January, 2016 Maranhao (Sao Luis, Santa Inez, Pindaré)
Alert: The first section on my “photo series” is a bit grumpy and personal. The second section on the real purpose of the trip is a bit more interesting. You can also just skip through the photos and captions. The last section — a “desultory discourse” is an explanation of our actual goals in the trip and the reasons we are doing this.
My photo series on Brazilian (Maranhao) bus stops
Ever since our extended bus trips to Minas Gerais in 2008 to visit the home of the baroque artist Aleijardinho, we have often found ourselves on Brazilian buses. That is, European-built buses run by various bus enterprises. The most comfortable are the MarcoPolo buses by Mercedes. The least confortable are the modest, shorter-haul buses that sometimes reach the capital, but often do not because of leaky radiators and bald tires.
These are the buses you get when you arrive too late for the MarcoPolo. I know… I’ve tested this over and over.
Some of the Maranhão roads are unforgiving, in spite of the state signs bragging about “more asphalt for you.” The “you” seems to be the transit interchanges and roads in main arteries of the city. This often does not include neighborhoods where roads, water and security are already problem.
But the federal highway to the south from the capital is wide and fast, until you run out of decent road and bobble back and forth in the bus, avoiding potholes and other vehicles.
You know you are back in the capital when you see Pedreiras, the state penitentiary, then the airport, and finally the bus station. By then you are in São Luis, which looked a bit seedy a few days ago and now looks like home.
The first time through this area I was enchanted by the bus stops with their barbeque stands, vendors of street food, and men who peel the tough Brazilian oranges for you. Standing at Itapecaru-Mirim station, bracing myself to brave the restroom, I thought that I should do a photo set.
I was wrong about two things: The first was thinking that I wouldn’t see Itapecaru-Mirim again. The second was a vague assumption that I would have my cameras with me.
The second assumption evaporated when we arrived near the station. I felt for the cameras and found that the bag under my legs was strangely light. Under my legs!
During the night when everyone slept, someone slipped into my bag and lifted all the gear. It seems premeditated because someone got on outside the Sao Luis bus station (outside the security cameras and without having to show proper identification), and got off a hundred yards before our stop (slipping away in the dark while all the passengers were asleep).
The police were solicitous, admonishing us to be more careful next time.
We stayed in the little community in a bus station pousada, waiting for the manager to sweep the hundreds of black beetles out of the room. The next morning we visited a police station whose waiting room/main office was two chairs, no telephone, and not a trace of paper — not even a calendar. There was, however, an officer who was busy sweeping out black beetles.
The local police were also solicitous, also admonishing us that travel in risky at night.
Simone has been having a dialogue with the management of the bus company. The side of the conversation, it turns is, in turns, solicitous and legalistic. Our side of the discussion has a touch of moral outrage along with suggestions for proper responsibility for their passengers.
It hasn’t been a very productive conversation.
Anyway, the bus station photo project has slowed down a bit.
The images of Santa Inez are from the patron saint and mother church of the city. It is official Catholicism, centered in the mother church (matriz) of the city of Santa Inez (Saint Agnes).
You may want to compare this imagery and representation with the Afro-Brazilian imagery below.
The old Pindaré sugar cane mill has been inactive for decades and is now used for storage of materials for the Saint John celebration, which used a giant ox/boi. For the less romantic it is a dumping place for trash; for the more romantic, it is a gathering place for loose donkeys and dogs. It can be a lively place, though not this night. Believe it or not, the building at the end is the city Office of Health (well placed, actually).
Some may be reminded of dervish dancing which also used twirling movements for meditation and trance. This macumba twirling is faster and episodic, following the percussion rhythms of a set of drums played by rotating groups of batazeiros.
The twirling is often accompanied by singing and other vocalizations.
Desultory Discourse: The Real Point of the Trip
Why would we be doing this? We are not anthropologists of the old school who relish the excitement of research on remote peoples. We are a retired political scientists and a dancer/professor.
We are really in the midst of what we think may be two books. The first is on women in “popular” (traditional) culture in Maranhão. The second is based on the festival known as the Bumba-meu-boi, but has broadened to include connection of that practice with other religious and cultural practices in Maranhão. The BmB in our work is in the center of a network practices and social relations that still exist in the interior of Maranhão. Much of this network has been changed in the capital city, but the interior maintains much of its cultural density and richness.
That is why we keep going there.
The key events were a several-day-long celebration of African-Brazilian practice. This includes elements of Candomblé, Tereco, Tambor de Minas, and Umbanda. Many of these groups gathered in Pindaré and we were there to film and photograph they, to interview some of the leaders where possible, and to try to understand more of this intricate cultural matrix. It sometimes has surface elements of Catholicism, but is in fact an alternative symbolic universe of entities and practices that coopt many diverse elements.
This event connected at the nexus of our two imaginary books – women are powerful in these religious practices and many of the practitioners are also involved in the Bumba-meu-boi.
Our key interview was with the mae de santos (mother of saints) who is spiritual head of an Umbanda house. She is a leading religious figure in the area. In her biography, she traversed a youth in an evangelical church, but was ejected for having visions (the wrong ones). She drifted toward alternative practices and eventually founded her own house of syncretic practices.
We were there to learn about the remarkable charisma, spiritual authority, and community responsibility of women such as this.
She was a central figure in the spiritual celebration, but shared the authority and guidance with others (including her own mae pequena – “little mother” — who is the second in command of her spiritual house. A sign that the little mother was still on the path was that she conducted liturgies and chants in Portuguese, rather than Yoruba, one of the African languages often used in Afro-Brazilian practice.
One of the challenges is that each of these practices has its own combination of symbols and forms for worship and celebration. It is not very productive to take a “comparative religion” point of view because the practices and entities do not decode directly into Western practices. There are similarities, but the religions are not based on a text, a normative priesthood and catechism, or written tradition. They are transmitted through apprenticeship and practice, through dance and songs, and through oral transmission. This gives them continuity as well as flexibility (see Yvonne Daniel, Dancing Wisdom). In Maranhão there are strong traditions, but no “orthodoxy” that is easily codified. In fact, researchers in Afro-Brazilian practice have often reported their research analysis provided a useful codification for practitioners – the anthropologists became active participants in codifying their practice.
Our own research is (1) trying to work out the expanding role of women in cultura popular of Maranhão, and (2) finding a way to analyze and represent the way the Bumba-meu-boi celebration fits in the cultural matrix of heritage practice in Maranhão.