The faux carioca has just returned from a week spent in close quarters with eight undergraduate students plus one nice graduate student with whom she has little in common. The faux carioca does not like to be in close quarters with anyone for an extended period of time and certainly not when she is in potentially dangerous situations. All things considered, she managed to keep the violence to a minimum by only going off on one student, snapping at a second, kicking a third in the head, and restraining from slapping a fourth.
The week-long 'vacation' began in Salvador, Bahia. As many gentle readers may already know, Salvador was a major slave port well into the 19th century. Today African-descended people and culture constitute a vibrant presence here. Because the culture course for our program is very much concerned with matters of race, culture, and national identity, a visit to the historic Pelourinho district in Salvador was not to be missed.
The Pelourinho is an old colonial part of the city with narrow cobbled streets, brightly painted buildings, gorgeous churches and other structures built on the backs of slaves. The churches in particular are meticulously crafted. The facade of one was carved entirely by hand using small dental-type tools. After the churches were built, African-descended people were prohibited from attending mass. The gentle reader protests: Wasn't an important aspect of Portuguese colonization the Catholic project of converting so-called heathens? But some details--like church facades and numbers--are more important than others for the Catholic church. A practicing resemblance to Catholicism that white folk didn't have to look at was A-OK. In a region where many people shared Yoruban or Angolan heritage and remained in contact with each other, elements of earlier African practices were kept alive. This was true in a variety of ways including in the Brazilian religion of Candomblé, which incorporates elements of Catholicism and Yoruban beliefs. Some have argued that Candomblé evolved as a way of masking the Yoruban belief system where some saints have become almost interchangeable with orixás. This is debateable. Yet there is no denying that today elements of Yoruban and Catholic religious practices comingle in Candomblé.
Today Candomblé is not only Afro-Brazilian but also an important part of much of Brazilian culture. Deities/saints regularly materialize through possession of human bodies and can be called upon, supplicated to grant healing, protection, wishes and so on. Truly it is a very rational and hopeful belief system that can hold little appeal for those who see little logic in the ways of the world (world including the material and anything else you like).
On a different note, it is provocative to consider that Candomblé evolved as a form of--if the faux carioca's recollection of Homi Bhabha is correct--sly civility in which the oppressed find ways of resisting oppression while giving the appearance of submission. This perspective is an interesting one when considering Salvador today. The historic Pelourinho district lost its romantic luster made famous by Jorge Amado sometime in the 1960s or so when it became a seedy, violent area. In the 1980s a project (by the city? the state?) was begun to turn the area into a tourist destination. Buildings were renovated, undesirables moved out, and police brought in. This project has been quite successful until very recently. In the past year there has been a trend to return the Pelourinho back to the people. The method for doing so includes removing police from the streets after a certain hour (who knows when?) so that poor people feel comfortable visiting the neighborhood. Unfortunately, many of the poor in Salvador are literally starving to death and are understandably desperate. Imagine this recipe.
Recipe for violent crime: Less than 2% of the city's inhabitants are 'middle-class' the rest are poor and many live on the streets. People are desperate and hungry. Tourists in the Pelourinho are rich and easily identified. Currently we are in the low tourist season. There are no police on the dimly lit streets after a certain hour.
The faux carioca went out dancing one night in the Pelourinho within a four block radius of her hostel. There were five people in her group including one real carioca. The clubs were teeming with young Baianos looking for tourist women to have sex with and probably garner a few drinks or dollars in the process. The faux carioca had a delightful time learning how to dance farol (from the English phrase 'for all') with a handsome gentleman hustler who left her alone when he realized he would not be procuring dollars or sex from her. Everyone seemed to have a delightful time. Just this side of fun's peak, the faux carioca wanted to go back to the hostel. One of her rules of thumb is to leave while she's having a good time because the evening will only end in disappointment. But she was hungry and so were the others so they went to a restaurant on the square. The food took too long to arrive and the 'mathematician' in the group took too long to calculate (to the penny) how much each person owed. Meanwhile, food vendors packed up carts, the streets emptied, and desperate children walked back and forth looking at the people seated on the right side of the sidewalk planters.
The real carioca told the group that they had to walk the two blocks back to the hostel extremely fast. She bolted out of the outdoor cafe and the faux carioca quickly reached her side and locked arms with her. A man immediately approached the cariocas and the real one gave him her water. They wove in and out of scattered carts and people at a speed walker's pace. The faux carioca wondered if the others were behind but couldn't pause to look back. About 18 feet from the hostel she heard one of the others yelling for one fellow to catch up. The cariocas stopped and turned to see a scuffle and someone rip the silver chain off of one of the party's necks. Going back would have been foolish (as it was for the shouter) so they high-tailed it to the hostel where the others caught up. It was at this moment that the faux carioca wanted to slap the straggler for being so slow and not recognizing the danger that he put himself in as well as the rest of the group. The faux carioca has never experienced such an intense 25 yard walk. The faux carioca is not easily frightened but in that five minute walk a violent end did not seem an unlikely prospect.
There's more to the desperate pulse of Salvador. There's always more, but this tale will have to be continued later.
1 comment:
um, yikes!
I was going to send you an email asking if you were still alive, but given your recent experience, that question now seems horribly tacky. (Ahh, the privileges of living in an area so safe that such a query is usually considered just another way to ask how everything is going).
Maybe you should've spent as much time on kung fu as you did on the portuguese???
ten cuidado, kid!
Post a Comment