Documented memories of the “Tradition of the Orishas” group: Brazilian reactions, resistance and resonances in the 1980s

Abstract: afro-Brazilian religions integrate a historical struggle against the attempted erasure of the history and memory of people of African descent in Brazil. However, it was in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s that the terreiros and their members, the “Egbé communities”, began to exercise the role of political protagonists in the elaboration of legal, political and epistemological strategies to counter racism. From the experience of the “Tradition of the Orishas Project”, constituted in the lowlands of the Rio de Janeiro state (Baixada Fluminense), the article analyses the movement of “afroperspectivation” that re-signified the role of priests and priestesses (civilisational authorities) of Afro-Brazilian religions, moving them beyond the realm of symbolic representation and toward the condition of interlocutors in a new trajectory of the anti-racist struggle, in which race and religion are intertwined. This article presents such singular trajectory, evincing the diverse strategies of resistance, particularly, the perspective of afrocentred values within the terreiros and their repercussion in the present.

Keywords:
afro-brazilian memories; Tradition of the Orishas; religious racism; religious intolerance