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Describes the sociopolitical context of the new republican public order of Brazil between 1889 and 1930 that uncovered a third historical layer of the practice of secrecy, now as resistance to the republic.

The problem of the classification of Candomblé in the Brazilian public sphere began in 1888 with abolition. It is precisely at this juncture that the relation of Afro‐Brazilians and their religions to Brazilian national identity became a pressing concern. With the advent of abolition and the inchoateness of Afro‐Brazilians’ new social position, their provisional status as “Brazilians” shifted in the eyes of white élites back to that of “Africans” and therefore, foreigners – a dangerous and polluting presence. The liberty of freed slaves to perform religious ceremonies involving drumming, sacrifice, and possession dance was an obvious site of contestation since it was in such ritual performances that difference – the “non‐Brazilian” identity – was most radically marked.

Madalena Schwartz was another important foreign photographer of São Paulo. She was also a Jewish refugee (from Hungary, via Buenos Aires), and although she did not begin working in photography until late in her middle age, she went on to become Brazil's most important portrait photographer, working extensively in publicity and producing images of some of the country's most prominent citizens. However, Schwartz also developed a personal artistic line to her photography. Working exclusively in black and white and venturing into the outback, she might be said to be Brazil's first eco-photographer. Of interest to this study, however, is her perspective on marginal urban groups; she is famous for her images of often marginalized Afro-Brazilians, such as the singer Clementina de Jesús and the spiritual leader Mãe Menininha do Gantois, as well as the transvestite performance group, Dzi Croquettes, whose creative resistance to the censorship of the 1964 military coup won them an international audience. Despite being an intimate portraitist, Schwartz was able to capture the enormous complexity of urban life.

This chapter summarizes the book's main themes and presents some final thoughts. It presents a comparison of the case of Xocó recognition with that of American Indians. It also discusses the rights for Afro-Brazilians and Indians during the first decade of the twenty-first century and social justice and state recognition of new ethnoracial identities.

Brazil has been long considered a global leader in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; however, little is known about the effectiveness of these prevention and treatment efforts for the Afro-Brazilian population. This chapter examines the shift toward greater government action focused on HIV prevention for Afro-Brazilians. The chapter also explores HIV prevention initiatives developed by black women’s organizations and how the dynamics of gender, race, and class shape HIV vulnerability for Afro-Brazilian women. Finally, this chapter examines critiques of racially specific HIV prevention initiatives and the tensions between universalism and race consciousness that have characterized the shift toward focusing on the black population in HIV prevention efforts.

This chapter examines the many facets of Bahian Carnival and how various artists, Carnival organizations, and young Afro-Brazilians celebrate their “re-Africanization” with performances of popular music and appropriation of sacred themes, imagery, symbols, and iconography from Candomblé in public celebration. It describes how axé music, sacred themes, and imagery and symbols from the Candomblé religion are embodied, secularized, altered, and negotiated in Bahian Carnival. The chapter also explains how sacred rituals observed in the private sanctum of Candomblé are appropriated by many young Afro-Brazilians in the secular celebrations of Bahian Carnival.

This introductory chapter reflects on the political complexities surrounding Afro-Brazilians and the evangelical music scene. The issue of race is an important one in Brazil, hence the pressing need to understand what evangélicos (Protestants) think about it. In Brazil, the word has been used since the late 1980s as a generic term to cover all Protestant denominations. Of particular note is their reluctance to engage in ethnocentric activism, as for several reasons the Church has kept itself from participating in politics. Yet at the heart of these evangélicos' lives is music—particularly gospel music—which has since become a vehicle for problack sentiment.

This chapter focuses on the construction of President Vargas Avenue in Rio de Janeiro in the context of changes taking place in other parts of the world, with emphasis on the opposition of local musicians to the project. It looks at Orson Welles’s experience in the city in 1942 in connection with the consequences of urban reform, particularly his fascination with samba and his relationship with popular musicians. It also considers the importance of the Praça Onze — razed as part of the construction of President Vargas Avenue — to Rio’s cultural landscape. The chapter argues that the Praça Onze would be a central element of Welles’s aborted film, It’s All True, including a performance of the song ‘Praça Onze’ by Herivelto Martins and Grande Otelo. Finally, it discusses unpublished studies on Rio commissioned by Welles, along with his portrayal of Afro-Brazilians and his innovative use of musical forms to structure It’s All True.

The introduction explains the three central issues in light of which African American roots tourism in Brazil is examined: 1) The construction of diasporic identities through tourism, and how national and racial identities may contradict one another; 2) Roots tourism as a means for transnational black solidarity; 3) The geopolitics of the black diaspora since African Americans interact with Afro-Brazilians simultaneously as co-participants in the African diaspora and as citizens of the United States. The introduction also discusses the theoretical frameworks adopted in the book and the applicability of cultural studies and post-structuralism to study tourism discourses and practices, as well as the challenges of carrying out ethnographic research on tourists, subjects that are defined as being “on the move.”

This chapter contextualizes African American roots tourism in Brazil both time-wise and space-wise. First, it locates the brief history of African American roots tourism within the longer trajectory of the meanings of Brazil for African Americans, spanning from the late nineteenth century—when, inspired by fantastical imaginings of Brazil as a “racial paradise,” groups of African Americans attempted to migrate there—to the present-day, when the country has become an important roots tourism destination. Second, the chapter compares representations of Brazil with those of other countries frequently visited by African American roots tourists, placing them within a wider system of meanings that the author defines as the “map of Africanness,” a map that is both spatial and temporal.

This chapter examines the dominant African American roots tourist gaze on Brazil. Contrasting the discourse of the tourists, as expressed in ethnographic interviews, with the representations found in various textual and audiovisual sources, such as documentary films, books, newspaper articles, and tourism promotional materials, the chapter examines the three major intersecting tropes that inform and sustain this gaze: the trope of Bahia as a “closer Africa” and a place where African Americans can find their past; the trope of the “happy native,” or the perception that, because Afro-Brazilians supposedly inhabit the African American past, they are imagined to be essentially more culturally fulfilled than African Americans; and the trope of “black evolution,” which defines the “Africanness” of Afro-Brazilians as an earlier stage in the unidirectional path toward a modern form of blackness, one supposedly already reached by African Americans. In this view, Afro-Brazilians enjoy abundant African tradition, but have yet to achieve black modernity, and should therefore look up to African Americans for guidance.

This chapter examines how roots tourism has allowed for the construction of black racial solidarity between African Americans and Afro-Brazilians. Aware of their power as U.S. citizens, African Americans have actively “made use” of their identity, as both tourists and Americans, to support Afro-Brazilians. In addition to donating cash and goods and providing financial aid to Afro-Brazilian organizations, they have often requested black tourist guides and prioritized patronizing black-owned businesses so that their U.S. dollars are channeled to Afro-Brazilians. Afro-Brazilian actors, in general, have responded very positively to such practices of solidarity, even if they are also critical of, and ready to challenge, what they view as the tourists’ “Americanness.” Most importantly, Afro-Brazilian activists have also set the terms of engagement in these interactions and, rather than being mere beneficiaries, they have become important agents in these projects of transnational black solidarity, acting as co-producers in the processes of diaspora-making.

This chapter examines the gendered dimensions of travel in order to explain why women make up the majority of roots tourists in Brazil. It builds on the literature that seeks to deconstruct the implicitly masculinist abstract tourist subject. Analyzing why and how women travel is important in the project of challenging the supposed neutrality of “the tourist.” At the same time, although focusing on women travelers, the chapter does not confirm men as the norm that goes on unexamined. The chapter thus maps out the differences between women and men without further othering women. Even though the analysis looks more closely at women, it does so in order to examine gender more broadly, including the power relations between women and men, travel and tourism as fundamentally embodied and gendered practices, and the gendering of the diaspora though the gendering of space, place, and time.

The role of local governments in attracting roots tourists is one of most important factors analyzed in the studies of diaspora tourism. Governments of several countries have actively sought to promote varied forms of roots tourism in order to attract members of their respective diasporas. In contrast, African American roots tourism in Brazil is marked by the almost complete inaction of the government, at both the state and federal levels. This type of tourism was initiated and continues to develop largely as the result of tourist demand, and with very little participation on the part of the state. This chapter analyzes the belated response of the state government of Bahia to African American tourism, examining how the inertia that dominated since the late 1970s was later replaced by a more proactive, although still inadequate, position, when the state tourism board, Bahiatursa, founded the Coordination of African Heritage Tourism to cater specifically to the African American roots tourism niche. The chapter also analyzes whether the left-leaning Workers’ Party, then in charge of the state government, challenged the longstanding discourse of baianidade (Bahianness) that has predominantly represented blackness (in tourism and other realms) through domesticated and stereotypical images.

The book concludes by reflecting on Brazil’s current political crisis, following the institutional coup d’état that ousted Dilma Rousseff, the country’s first female president. The epilogue discusses the deployment of an evolutionist language among the left to define the sudden turn of events as a “reversion” to a less advanced stage of the country’s development, and it argues that evolutionist explanations are unproductive, even when they seem appealing. Alternative ways to explain reality, that move us beyond hierarchical and Eurocentric logics, are more necessary than ever. The epilogue also points to new trends of black diaspora travel where transnational solidarity continues to be crucial, including that carried out by members of the Black Lives Matter movement.