Wicked women and femmes fatales: Gender, power, and Pomba Gira in Brazil

History of Religions

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 1-21

  Hayes, Kelly E ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61349143012     PISSN: 00182710     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/592152     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. Serge Bramly, Macumba: The Teachings of Maria-José, Mother of the Gods, trans. Meg Bogin (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), 187.
2. Therefore, I capitalize the term when using it in the specific and use the lowercase for the generic.
3. The term "Pomba Gira" itself may be a corruption of a central African deity Bombojira (alternatively Bombonjira, Bombogira). See Roger Bastide, African Civilizations in the New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 109;
4. Monique Augras, "De Yiá Mi a Pomba Gira: Transformaç ões e símbolos da libido," in Meu sinal está no teu corpo: Escritos sobre a religião dos Orixás, ed. Carlos Eugênio Marcondes de Moura (São Paulo: Edicon/EdUSP, 1989), 25. Nonetheless, I am aware of no research that examines this suggestion beyond the apparent linguistic similarities.
5. As Reginaldo Prandi also affirmed in "Pombagira dos Candomblés e Umbandas e as faces inconfessas do Brasil," Revista Brasiliera de ciências sociais 9, no. 26 (October 1994): 91-102. The most recent example of Pomba Gira's cinematic appearances is the recent (2001) Brazilian-made film O Xangô do Baker Street. The film, a fantastical romp in which the nineteenth-century Brazilian emperor Dom Pedro calls on Sherlock Holmes and Watson to solve a palace intrigue, includes a scene in which the ever-correct Englishman Watson is possessed by a bawdy Pomba Gira and hilarity ensues.
6. By effeminate men, I mean those males who refuse or are unable to live up to the hypermasculine standards of the Brazilian macho or homem de verdade (real man).
7. On the centrality of narrative to shape our understanding of experience, see Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
8. Lisias Negrão, Entre a Cruz e a encruzilhada: Formação do campo umbandista em São Paulo (São Paulo: EDUSP, 1996), 223.
9. Later published as a separate volume, which quickly became a bestseller. João do Rio, As religiões do Rio (Rio de Janeiro: H. Garnier, 1906).
10. Arthur Ramos, O Negro Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Graphia, 2001), 177. Because a broad range of popular religious practices were classified as false healing (curandeirismo), sorcery (feitiçaria), charlatanism, or "low spiritism," practitioners were subject to periodic waves of police persecution until the mid-1960s. Even today there continues to be a bias against certain popular practices, particularly those involving Pomba Gira.
11. Ponto cantado collected from author's field research, Rio de Janeiro, 2000.
12. See also the version cited by Prandi, "Pombagira," 96.
13. For example, Rio's Editora Espiritualista publishing house.
14. For a similar version of this story, see Prandi, "Pombagira," 96.
15. Maria Helena Farelli, Pomba Gira Cigana: Magias de amor, sorte, sonhos, reza forte, comidas e oferendas (Rio de Janeiro: Pallas, 1999), 39.
16. In Portuguese, the spelling is "Padilha"; in Spanish, "Padilla."
17. See Marylese Meyer, Maria Padilha e toda sua quadrilha: de amante de um rei de Castela a Pomba-Gira de Umbanda (São Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1993).
18. Although he did not refer specifically to Maria Padilha, Peter Fry observed that many pomba giras were said to be of "Spanish extraction" by his informants. See Fry, Para Ingés ver: Identidade e politica na cultura Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1982), 27.
19. Maria Helena Farelli, author of several books on Afro-Brazilian spirit entities aimed at a popular audience, gave the following history of Maria Padilha, which she says was recounted to her by that entity, incorporated in the body of a devotee: "I am white, not black like the orixás that I serve. I didn't come from Nigeria, I was born in Spain. I wasn't the queen, but I wore a crown; because of this I still wear a crown: it is my right. My first crown, made of gold, emeralds, rubies, and opals, was given to me by my first love: the King Don Pedro I of Castile, he whose Spanish subjects named 'The Cruel.' I was the King's lover in the time when there were Moors and Jews there, around the 1300s.... I wasn't the queen; her name was Dona Blanca de Borbon, she came from France and was a big bore. It was me who the King loved.... I was the mistress of the master of the land of Andalusia." Maria Helena Farelli, Os conjures de Maria Padilha: A verdaderia história da Rainha Padilha, de seus trabalhos de magia e de suas rezas infaliveis (Rio de Janeiro: Pallas, 2000).
20. This close connection between female sexuality and death encapsulated in Pomba Gira has provided rich ground for Freudian-based analyses. Monique Augras, for example, theorized that Pomba Gira emerged as a distinct entity as a result of a process in which West African goddesses like Yemanjá, once transplanted to the Iberian Catholic slave colony of Brazil, were purged of their erotic and libidinal qualities. While Yemanjá in Africa retained both her maternal and erotic associations, under the influence of Catholicism in Brazil the erotic was split from the maternal, and Pomba Gira came to represent the sublimated erotic dimension of these African goddesses, now associated only with the life-giving aspects of maternal female sexuality. See Monique Augras, "De Iyá Mi a Pomba-Gira: Transformações e simbolos de libido," in Candomblé: Religião de corpo e alma, ed. Carlos Eugênio Marcondes de Moura (Rio de Janeiro: Pallas, 2000), 14-33.
21. In Yoruba, the figure's name is spelled Esu; in Portuguese, Exu.
22. Negrão, Entre a Cruz, 221.
23. See Patrícia Birman, O que é Umbanda (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1985), 84-85.
24. Roberto da Matta, A casa e a rua: Espaço, cidadania, mulher, e morte no Brasil, 5th ed. (1985; Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2000).
25. Liana Trindade also observed this in her study of exu spirit beliefs. See Trindade, "Exu: Reinterpretações individualizadas de um mito," Religião e sociedade 8 (July 1982): 31.
26. Quote from author's fieldwork, Rio de Janeiro, 2000.
27. Aluizio Fontenelle, Exu, 6th ed. (1952; Rio de Janeiro: Espiritualista, 1966), 141.
28. The data on which this section is based are drawn from an extensive series of life-history interviews that I conducted with Nazaré and with various members of her family, including Nilmar.
29. Author's transcription and translation of interview with Nilmar, Rio de Janeiro, 2001.
30. Ponto cantado collected by author, Rio de Janeiro, 2001.
31. Bramly, Macumba, 192.
32. Francisco Giobellina Brumana and Elda Gonzales Martinez, Spirits from the Margins: Umbanda in São Paulo; A Study in Popular Religion and Social Experience (Stockholm: Uppsala University, 1989), 13.
33. Teixeira Alves Neto, Pomba-Gira: Enchantments to Invoke the Formidable Powers of the Female Messenger of the Gods, trans. Carol L. Dow (Burbank, CA: Technicians of the Sacred, 1990), xvii-xviii.
34. As I mentioned previously, although they are the majority, women who work with Pomba Gira are joined by a second category of social persons who may also be said to suffer from the constraints of normative gender codes: viados, or effeminate males - those males who for whatever reason cannot (or will not) fulfill the role of the macho/homem de verdade. As Stefania Capone also observed, within the symbolic space defined by the Pomba Gira, dominance is decoupled from masculinity, and it is femininity that is powerful. Within this symbolic space there is, in fact, no room for the dominant male. Capone, La Quête de L'Afrique dans le candomblé (Paris: Karthala, 1999), 200, n. 25.
35. James Wafer's ethnography provided a glimpse into the cultivation of the Pomba Gira among working-class, effeminate males in the urban periphery of Bahia. Although neither gender nor Pomba Gira was the focus of that work, his data are illustrative of the complex that I have described. See James Wafer, The Taste of Blood: Spirit Possession in Brazilian Candomblé (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).