African-Brazilian religions in Florianópolis: historical origins and social affirmation

Abstract

This article investigates the origin of Afro-Brazilian religions in the region of Grande Florianópolis by focusing on two relevant aspects, namely the practices of healers, shamans, and sorcerers, which are in the origin of the appearance of the first practitioners of Umbanda, and their relation with alternative health care, which was the main driving force that justified and fostered this form of social and spiritual organization. The research concentrates on the period when these Afro-Brazilian religions were confronted by the hegemonic conceptions of the Official Medicine and public sanitation expressed in the ‘hygienizing mission’ of the first decades of the twentieth century. These conceptions redefined values, rules of behavior, and social and physical spaces, which formed the basis of therepression against the Afro-Brazilian religious cults in the beginning of the twentieth century.