The Museu do Negro in Rio and the Cult of Anastácia as a New Model for the Memory of Slavery

Abstract

The following analysis concerns the figure of Anastácia, a mythical African princess who was supposedly enslaved and then tortured to death on a Brazilian plantation. She has become the focus for a wide variety of devotional activity within northeastern Brazil. The ways in which she is worshipped and displayed suggest that the syncretic religions of Umbanda and Candomblé may offer dynamic new ways for thinking about the traumatic memory of Atlantic slavery.