Page 46 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Chapter 1

“Don’t Ask Questions, Just Observe!”

Boundary Politics in

Bahian Candomblé

Mattijs van de Port

When I got stuck in a traffic jam in São Gonçalo do Retiro, a peripheral
neighborhood in Salvador in which the terreiro (temple) called Ilê Axé Opô
Afonjá is situated, I began to realize that my assumptions about the upcom-
ing event had been wrong. From what I had read in the announcement, the
Semana Cultural da Herança Africana na Bahia (Cultural Week of the
African Heritage in Bahia), was going to be yet another one of these rather
boring meetings of Salvador’s Candomblé elite, who organize a never end-
ing cycle of (often highly self-congratulatory) seminars, debates, fairs, and
homenagems. However, judging from what I saw through the window of
my car things might well be different this time. Hundreds of cars were
trying to make it to the opening night of the Cultural Week, impatiently
honking their horns, clutching up ill-lit roads, and floodlighting the street
vendors who ran from one car to the next to sell their cashew nuts and beer
and silicone bra strings. Policemen were all around, trying to control the
traffic and monitor the crowds, who, in a steady stream, entered the central
square of the terreiro’s compound.
Yes, the Candomblé elite was there. I recognized some of the dread-
1
locked activists from UNEGRO and Casa de Oxumaré, a Candomblé
house with an activist profile; the chique ladies with their expensive afro-
print dresses and turbans who always seem to be around; just as these men
who—whatever the color of their skin—dress up in Nigerian fashion, with