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Every New 12 months’s Eve, greater than two million revelers — twice as many as sometimes fill Occasions Sq. — costume in white and pack Copacabana Seashore in Rio de Janeiro to observe a 15-minute midnight fireworks extravaganza.
The one-night hedonistic launch is likely one of the world’s largest New 12 months’s celebrations and leaves Copacabana’s famed 2.4 miles of sand strewed with trash.
Nevertheless it started as one thing much more religious.
Within the Fifties, followers of an Afro-Brazilian faith, Umbanda, started congregating on Copacabana on New 12 months’s Eve to make choices to their goddess of the ocean, Iemanjá, and ask for luck within the yr forward.
It shortly turned one of many holiest moments of the yr for followers of a cluster of Afro-Brazilian religions which have roots in slavery, worship an array of deities and have lengthy confronted prejudice in Brazil.
Then, in 1987, a resort alongside the Copacabana strip began a Dec. 31 fireworks present. It was an enormous hit that started attracting giant numbers.
“Clearly, this was nice for the resort trade, for tourism,” mentioned Ivanir Dos Santos, a professor of comparative historical past on the Federal College of Rio de Janeiro.
A brand new New 12 months’s custom was born, and the revelers adopted some previous Umbanda traditions, together with throwing flowers into the ocean, leaping seven waves and, particularly, sporting white, an emblem of peace within the faith.
However the large social gathering, Mr. Dos Santos mentioned, “additionally then pushed the worshipers off the seaside.”
Not solely.
Mr. Dos Santos was standing on Copacabana Seashore, wearing white, with the chants of Umbanda worshipers behind him. But this was Dec. 29, the date when devotees of the Afro-Brazilian religions now descend on Copacabana Seashore to make their annual choices to Iemanjá (pronounced ee-mahn-JA).
Alongside beachgoers in bikinis and distributors promoting beer and barbecued cheese, a whole lot of worshipers had been attempting to make contact with one among their most essential gods. Devotees consider that Iemenjá, who is usually depicted with flowing hair and a billowing blue-and-white costume, is the queen of the ocean and a goddess of motherhood and fertility.
With temperatures exceeding 90 levels, many gathered underneath a tent for conventional dances and songs round an altar of small wood ships, loaded with flowers and fruit, that may quickly be despatched into the ocean. Outdoors, they dug shallow altars within the sand, leaving candles, flowers, fruit and liquor.
“It is a custom handed from technology to technology. From grandmother to mom to son,” mentioned Bruna Ribeiro de Souza, 39, a schoolteacher, sitting within the sand along with her mom and her toddler son. They’d lit three candles and poured a glass of glowing wine for Iemenjá. Close by was their foot-long wood boat, prepared for its voyage.
Ms. Souza’s mom, Marilda, 69, mentioned her personal mom introduced her to Copacabana to make choices to Iemanjá within the Fifties. It was a means, she mentioned, to reconnect along with her household’s African roots.
Afro-Brazilian religions had been largely created by slaves and their descendants. From about 1540 to 1850, Brazil imported extra slaves than every other nation, or almost half of the estimated 10.7 million slaves dropped at the Americas, based on historians.
One of the crucial widespread religions, Candomblé, is a direct extension of Yoruba beliefs from Africa, which additionally impressed Santería in Cuba. Residents of Rio created Umbanda within the twentieth century, mixing the Yoruba worship of assorted deities with Catholicism and elements of occultism.
Roughly 2 p.c of Brazilians, or greater than 4 million folks, determine as followers of Afro-Brazilian religions, based on a survey performed in 2019. (About half recognized as Catholic and 31 p.c Evangelical.) That was a rise from the 0.3 p.c who mentioned they adopted Afro-Brazilian religions in Brazil’s 2010 census, the final official figures.
The religions have given many Black Brazilians a cultural identification and connections with their ancestors. However followers have additionally confronted persecution. Extremists within the Evangelical church have known as the religions evil, attacked their followers and destroyed their locations of worship.
Nonetheless, because the solar set over Copacabana Seashore on Friday, teams of beachgoers cheered on the worshipers as they marched into the surf with bouquets of white flowers, bottles of sparking wine and their wood boats. (Environmental issues led devotees to desert Styrofoam boats, and so they not load on issues like bottles of fragrance.)
Alexander Pereira Vitoriano, a prepare dinner and Umbanda worshiper, carried one of many largest boats and waded into the waves first. As he let the boat go, a wave capsized it, an indication to the followers that Iemenjá had taken the providing.
“She involves take all the things unhealthy to the depths of the sacred sea, all of the evil, the illness, the envy,” he mentioned on the shore, panting and soaked. “It’s a clear begin to the brand new yr.”
Close by, Amanda Santos emptied a bottle of glowing wine into the waves and wept. “It’s simply gratitude,” she mentioned. “Final yr I used to be right here and requested for a house, and this yr I acquired my first home.”
After a couple of minutes, the surf turned a line of flowers that had been thrown into the ocean and had been then spit again out. Because the skies darkened and the gang cleared, Adriana Carvalho, 53, stood with a white dove in her palms. She had purchased the chook the day earlier than to launch it as an providing. She was asking Iemanjá for peace, well being and clear paths for her household.
She let go of the dove, and it flittered into the sky. Then it shortly got here down once more, touchdown on the again of a girl bent over an altar within the sand. The girl, Sara Henriques, 19, was making her first providing.
The dove landed “in the intervening time we had been asking for a very good 2024, with well being, prosperity and peace,” she mentioned. “So, to me, it was a affirmation that my want had been fulfilled.”
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