Beloved and/or Archanjo

Fighting Against Slavery and Racism in Bahia, Brazil

Abstract

The Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado recreated social and cultural aspects of his time in fiction; through the belief system of Bahian Candomblé, he highlighted and criticized the racism that arose from the imprint of colonial slavery in this northeastern region. The question to be answered in this article corresponds to unraveling how this narrator developed this fight and resistance against slavery and racism through the character Pedro Archanjo, from the novel Tenda dos Milagres, from 1969. The theoretical framework will be the “critique of aspects” by Antonio Candido, which consists of analyzing the poetics or aesthetics of the work without reducing it or subjecting it to a single theoretical or critical perspective, since it allows us to delve deeper from various points, edges and perspectives from other disciplines that complement the study in question. The methodology will be to address, in a first section, the core characteristics of candomblé and the projection that the writer made through this fictional character, then focus on the actions and/or significant scenes of the texts, to understand the ethical and social commitment expressed. by the writer. I am interested in highlighting the symbolic importance of Xangô, in that fight and resistance against the consequences that slavery left in the racist practices that still prevail. More than five hundred years after the “conquest”, these decolonial studies that vindicate African roots in Latin America are essential and must be seen in it’s fair relevance.