Religious: Brazil, land of Candomblé

Your mission, if you accept it (an idea spinned from a suddent idea in The Future Spread of Religions thread in the Future section), is to make Candomblé - the local 'voodoo'/afro-'american' religion -THE religion of ATL Brazil, instead of Catholicism (but having a coexistance is very fine), or at very least, a serious stuff, large % of followers openly.

Would by example even more slaves, or mixing of races, AND a rise of a different form of nationalism, like the local far-right ideology - Integralism - do it?






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Bonus point if you do it too OR instead with another nation, and their local 'voodoo' (Vaudou of Haiti, Santeria of Cuba...).


((BTW, a related question; what is the official and real politics of Cuba vs Santeria and it's adepts, while I am at it? A 'superstition, to be smashed', or 'an admirable local specifities of the oppressed people, to be protected'?))
 
Balkanize Brazil as the result of a protracted independence campaign or Civil War. The Northern States become an elitist, conservative republic for a few generations before succumbing to an insurgency centered on Candomblé followers, who then establish it as the state religion.
 
Balkanize Brazil as the result of a protracted independence campaign or Civil War. The Northern States become an elitist, conservative republic for a few generations before succumbing to an insurgency centered on Candomblé followers, who then establish it as the state religion.

Probably with a rigid, slaves-based economy, like the american south...
 
Perhaps when the Dutch were occupying parts of Brazil a united Slave revolt singlehandedly overthrows them. The slaves offer to rejoin Portugal and go back to the fields as long as their religion of Candomblé is recognized and spaces for worship or ensured. Overall the slave system will still exist but be extremely relaxed, with a mixed society of free and enslaved blacks and plenty of mestizos.
 
How many followers does it have IOTL? I've heward it is quite significant, just something that is still widely regarded as shameful, not talked about in public (or at least, within hearing of 'proper' Catholics).

I think modern religions of all stripes are endlessly fascinating, and when I was young and stupid on this board I came up with the idea of making Rastafarianism the socially dominant faith of the Anglophone West Indies (and another touchy issue in the fraught relationship between the West Indian culturally assimilated "blacks" and the African "negroes" in the Empire). Obviously that made no sense whatsoever.

I don't know very much about Brazilian history, so I cannot really comment on the probability, but on a broader scale I wonder whether a different take on state religions in the late ninineteenth and early twentieth century might have done something here. IOTL the consensus among 'progressives' was that a state religion was something tyrants had, and state religions were often happy to confirm the stereotype. What if, instead of connotating career-killing barriers to entry and rampaging black hundreds, state religions were widely thought of as a harmless, folksy, soulful element of a nation's collective identity? Sort of like the CofE :p

I could see no end of interesting religious developments in states just about defining their ethnic identities. Europe did see a rise of neotraditionalist ethnic paganism at the time, though it didn't get very far because it was so artificial. If something like this got state backing in Brazil, Nigeria or Jamaica, it would likely have much better chances.
 
knowing some brazilians... if I remember well, Bahia - the heart of afro-brazilian culture - showcase it as a part of their traditions, nothing shamefull so much. There is non-blacks followers as well I heard, probably not common quite...
 
I can see it happening maybe in one province or two in the North if Brazil is split in several independent countries, but not in the entire country. It would require a slave revolution, but it probably would also mean that the other provinces would intervene (as they wouldn't want an example for their own slaves).

And even then you need to consider that the "official" and the "illegal" religion were just too intermingled in the minds of the followers. For them Yemanja is "Our Lady of Navigators", Ogum is "Saint George" and Oxossi is "Saint Sebastian". They had - and many still have - no problem declaring themselves Catholics while continuing with their African based practices. Even the most famous Brazilian Iyalorixa - Mãe Menininha do Gantois - used to say that she was Catholic, and was frequently in Mass. What is changing this situation is the Evangelical revolution that is happening among the Brazilian poors.
 
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