13 - “Much to See and Admire”: Festivals, Parades, and Royal Pageantry among Afro-Bahian Brotherhoods in the Eighteenth Century

Summary

Abstract

Brotherhoods’ patron feasts were their main devotional and social activity. Celebrated annually, it was the most notable as well as the moment of the greatest public visibility for members. The celebration could bring a great deal of prestige to the governing board and the whole brotherhood, attracting new members. Beyond this, the feast was an opportunity for the brotherhood to show its capacity to organize funerals, along with burial at a holy place, which constituted a key source of income and a major attractive to potential members. This was also another aspect of the celebrations: they functioned as a space for dancing, music, and the consumption of food and alcoholic beverages. The election and coronation of kings and queens was a unique part of this aspect of the celebration. This chapter analyzes the festivities organized by black brotherhoods in eighteenth-century Salvador, Brazil, underscoring various aspects of their confraternal life and the economic and political activity (within and without the brotherhood) undertaken to stage these festivities.

Keywords: Bahia, Afro-Brazilian Brotherhoods, Festivals, Parades, Royal Pageantry

For Afro-Brazilian brotherhoods, called irmandades, the feast of their patron is the main annual event. It is the most conspicuous moment of confraternal life, marked with the greatest mobilization and public visibility for the brotherhood. During the colonial period, black brotherhoods rivaled each other as well as their white counterparts, taking this competition to the streets in the form of colorful displays, music, and dances. According to a contemporary account, they often surpassed “the whites in everything, going to great lengths to outdo everyone.” Behind these rivalries lay the desire for distinction in colonial society. The patron's feast was also a unique opportunity to entice new members and even secure the benevolence of colonial elites and civil and ecclesiastical authorities, which could guarantee “strong supporters in the defense of their interests.” However, confraternal celebrations had other aspects, as they constituted the spaces for dance, music, and feasting least likely to attract the interference of colonial authorities. The coronation of the king and queen were the central component of the festivities, giving visibility to the most complex political dimensions of Afro-Brazilians’ relations with the slavocratic establishment. In this chapter, I argue that the festivities organized by eighteenth-century Afro-Bahian brotherhoods reveal, and at the same time, constitute privileged spaces of confraternal life, economic relations, and conflict and governance within the brotherhoods.