"feiticeiros ou irmãos das almas": Religious and healing practices in the Atlantic Diaspora, Vale do Paraíba in São Paulo, late 19th century

• Grant number: 23/14081-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2024
• Effective date (End): October 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Maria Cristina Cortez Wissenbach
• Grantee: Yaracê Morena Boregas e Rêgo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This study proposes an investigation into the "Irmandade das Almas", cited in a 1890 police record (APESP collection) as a criminal organization. Allegedly composed mainly of Africans (probably formerly enslaved), the organization was active in the villages around the Vale do Paraíba region in São Paulo aspiring to "cure and poison". From a Social History perspective, the primordial goal is to reconstruct its history, its assembling and its operations. Additionally, I propose an investigation into their "culto das almas", often mentioned in the sources, while searching for some possible relationship to ancestor worship experiences. I advance a hypothesis that this Brotherhood constituted a space for expression and reforging of African cosmologies and epistemologies in the Vale do Paraíba region. I thus seek to identify and analyze this phenomenon alongside broader diasporic religious practices like affliction cults in their diverse expressions in the Atlantic World. As a means to achieve this, special attention is given to the agency of individuals involved in transatlantic slave trade, particularly Central-West Africans, in their historical process of continuous reinvention through cultural interconnections of the diaspora within the social context of slavery. Furthermore, I also aim to contribute to the field of post-emancipation studies since the investigation of this Brotherhood and other similar enterprises will help understand ways of experiencing freedom in the pre and post-emancipation period. The various social relationships derived from the slavery will be characterized in one of the last slaveholding regions of the Brazilian imperial period in contrast to other slave contexts. Finally, engaging with studies on material culture, this research intends to examine the objects and substances described in the specified sources, placing them in their historical dimension and analyzing the symbolic resignifications around their use.