here demonstrate the heroic ability not only to survive but to transcend
their experience of slavery, retain their humanity intact, and still be able to care and to give to
others despite the horrors of their oppression" (1994:71). That seems to be the interpretation
given to the preto velho in the four Umbanda groups with which I work intensively; what Marx
and Engels, as well as Nietzsche, characterized as a slave's survival ideology of submission and
escapism, is understood by participants as transcendence and spiritual and moral reclamation.
And then there is the feiticeiro's path. The feiticeiro does not openly resist, like the heroic
FatherJoaquim or Anastacia. The sorcerer does not forswear anger and vengeance in favor of
an ethic of Christian love but instead chooses to struggle, surreptitiouslyand bitterly, using the
weapons of deadly magic. Uncommon though these characters are in Umbanda, their presence,
usually repressed but always available within the personalities of many pretos velhos, lends
threatening edge, anger, ambivalence, and complexity to the kindly old slaves.
It could be that the strongly contestatory tone of some preto velho discourse is an emerging
trend. Diana Brown did her research in the late 1960s; Roger Bastide's research on Umbanda
dates from before 1960. Dramatic political and social changes have since occurred. The
mid-1980s saw the end of two decades of military rule that had silenced dissent (especially
around the time of Brown's research) as brutally as the iron muzzle of Anastacia. Equally
important, Afro-Brazilian political and cultural consciousness has increased dramatically,
bringing with it a critique of history and a valorization of Africa and of Braziliansof color. There
are now movies and miniseries condemning slavery, glorifying Africa and the Orixas, and
depicting the resistance of runaways and old sorcerers in a properly heroic light.
Of course, the light has penetrated unevenly and, in some cases, been almost entirely blocked
by thick curtains of conservative ideology. At the House of Saint Benedict, where an old slave
told me that Umbanda came from the planet Cabal and was corrupted by the "primitive"
Africans who brought it to Brazil, the preto velho embodies racist mythology. Another old slave
there, who goes by the name of Mane, told me that being brought to Brazilwas a blessing; hard
though his slave-life was, it brought him to Christ,taught him the rudiments of civilization, and
rescued his soul from the consequences of the unspeakable sins commonly practiced in his
homeland. The medium who receives this spirit is an elderly woman whose political and racial
ideology is breathtakinglyreactionary; she once explained the devastating poverty in Africa as
a consequence of Karma-Africans are poor, she said, because spiritually speaking, they are
little more evolved than apes. Even for the House of Saint Benedict, her attitude was extreme-but then I recall near-unanimous agreement when this same leader contrasted the
saintly, humble demeanor of the old slaves with the "bad manners" and "immorality"of
contemporary Afro-Brazilians.
The starkcontrast between the messages embodied in Mane and FatherJoaquim suggest that
old-slave spiritscan be understood in terms of the racial and class positions of participants.The
man who receives FatherJoaquim tells me that his own great grandmotherwas a slave; the man
who first told me the story of Father Joaquim's heroic resistance is a politically aware
Afro-Brazilianwho lives in a shantytown. During visits with the family of Jorge, the man who
made sure I got the point about the Feast of the Old Slaves, the conversation inevitably turned
to the issue of racism;against the myth of racial democracy, his wife Deolinda and their daughter
Vera cited example afterexample of how they personally experienced mistreatmentdue to "this
dark skin." Deolinda's preta velha spirit in turn pointedly protests against the humiliations she
suffered at the hands of supposedly benign owners. At the opposite pole of identification with
Afro-Brazilianexperience, I have already suggested that for Umbandistas, who are white and
middle class, these spirits provide metaphors for speaking, not so much about race and
Afro-Brazilianness(which is after all not of central concern to them), but about other issues.
But there is a danger of reducing a very complex, ambivalent picture to a reduced sketch of
interest and ideology. The correlation of spirit and class-race locations of mediums is to some

409
extentoverriddenby the ambivalence,complexity,and multiplicityof Umbandistas'attitudes

towardtheirown (andothers')ethnicities.While FatherJoaquim'sbiographyis one of heroic
resistance,he counselshumilityand forgiveness.The ambivalenceis not only withina given
spirit;a mediummay receiveseveralpretovelho spirits,drawnfromdifferentand sometimes
opposed perspectives.The woman who receivesthe threateningold sorceressBahianaalso
receives,in herlittleUmbandacenteron a mudstreetwindingthroughan impoverishedhillside
a warm,nonthreatening
spiritwho counsels
slum,the old slavewomanBrazilianGrandmother,
forgiveness,humility,and kindness. While her FatherGeronimospirit is only tenuously
connectedto the issuesof contemporaryracism,Irecallan instancewhen DonaMarta-middle
class and of Portugueseancestry-received the spiritof a little Afro-Brazilian
boy named
party"forthechildspirits.Verytimid,
Rog6rio.Rogeriocame atthe end of the annual"birthday
Rog6rioeyed the candyandcake hungrily,too shy to askforany. Unlikeall otherspiritsI met,
Rogeriohadbeendeceasedonly a shorttime. Homelessas longas he couldremember,Rogerio
representedthe untoldthousandsof children abandonedto the streetsof Braziliancities.
Betweenmouthfulsof cake and swallows of a soft drink,Rog6riotold of his shortlife on the
street,stealingandbeggingforfood,goinghungry,beingbeatenbypolicemenandshopkeepers,
and finallybeingkilledby the deathsquad"becauseI am black,poor,and havenowhereto go
and no one to care for me."Rogerioengages contemporaryracism,and his messagecontests
prevailingmiddle-classattitudesthat constructstreetchildrenas victimizerspreyingon lawabidingcitizensratherthanas the victimsof racismand deathsquads.
Andyet Rogerioconteststhe statusquo throughthe white, middle-classbodyof a decidedly
conservativewomanwhose experienceand identitycould not be moredistantfromthatof the
streetchild:this is not like Deolinda'sold slave woman, symbolizingher medium'spersonal
experienceof racialprejudice.Two explanations,not at all mutuallyexclusive,come to mind.
One is thatthese spirits,as we have alreadyseen, providemetaphorsfortalkingaboutall kinds
of otherconcerns;it couldwell be, as I believe,thatRogerio'stragedyrepresentsthis medium's
own experienceof abandonmentand abuse. Rogeriorepresentsa deeplywoundedinnerchild.
Anotherexplanation,one thatleadsus beyondthe closed circleof psychologicalinterpretation, is suggestedin one chapterof JaniceBoddy'sinsightfulstudy(1989)of Zarpossessionin
the Sudan.In the Zar,women closed withinthe circles of domesticand village life receive
(amongothers)the spiritsof outsiders,including"loose"women traderswho periodicallyvisit
the village and behave scandalouslyby local lights, colonial officials,and those Westerners-expatriate businessmen,researchers,charactersportrayedin media-who are an increasing presencein the local imagination.These outsidersare decidedlyOther,butthey are also
importantplayersin these villagers'social universe.The Zar allows women to bridgethe
distance, to imaginethese others,to "know"them throughbodily performance.Something
similarhappensin Umbanda.Thekindlyold slave,the sorcerer,the heroicrebel,the murdered
streeturchin:these maybe one's ancestorsand countrymen,but, in a realsense, they are also
as alien as it is possibleto be. Likethe outsidersof the Zar,they are not-self,yet they embody
self-identity;
throughthem,formsof Brazilianbeing-intimate andyetdistancedby historyand
(sometimes)race-are embodiedas collective memory.Deeply identifiedwith the self-after
all, these spiritsenterthe body and speak and act throughit-they, likethe Zarspirits,act as
vehicles for imagining,exploring,and knowingthe Other.17
notes
Thefield researchon which this articleis basedwas supportedby a Fulbright-Hays
Acknowledgments.
Researchgrant.I thankRichardAdams,JamesBrow,JohnBurdick,LisaHale,James
DoctoralDissertation
Hutchinson,Dan Lefkowitz,LouiseMeintjes,GregUrban,MariahWade, participantsin the 1995 AAA
panel "RethinkingRace, Class, Sexuality,and Identityin ContemporaryBrazil,"and the anonymous
410

reviewers of American Ethnologist for their comments on earlier versions. Although their comments have
contributed to this article's strengths, they are in no way responsible for its eventual shortcomings.
1. Names of persons and places are changed in the interests of privacy.
2. The very same story of FatherJoaquim can be found in the P. Carlos de Araujo'sjournalistic-novelistic
account of Afro-Brazilianreligion Macumba, As Forcas Vivas da Natureza (Macumba: The Living forces of
Nature) published in 1989.
3. Umbanda and the other Afro-Brazilian religions are the subjects of an extensive, varied and rich
literature.Even a sketchy discussion would be beyond the scope of this article and could not do justice to
it. Among the works that have most informed my perspective are the following: Augras 1983; Bastide 1978,
1983; Birman 1980, 1988; Brown 1994; Camargo 1961; Carneiro 1967, 1991; Cavalcanti 1983; Concone
1987; DaMatta 1981, 1986, 1991; Dantas 1982; Fry 1982; Furuya 1994; Herskovits 1937; Landes 1947;
Leacock 1972; Lima1977; Luz and Lapassade1972; Montero 1985; Ortiz 1978; Prandi 1991; Pressel 1973,
1974; Ribeiro 1982; dos Santos 1984; Seiblitz 1979; Simpson 1978; Trindade 1985; Velho 1975; Verger
1981; and Wafer 1991.
4. Bastide offers an apposite observation in this regard:
And here again the blacks have the advantage over the whites because spiritualization is produced
primarilyby suffering, especially unjust suffering.The slave was tortured, beaten, and cursed, like Jesus
Christ. His earthly existence was a second Passion, a second crucifixion. Yet he does not answer wrong
with wrong. On the contrary it is he who, in the sweat of his brow, has created all the wealth of Brazil,
the fortunes of his masters, the greatness of his new homeland ... a new myth emerges-the myth of
messianic salvation through the blacks, the mysterious alchemy that makes goodness out of injustice.
[1978:309]
Bastide goes on to juxtapose the two options-revolt on the one hand, Christian "martyrdom"on the
other-with Brazilian(and Umbanda) ideology constructing the latteras the "glorificationof the oppressed,
redeeming race" (1978:309).
5. I am reconstructingthis line from my memory of the film, which I saw several years ago, so, while this
is not a literal translation, it catches the sense of the utterance.
6. In his film, Diegues depicts several themes and characters that appear in Umbanda performance and
discourse. There are the cruel tortures, already mentioned. Palmares is presented as a recreation of the
African utopia: a community where justice, traditionalculture, dignity, and plenty reign. There is a character
in the movie (played by the veteran black actor Grande Otelo) who epitomizes the wise, grandfatherlypreto
velho, with his cackling voice, love of children, and herbal knowledge. The movie is a story of resistance
and its consequences, culminating in the final defeat of the community by slave hunters. All this is familiar
to anyone who has spent much time with the pretos velhos.
7. The cruzeiro (crossing) is the place in a cemetery where the main east-west and north-south paths
cross. It is a place of great moment in Umbanda, because it brings together the crossroads (where trickster
spirits known as Exus lurk) and the cemetery. (For discussions of these ambivalent spirits see Hale 1994;
Trindade 1985; Wafer 1991)
8. Terreiroliterally means a clearing. The word is used to designate places of worship in Afro-Brazilian
religion; it alludes to the idea that ritualswere traditionallyheld out of doors-in clearings, or terreiros(from
terraor earth). Although many rituals still take place out of doors, a terreiro is understood to be a building
specifically consecrated to ritual purposes.
9. Beans in Brazil are a condensed gastronomic symbol of fundamental importance. The national dish,
feijoada, consists of beans cooked with dried, salted meat, including jerked beef, and pork ears, snouts, tails,
and fatback; it is served with greens and toasted manioc flour. It is said that feijoada was invented by the
slaves, who used the castoff parts of pigs and the ubiquitous charqui (dried beef) to fortify and flavor their
monotonous diet of beans, rice, and manioc. The practice of eating greens came from Africa, while manioc
was an indigenous Brazilian addition.
The anthropologist Peter Fry(1982:47-53) once wrote an insightful essay concerning the appropriation
of Afro-Brazilianculture in the formation of a Brazilian national identity. Partof his argument concerns the
respective social significance of feijoada and "soul food" (including red beans and rice) in the United States.
He notes that while feijoada has become a national dish, served every Saturdayin practically every restaurant
in Brazil, the consumption of soul food is limited almost entirely to individuals, mostly African American,
from poor, southern rural backgrounds. It would seem that what in the United States is a sign of cultural
difference is taken in Brazil as a metaphor of inclusion and cultural mixing-admittedly one that masks real
inequality and exclusion.
Brazilian anthropologist Roberto DaMattatells us that feijoada is a quintessential Brazilian food symbol
for another reason: in eating feijoada, one sensuously mixes foods of very different textures, colors, and
tastes, in a kind of spicy, satisfyinggustatorymiscegenation and so metaphorically expresses and participates
in a key cultural value. Da Matta contrasts this with typical North American fare, with its stark segregation
of meat, vegetable, potato, and sauce (DaMatta 1986:49-64).
10. Freyre was not entirely taken in by his own argument, as The Masters and the Slaves makes clear.
He saw brutality, rape, sadism, the passive receptivity of women with no choice, and the inevitable moral
infection of all caught up in a corrupting sexuality of absolute power and abject powerlessness.
11. It is not only an impression for the audience; when Dona Marta receives this spirit, her bodily
experience is that of a strong, virile man. Dona Marta-or rather, FatherGer6nimo, because Dona Marta is

411
not consciously present at those times-describes himself as feeling "good," "strong,""full of force," even
"a little horny" sometimes. The spirit is, literally, incorporated, given body. FatherGer6nimo told me on
occasion that I would someday receive the spiritof his brother Joaquim (not the same FatherJoaquim who
led the revolt; there are relatively few names shared out among thousands of Umbanda spirits). He would
tell me that he could see Joaquim leaning on me and that I could feel Joaquim's presence in the swelling of
(his) big muscles beneath my skin, the stiffness in my knee (Joaquim'sknee had been injured when he was
gored by a black bull), and in the restless energy of this powerful young preto velho. Those sensations, he
said, were physical manifestationsof Joaquim'sspirit-Joaquim's memories of how his body had felt. Other
spirits feel very different; for instance, the legs of Dona Marta's female Bedouin spirit ache from her
exhausting treks through the desert.
12. This basic theme of the slave girl raised in the big house is common, not only in Umbanda. An early
literaryexample is A EscravaIsaura,by BernardoGuimaraes (1988[1875]). The mulatto Isaura,interestingly
enough, was not only culturally but also phenotypically white.
13. There is a fundamental paradox in the Hegelian master's claim for recognition. In defeating the slave
and thereby gaining his recognition, the master produces a being who is not fully human, and whose
recognition is therefore not satisfying. The failure in question here is different:the contest between master
and slave cannot prove the master'ssuperior courage because the contest is fought on grossly unequal terms.
14. In many cases to which I was privy, these power-figures turned out to be bosses, business associates,
relatives, and spouses.
15. Ortiz tells us that Quimbanda is an imaginary construction that was created by Umbanda to deflect
criticism from itself;when critics accused Umbanda of black magic, human sacrifices, and other evil acts,
Umbandistas would attributethese crimes to Quimbanda. Quimbanda thus representedthe epitome of evil,
a model against which Umbanda defined itself (Ortiz 1978:133; see also Brown 1994). Ortiz is probably
right about the origin of Quimbanda in the Umbanda imaginary, but, like other figments of the collective
imagination, it seems to have taken on a life of its own. Now one can find books describing the performance
of Quimbanda rites and advertisements for Quimbanda practitioners (e.g., Molina 1977, n.d.; Silva 1964;
Teixeira 1973). In fact, during my fieldwork I interviewed a young graduate student from the Federal
University who claimed to be a quimbandeiro.
16. Pontos riscados, literally "scratched points," are chalk designs that Umbanda make as identifying
signatures. The designs are basically pictographs and are composed of such signs as the moon, stars, bows
and arrows, swords, crosses, and so forth
17. But they do not always do so accurately or authentically; witness the case of Mane.
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414


Resistence, Redemptionn, and Engendered Representations of Slavery PDF

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preto velho: Resistance, Redemption, and Engendered Representations of Slavery in a

Brazilian Possession-Trance Religion

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preto velho: resistance, redemption,and engendered

LINDSAY LAUREN HALE-University of Texas, Austin

ThePretosVelhospresenta strikingcontrastto theCaboclos[theproudspiritsof BrazilianIndians].These

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preto velho: resistance and redemption

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preto velho: resistance and redemption

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option for slaves seekingto transcendtheirdegradedcondition:they can rebel, at the riskof

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there,in the divinecruzeiro7

preto velho: resistance and redemption

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Christ.Hisearthlyexistencewas a second Passion,a secondcrucifixion.Yethe does not answerwrong

big house and slave quarters: the plantation as moral space

preto velho: resistance and redemption

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the crucifixion of Father Geronimo

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preto velho: resistance and redemption

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Anastscia and Catherine: distaff modes of resistance and redemption

preto velho: resistance and redemption

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There are interesting structural parallels: Father Geronimo, a youngish-to-middle-aged man,

preto velho: resistance and redemption

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the dark one

preto velho: resistance and redemption

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preto velho: resistance and redemption

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extentoverriddenby the ambivalence,complexity,and multiplicityof Umbandistas'attitudes

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preto velho: resistance and redemption

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Cavalcanti, Maria LauraViveiros de Castro

preto velho: resistance and redemption

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