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‘Adorned with the Mix of Faith and Profanity that Intoxicates the People’: The Festival of the Senhor do Bonfim in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 1930–1954 1
Author(s) -
Ickes Scott
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
bulletin of latin american research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1470-9856
pISSN - 0261-3050
DOI - 10.1111/j.0261-3050.2005.00131.x
Subject(s) - hegemony , faith , formative assessment , sociology , identity (music) , variety (cybernetics) , ethnology , gender studies , political science , law , art , aesthetics , theology , pedagogy , philosophy , artificial intelligence , politics , computer science
This essay looks at a formative period in the history of the festival of the Senhor do Bonfim, one of Salvador's most important religious festivals. The essay focuses on the public ritual washing of the Church of Bonfim and the tensions between the Catholic Church, who periodically banned the washing from the larger festival, and a variety of historical actors including politicians, journalists, authors and working‐class Salvadorans whose efforts eventually contributed to the lifting of the prohibition once and for all in 1953. The author suggests that the defence of the washing both reflected and contributed to a larger hegemonic process taking place in Salvador after 1930, as actors within Salvador's dominant class accepted and even praised Afro‐Bahian cultural practices, including them as integral parts of a larger Bahian identity.