Atlantic Travelers and the Nagoization of Afro-Brazilian Religion

A cosmopolitan, hybrid, and anti-essentialist Modern Atlantic should overcome the classic opposition between Africa conceived as the origin, the past and tradition, and America as the Diaspora, the present and modernity. In looking at the flux and reflux of African freedmen and their descendants between Bahia (Brazil) and West Africa during the nineteenth century, this paper proposes a notion of Atlantic circularity. To discuss this theme, the text presents newly uncovered data tracing the life history of one of the most famous African priestesses of Candomblé, from her early experiences as a slave in Bahia in the 1820s to her 1837 return to Africa and her subsequent rise to wealth and power once back in Bahia during the second half of the century. The paper examines the impact that the transatlantic network established by her and other Yoruba religious experts and travelers had on the formation and inner dynamic of Bahian Candomblé. While recent literature has rightly underscored the post-slave-trade Yoruba influences in Bahia, deconstructing the image of Candomblé as a mere survival of ancient traditions brought by slaves, the new data suggests these traveler-priests were operating several decades earlier than has been previously suspected. On the other hand, while recognizing the world of change deriving from the transnational flows of this black elite, a shift to a more thoroughly Atlantic approach should also emphasize the importance of local micro-politics and their influences on the individuals who moved through this multitude of overlapping cultural circuits.