Essay on the legacy of slavery in Brazil
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Chapter7Johnson.pdf
7. Jorge Amado and Friends Randal Johnson
I am a man who throughout his life has struggled to defend the rights of blacks, poor people, and Candomblé communities. My lifetime struggle against racism is a struggle that directly supports black religion.
—Jorge Amado (Raillard 1990, 82) The Brazilian modernist movement of the 1920s involved, in addition to aesthetic renewal, a
concern with the nation’s cultural identity, culminating in 1928 with Mário de Andrade’s novel
Macunaíma, which reflects on the possibility of an original Brazilian civilization, and Oswald de
Andrade’s “Anthropophagic Manifesto,” which offered a radical proposal for the interaction of
Brazilian and foreign cultures. At the same time, the idea that Brazilian society was constituted
through the convergence of three races was commonplace as writers began to reflect, perhaps
timidly, on the legacy of slavery and the African contribution to Brazilian culture.
The process of self-exploration intensified in the 1930s with the publication of numerous
books and essays in which intellectuals of different political persuasions attempted to
understand, reinterpret, or reconceptualize Brazil’s social and cultural formation. In Casa grande
e senzala (The Masters and the Slaves, 1933), Gilberto Freyre undertook a broad analysis of the
historical development of Brazilian society by casting racial mixing in a positive light (in stark
contrast to nineteenth-century conceptions of it as a form of mongrelization), while at the same
time discussing the positive contributions of European, indigenous, and African cultures to
Brazil’s cultural formation. Various other studies from the period also examined the contribution
of black culture to Brazilian society, in what literary scholar Antônio Dimas has referred to as a
“veritable collective desire for a national self-inquisition”: O negro brasileiro (Artur Ramos,
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1934), Religiões negras (Édison Carneiro, 1936), Negros bantos (Édison Carneiro, 1937), and
Senzala e macumba (Jacy Rego Barros, 1938), among others (Dimas 2008, 339–40).
Such studies obviously held significance for Bahia and its capital, Salvador, long
considered the most African city in Brazil (fig. 7.1). Numerous scholars, including several
contributors to this volume, have written of the transformation, in the first half of the twentieth
century, of Bahia’s identity as the nation’s cultural bedrock, particularly because of the positive
valuation of racial mixing and the recognition of the importance of Afro-descendants in the state,
and particularly in Salvador and the area surrounding the Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bay of All
Saints), known as the Reconcâvo. This transformation eventually led to the elaboration of a
distinctive and hegemonic Afro-Bahian cultural identity, although it did not lead to significant
changes in the economic or political structure.1 As Edward Telles has noted, Salvador is a city
“where blacks are granted nearly free run of the cultural realm, and where the culture of Africa is
celebrated, apparently in exchange for relinquishing claims to economic and political power so
that it can continue to be monopolized by a small white elite” (Telles 2004, 213; cited in Dunn
2007, 851).
Despite—or perhaps because of—such social contradictions, Bahia’s image has often
tended to be idealized or romanticized. This is evident in such characterizations of the city as a
“Black Rome,” an expression apparently coined by Candomblé priestess Mãe Aninha2 in the
mid-1930s (Carneiro and Ferraz 1940, 7 n.1; Ickes 2013a, 2; Romo 2010, 119); in official
tourism promotion campaigns (e.g., “Sorria, Está na Bahia,” or “Smile, You’re in Bahia”); and in
many popular songs, works of art and literature, films, and television programs. One might think,
in this regard, of a number of songs composed by non-Bahian Ary Barroso starting in the early
1930s, all of which offer a very romantic view of the city, its culture, and its people: “Bahia”
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(1931), “Nega baiana” (1931), “Terra de iaiá” (1931), “No tabuleiro da baiana” (1936), “Quando
penso na Bahia” (1937), “Na Baixa do Sapateiro” (1938), and “Os quindins de iaiá” (1941).
These last two songs were used to represent Bahia musically in Disney’s animated film The
Three Caballeros (1944).3
Many people and institutions—ranging from the Candomblé community and Carnaval
organizations to the tourism industry, from political leaders to local and non-local artists and
intellectuals, and from certain sectors of both the white elite and the black working class—
contributed to this process of identity formation.4 Four artists stand out above all others (figs.
7.2–7.4, and see figs. 7.6, 7.8), however, for having expressed and solidified what may well be
seen as the dominant image that many people have of Bahia today: novelist Jorge Amado
(1912–2001), singer/song-writer Dorival Caymmi (1914–2008), fine artist Carybé (Héctor Julio
Páride Bernabó, 1911–1997), and anthropologist/photographer Pierre Verger (1902–1996). As
Roger Sansi has written of Carybé and Verger, to which we can clearly add Amado and Caymmi,
“[Their] influence…on the image of Bahia is incommensurable. Their portraits of popular life in
Bahia’s streets and of Candomblé almost became a trademark of the city” (Sansi 2007, 131).
This situation is filled with paradoxes. One of the paradoxes is that although the identity
in question is clearly Afro-Bahian, only one of the four—Caymmi—was arguably black (official
records list him as “pardo,” or “brown”), and two others—Carybé and Verger—were not even
Brazilian by birth, much less Bahian. The former was born in Argentina, the latter in France.
Carybé established residence in Salvador in 1950; Verger in 1946. Both lived much of their adult
lives in the city, and Carybé became naturalized Brazilian citizen in 1957. Regarding this
paradox, it might be helpful to keep in mind a distinction that art historian Roberto Conduru
makes in his book, Pérolas negras, when he writes that the term “Afro-Brazilian art” has not
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always been characterized as that produced exclusively by Afro-descendants. Conduru gives as
examples precisely Carybé and Verger, along German-born Karl Heinz Hansen (1915–1978),
who is known as Hansen Bahia, all of whom explored Afro-Brazilian themes in their artistic
production (Conduru 2013, 16), as did Amado and Caymmi.
The importance of these artists—and close friends—is evident in their official
recognition as icons of a dominant view of Bahian identity. For example, in 1953 the municipal
government of Salvador named a plaza in the neighborhood of Itapuã in honor of Dorival
Caymmi (see fig. 7.4). The homage was no doubt made in Itapuã rather than another area of the
city because in 1948 he had written a song that has since become a classic of Brazilian popular
music, “Saudades de Itapuã” (roughly, “Missing Itapuã”), but it was rendered because of his
contributions toward the creation and dissemination of a positive image of Bahia in the rest of
the country (Stella Caymmi 2001, 295–99).
One might also think of Salvador’s historic center, Pelourinho, which is the setting of
numerous novels by Jorge Amado and the subject of many paintings by Carybé and photographs
by Verger. Since its inauguration in 1987, the Fundaçâo Casa de Jorge Amado (Jorge Amado
Foundation) has been housed at the top of the Largo do Pelourinho in an iconic eighteenth-
century Baroque building (casarão), which had been designated part of the state’s historical
patrimony (fig. 7.5). The Foundation’s opening was attended by Brazil’s president at the time,
José Sarney, and other state and national dignitaries and celebrities (Coelho 2012). In addition to
the privileged position of the Foundation, two of Pelourinho’s main internal plazas are named for
characters in Amado’s novels: Pedro Arcanjo, from Tenda dos milagres (Tent of Miracles, 1968)
and Tereza Batista, from Tereza Batista, cansada de guerra (Tereza Batista, Home from the
Wars, 1972). In 2014, Amado’s Rio Vermelho residence, where he had lived since the early
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1960s with his long-time spouse, writer Zélia Gattai (1916–2008), became a museum with the
support of the municipal government of Salvador and the federal Ministry of Culture, among
other public and private institutions.5 Furthermore, in 2016 the municipal government of
Salvador and Brazil’s army collaborated to open, in historical forts (São Diogo and Santa Maria)
on either side of famed Porto da Barra Beach, cultural centers in honor of Carybé and Pierre
Verger. At night, images of their work are projected on the sides of the respective forts
(“Salvador ganha,” 2016).
These four artists came together at different moments in time based on their enthusiasm
for and defense of Afro-Brazilian culture and Bahia’s popular classes. Amado was a pioneer,
starting in the 1930s with the publication of a series of novels about Bahia’s black population,
notably Jubiabá (1935), Mar morto (Sea of Death, 1936), and Capitães de areia (Captains of the
Sands, 1937). By the time he published the novels, however, he was living in Rio de Janeiro, the
country’s center of artistic legitimation, and he did not publish another literary work set in
Salvador until the late 1950s. He only again established residence in the city in the early 1960s.
Dorival Caymmi also began his career in the mid-1930s, but it only took off after he too
established residence in Rio de Janeiro and began to perform on Radio Tupi (Stella Caymmi,
121–22). His first recorded songs date from 1939, when he released, with Carmen Miranda, “O
que é que a baiana tem” (see Christopher Dunn and Heather Shirey, this volume) and, on Side B,
“A preta do acarajé,” both of which allude to Candomblé, even though they do not directly
mention the religion.
Pierre Verger and Carybé arrived in Salvador later—the former in 1946, the latter in
1950—both with a solid body of work behind them (fig. 7.6). Verger had traveled extensively
between 1932 and 1946, supporting himself through his photography. Even after establishing
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residence in Salvador, he did not cease traveling, particularly to Africa, where he explored
cultural, social, and religious connections between Africa and Brazil.6 Carybé, in turn, had
studied in Rio de Janeiro’s Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in the late 1920s and had worked as a
graphic designer and illustrator for numerous publications in Argentina and Brazil, while at the
same time pursuing his own artistic career. He had first visited Salvador in 1938, and in 1950,
Bahia’s secretary of education, Anísio Teixeira, invited him to produce murals for the Centro
Educacional Carneiro Ribeiro in Salvador, where he established permanent residence that would
last until his death.
Amado, Caymmi, Carybé, and Verger all documented Bahia’s people and culture in their
own way and respective artistic mediums. Taken together, they left a remarkable body of work
which, as Roberto Conduru suggests in chapter 14 of this volume, has at its core an exaltation of
Bahia. They did not, however, celebrate Bahia’s white elite; rather, they exalted the common
people, popular culture, and Afro-Brazilian religion.
Although each is an important artist in his own right, Jorge Amado would seem to be the
central figure of the group. Three novels he published in the mid-1930s—Jubiabá (see fig. 7.9),
Mar morto, and Capitães da areia—already contain many of the elements that would later come
to constitute the Bahian identity the artists represented and defended. His tourist guide, Bahia de
Todos os Santos (1945)—written during a brief period of residence in Salvador, when his literary
writing tended to focus on struggles for power in the cacao region of southern Bahia and his
political militancy was intense—offers a view of the city that is both romanticized and political,
talking about the magic as well as the hardship of this black city: “In its lyrical mystery and its
tragic poverty, truth and legend become one” (Amado 1945, 16; see Romo’s chapter, this
volume, for a brief discussion of this work).
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In some cases, however, Amado’s influence is more direct than the elaboration of certain
themes. Some of Caymmi’s early “canções praieiras” (songs of the sea) were inspired by
Amado’s 1936 novel, Mar morto, and the novelist is credited with contributing to the lyrics of “É
doce morrer no mar” (1941), whose title is taken directly from the novel, as well as a number of
other Caymmi songs and artistic projects. One is the LP Canto de amor à Bahia e quatro
acalantos de Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (1958), with lyrics by Amado, music by Caymmi, and a
photograph by Pierre Verger on the cover (fig. 7.7; Stella Caymmi, 368–69).
It is well known that both Carybé and Verger became interested in visiting Bahia after
reading Jubiabá (1935), and Carybé served as illustrator for several of Amado’s books.7 In many
ways, one can say that Caymmi, Carybé, and Verger all reproduce, each in his own fashion, their
own visions of the cultural universe that Amado describes in these and later works. In other
words, what occurred was a convergence of distinct artistic practices, developed in different
professional trajectories, around a common set of themes related to the people and cultures of
Bahia.
Central to these themes is Candomblé. This is not surprising, since all four were Obás of
Xangô at the Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá Candomblé house and were either active in one or more
temples or engaged to different degrees in the defense of Afro-Brazilian religion and culture (fig.
7.8).8 In this sense, their association with Candomblé goes far beyond artistic elaboration or
documentation. Jorge Amado, for example, wrote the article of the 1946 constitution that
guaranteed religious freedom in the country. Verger undertook extensive research into orixás and
Candomblé on both sides of the Atlantic and became a babalaô, or diviner of Ifá prophecies, for
which he earned the name “Fátúmbí” (meaning “one who was reborn for Ifá”) He was involved
in numerous Candomblé temples in Salvador, including Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá, the Terreiro do
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Gantois, and Ilê Axé Opô Aganju. At Opô Afonjá, Carybé served as an Obá, an Ogã,9 and
president of the house’s civil society, the Sociedade Cruz Santa. He also “became something of
the right arm of Mãe Stella from the administrative standpoint” (Fundação Pierre Verger 2012,
183).
Both Verger and Carybé documented multiple aspects of Candomblé, the former through
his photography, which includes hundreds of photographs of Bahian Candomblé, among them
iconic images of Mãe Senhora10 and Iemanjá. Verger’s publications on African and Afro-
Brazilian religion are also extensive. Carybé worked in diverse media in his artistic
representations of a broad range of Candomblé figures and activities. Most notable are perhaps
the 27 wood panels of the orixás (1967) held by the Museu Afro-Brasileiro in Salvador and the
book Iconografia dos deuses africanos no Candomblé da Bahia (1980), which brings together
128 watercolors resulting from 40 years of research and observation (see Conduru, this volume,
for a discussion of the work of Carybé).
As indicated above, Dorival Caymmi’s “É doce morrer no mar” and other songs were
inspired by—and its lyrics largely taken from—Amado’s Mar morto. The song evokes the
goddess of the sea, Iemanjá, in its final verses:11
Saveiro partiu de noite foi Madrugada não voltou O marinheiro bonito Sereia do mar levou É doce morrer... (bis) Nas ondas verdes do mar meu bem Ele se foi afogar Fez sua cama de noivo No colo de Iemanjá É doce morrer... (bis)
The sloop left at night And did not return at dawn The handsome sailor A siren took away It’s sweet to die at sea (bis) In the green waves of the sea, my love He went away to drown He made his wedding bed In the arms of Iemanjá It’s sweet to die at sea (bis)
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Caymmi refers to Iemanjá in numerous other songs: “Rainha do mar” (1939),12 “Promessa de
pescador” (1939), “O bem do mar” (1954), “Quem vem pra beira do mar” (1954), “Dois de
Fevereiro” (1957), “Sargaço Mar” (1985), and “Caminhos do mar” (2001), among others. Close
to both the Terreiro do Gantois and the Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá Candomblé houses, he also wrote
songs in honor of their leaders, Mãe Menininha13 (“Oração de Mãe Menininha,” 1972) and Mãe
Stella de Oxossi (“Mãe Stella,” 1994),14 as well as in honor of the orixá Xangô, “Canto de Obá”
(with Jorge Amado, 1972).15 As indicated above, it was Jorge Amado who inspired all three of
these artists in different ways.
Jorge Amado
Jorge Amado is one of Brazil’s most popular and widely translated novelists. With a career
lasting almost seventy years, his novels have been translated into forty-nine languages in fifty-
five countries. From the early 1930s until at least the late 1950s, he was affiliated with the
Brazilian Communist Party. Because of his political activism, he was arrested several times
(1936, 1937, 1942, 1945), had books burned in a public square in Salvador (1937), and lived in
exile outside of Brazil on several occasions (1941–1945: Argentina and Uruguay; 1948–1950:
Paris; 1951–1952: Prague). In 1945, during a brief period of party legality, he was elected federal
deputy (from São Paulo) on the Communist Party slate. It was in this capacity, and as a
participant of the 1946 Constituent Assembly, that he wrote the constitutional amendment that
guaranteed religious freedom in the country, an amendment specifically designed to protect the
Candomblé community (Amado 2001, 73–74). Recent reports indicate that he was monitored by
both the CIA (starting in the 1940s) and the Brazilian government (1936–1985) because of his
political activities (Sperb 2017). Despite his political inclinations, Amado once described himself
as a “baiano romântico e sensual” (a romantic and sensual Bahian), and there is no doubt that the
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image he came to transmit of Bahia could, in many respects, be characterized in these terms as
well.16 The self-description was not entirely evident in his work until the late 1950s, when a shift
in focus became apparent and when, shortly thereafter, he again established residence in
Salvador after many years in Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere.
Born in 1912 on a farm near the southern Bahian city of Itabuna, Amado first went to
Salvador in 1922 to study at a boarding school. Near the end of the decade, he formed part of a
literary/intellectual group known as the “Academia dos rebeldes” (Academy of Rebels, 1928–
1933), led by symbolist poet Pinheiro Viegas. In addition to Amado, the group was important in
the intellectual development of such figures as poet Sosígenes Costa (1901–1968), poet and
novelist Áydano Couto Ferraz (1914–1985), cultural critic and political militant Dias da Costa
(1907–1979), film critic Walter da Silveira (1910–1970), novelist Clóvis Amorim (1912–1970),
and ethnographer Édison Carneiro (1912–1972), who would play an important role in the
legitimation of Afro-Bahian religion and culture in the 1930s and 1940s through his writings.17
According to Amado, it was at that time—the late 1920s and early 1930s—that he began to be
interested in Bahian popular culture, including Candomblé temples, where he witnessed the
discrimination and violence the adherents suffered: “sacred places invaded and destroyed,
iyalorixás and babalorixás arrested, beaten, humiliated.… Such misery and the greatness of the
Bahian people are the raw material of my novels.” (2001, 71–72). This early involvement led
him to participate in the second Afro-Brazilian Congress, organized by Édison Carneiro in
Salvador in 1937 (Amado 2001, 235).
A precocious writer, in 1931, at the age of nineteen, Amado published his first novel, O
país do Carnaval (The Country of Carnaval), a fictional portrait of his intellectual generation,
but his focus would shift drastically in his subsequent novels. In the early 1930s, Brazil’s
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intellectual/artistic field was extremely polarized, and writers felt pressured to choose between
extremes on the left or the right. Amado opted for the left, initiating an affiliation with the
Brazilian Communist Party that would last at least until the 1950s.
Amado’s political turn is evident in his literary production. In the preface to his second
novel, Cacau (1933), which deals with workers on a cacao plantation in southern Bahia, Amado
asks, “Could this be a proletarian novel?” His third novel, Suor (Sweat, 1934), offers a portrait of
the sordid, degrading life in a tenement house in Salvador’s historical district (Pelourinho). None
of these early novels portends the image of Salvador that Amado would develop later in his
career. As already noted, that image began to be developed in his next three novels, Jubiabá,
Mar morto, and Capitães da areia. After a very brief discussion of the contribution of these
works to the construction of a certain image of Bahia, I will focus on two later novels—Tenda
dos milagres and O sumiço da santa (1988; The War of the Saints, 1993)—that offer a somewhat
different, but clearly related, view, one that continues to give centrality to Candomblé, but with a
much stronger defense of racial and cultural miscegenation. This later view is also arguably more
romantic, idealized, and humorous than that of his novels from the 1930s and 1940s.
The three novels in question have a number of things in common. First, they all deal with
the lower classes. Jubiabá is the story of Antônio Balduíno (fig. 7.9), one of the first black
heroes in Brazilian literature, and his trajectory from a boy living in a favela, the Morro do Capa
Negro,18 through numerous situations and occupations—street kid, boxer, worker on a
Recôncavo tobacco plantation, stevedore—to becoming the leader of a dockworkers’ strike in
Salvador. In Mar morto, Amado turns to sailors and captains of small boats in the Bay of All
Saints in a tale that is much more lyrical than political. Capitães de areia, in turn, focuses on a
group of street children who live along the wharfs of Salvador in a kind of primitive
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communism, begging or stealing during the day, sharing what they obtained at night. In tune
with Amado’s political inclinations at the time, the group’s leader, Pedro Bala, like Antônio
Balduíno in Jubiabá, comes to lead a strike on the city’s docks. All three of the novels reveal
solidarity with the lower classes, who survive in the face of hardship, marginalization, and
exploitation.
The second thing they have in common is that they all involve Candomblé. The title
character of Jubiabá is a pai de santo, or Candomblé priest:
Jubiabá always carried a bunch of herbs that rustled in the wind, and muttered
words in the African Nagô dialect. He would come along the street talking to
himself and blessing people.…
On certain nights, the sound of strange music would come from Jubiabá’s
house. Antônio Balduíno would toss and turn relentlessly on his straw mat. The
music seemed to be calling him with rhythmic drumbeats, sounds of dancing,
mysterious voices. (Amado [1935] 1984, 13)
Right from the beginning of the novel, Amado imbues the city of Salvador with air of
mystery associated with Afro-Brazilian religion. Jubiabá is not the novel’s main character, but as
Antônio Dimas notes, “[He] is the moral conscience of those who live on Capa Negro Hill.
Reserved and mysterious, which suits his function, Jubiabá only appears when called, because
his availability is not that of common mortals… [he] has reached a higher level, the domicile of
those who no longer need materiality to govern the living. ” (Dimas 2008, 329). Jubiabá is also
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the first novel in Brazil to represent, “without exoticism or bewilderment,” a syncretic
Candomblé ceremony (Dimas 2008, 328):
The deity paid reverence to Jubiabá. Arms at sharp angles greeted Oxossi, the god
of hunting. Lips were pursed, hands trembled, bodies shook in the hysteria of the
sacred dance. Then suddenly, Oxalá, the greatest of all the gods, appeared,
knocking down Maria dos Reis, a black girl of fifteen with a rounded, virgin’s
body. Oxalá divides himself in two: Oxadiã [Oxaguiã], who is young, and
Oxolufã, who is old. This time he appeared as Oxolufã, old and bent, supported
by a decorated staff. He came out of the dressing room attired in white to receive
the reverence of the audience, who all bowed lower than ever.
“Okê, Okê, Okê!”
Only then did the high priestess sing, “Ê inun ójá la o lô, inun li a ô lo.”
She was advising, “Prepare yourselves, O people of the marketplace, for we are
going to invade.”
And the audience chanted, “Erô ójá é pará món, ê inun ójá li a o lô.”
“Be careful, O crowds of people, we will enter the market place.” Yes,
they would enter the market place because they were with Oxalá, the greatest of
all the spirits. (Amado [1935], 1984, 83-84)
Just as Jubiabá marks a presence, even when absent, Candomblé permeates Amado’s novel, even
when not explicitly mentioned.
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The same occurs in Mar morto, which takes place largely on or around the Bay of All
Saints in Salvador and the Reconcâvo. The title of the book’s initial section is “Iemanjá, Mistress
of Seas and Sloops.” Iemanjá, of course, is the goddess of the sea in Candomblé, and her
presence permeates the novel.
Iemanjá, who is mistress of the docks, of the sloops of the lives of all of them, has
five names, five sweet names that everyone knows. She is called Iemanjá, she has
always been called that and it is her real name, as mistress of waters, lady of the
oceans. Canoemen, however, like to call her Dona Janaína, and the blacks, who
are her favorite children, who dance for her and fear her more than any others,
call her Inaê, with devotion, or they make entreaties to the Princess of Aiocá,
queen of those mysterious lands hidden behind the blue line that separates them
from other places. The women of the docks, who are simple and valiant…call her
Dona Maria, because Maria is a pretty name.… She is a siren, she is the mother-
of-waters, the mistress of the sea, Iemanjá, Dona Janaína, Dona Maria, Inaê,
Princess of Aiocá. (Amado [1936] 1984, 69)
José Benedito dos Santos has argued that in Mar morto Amado uses the myth of Iemanjá and her
son Orungã, a myth that explains the origins of the waters of the oceans, as a symbol of the
construction of Brazilian identity based on its African heritage. In the novel Amado makes
extensive use of oral traditions, as well as descriptions of Candomblé rituals, all in a romantic
and lyrical setting (Santos 2013).
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Although Candomblé doesn’t have the same structural importance in Capitães da areia
as in does in the two previous novels, it is nonetheless a factor. One of Amado’s characters is
Candomblé priestess Mãe Aninha, who founded and led the Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá house from
1910 until her death in 1938, and “who knows everything that Iá tells her” by consulting cowrie
shells on stormy nights” (Amado [1937] 1988, 21). The novel’s narrator explains that “all blacks
and all poor people in Bahia are friends of the great mãe-de-santo” (Amado [1937] 1988, 80–
81). Beyond that, Mãe Aninha represents a healing spirit for those in need and a center force of
resistance to police violence against Candomblé houses.
These three novels, all of which belong to Amado’s earliest political phase, offer a vision
of Bahia as both socially and economically stratified, with the poor suffering from violence and
marginalization, and at the same time intriguing and romantic. As he writes near the beginning of
Capitães de areia, “The city of Bahia, black and religious, is almost as mysterious as the green
sea” (Amado [1937], 1988, 18).
Two later novels, Tenda dos milagres and O sumiço da santa, are imminently
representative of a vision of Bahia that Amado would express starting in the late 1950s. The
former, written during a period of repressive military rule, is explicitly anti-racist and anti-
authoritarian. In a kind of foreword, the narrator posits an opposition between “a vast university”
that encompasses the historical center of Salvador, “wherever there are men and women who
work,” creating “a fresh, original image of novel colors and sounds” (Amado [1968] 2003, 3),
and the nearby School of Medicine, where students learn to care for the sick and “other things as
well—bad rhetoric, and how to spout sonnets, and theories of dubious value” (Amado [1968]
2003, 9). The latter include the forms of scientific racism that prevailed in the nineteenth century
and continued into the twentieth. The novel is much too complex to go into in any detail. Suffice
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to say that, like his earlier work, it denounces police violence against Candomblé temples,
racism, authoritarianism, and the hypocrisy of dominant social institutions such as the press and
the Catholic Church. It also involves an ardent defense of racial and cultural mixing. It does all
of this with an infectious sense of humor and local color. Appropriately, the old building of the
School of Medicine, where “theories of dubious values” were spouted, now houses the Museu
Afro-Brasileiro (MAFRO), which is dedicated to the exhibition of the arts and cultures of Africa
and the African diaspora in Brazil.
In O sumiço da santa, Amado again takes humorous, satirical aim at dominant social
institutions in a story that illustrates the notion of religious syncretism that has long characterized
discourses about Candomblé (fig. 7.10). In the novel, a statue of Saint Barbara of the Thunder is
transported from Santo Amaro da Purificação, a town in the Reconcâvo, to Salvador, where it is
to be exhibited in the Museum of Sacred Art. Saint Barbara is traditionally syncretized with
Iansã, the goddess of lightning, wind, and storms (thus the qualification “of the Thunder”). When
the sloop carrying the statue arrives at the dock in Salvador, something miraculous happens:
Before Master Manuel and Maria Clara had finished mooring the sloop and
managed to lift out the saint, the saint herself got down from her litter, took a step
forward, smoothed the folds of her cape, and walked off.
With a sway of her hips, Saint Barbara of the Thunder slipped between
Master Manuel and Maria Clara and gave them a smile of complicity and
affection. The êbômin then held her hands open before her breasts in a ritual
gesture and said: “Eparrei, Oyá!” When she passed the priest and the nun, she
waved politely to the nun and winked at the priest….
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Before the lists came on in their lampposts Saint Barbara Yansan had
disappeared into the midst of her people. (Amado [1988] 1993, XX)
Here, Amado’s view of Bahia as a magical space comes into full view. O sumiço da santa is a
novel that offers a defense of Candomblé and well as religious and cultural syncretism. It
involves large doses of sensuality, a love for Brazilian culture, political and social satire, and a
wonderful sense of humor. It also offers a summary of Amado’s vision of Bahia.
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