The Development of Yoruba Candomble Communities in Salvador, Bahia 1835-1986

This project is an attempt to bring together the many fragments of history concerning the Yoruba religious community and their rise to prominence in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries. Given the scarcity of primary sources for this particular subject, i [...]
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This project is an attempt to bring together the many fragments of history concerning the Yoruba religious community and their rise to prominence in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries. Given the scarcity of primary sources for this particular subject, it focuses mainly on the works of early Bahian ethnographers as primary sources (even as it analyzes these sources' inherent weaknesses, such as the inability to corroborate much of their information and the cultural biases from which they were constructed), while also incorporating newspaper accounts, police records, oral interviews, and a variety of other innovative forms of evidence. The result is a fascinating historical study of a community characterized by a profound secrecy and a remarkable ability to manipulate or deliberately mislead outside researchers to preserve their own self-interests and protect what they feel is privileged information.