"Mandingas dos pretos": diáspora africana e religiosidades na Bahia (Século XVIII)

Abstract

Among the cases documented by the Holy Office at the time of its exercise in the Portuguese Atlantic World, the “bolsa de mandinga” appear as the most recurrent religiosity among those practiced by Africans and their descendants. Seen as empowered, they were used by various ethnic groups, blacks and non-blacks, who sought to solve innumerable problems that were victimized in the colonial period. Among the sources listed for this research at the inquisitorial scope, we note that most of those involved with these materials were those who, to a large extent, were trafficked as slaves to Brazil. Based on this assumption, we aim to understand the worldviews brought by these subjects to the capitaincy of Bahia of the eighteenth cetury and how they used the socio-cultural dialogues established by the African diaspora to carry out the maintenance their ethnicities in an unfavorable space for this because of religious persecution. Through this analysis, we realized that the Atlantic interactions made it possible for black men and women to access protagonism, through a worldview open to the new, but without ignoring the old.