African Diaspora and its Religious Heritage: A view from Triple-Border (Brazil/Paraguay/Argentina)

Abstract

The religious diversity of Latin America is a phenomenon that has gathered the attention of researchers from different fields. Along with the expressions of belief and feeling related to Catholics and Protestants, who are still the majority, there are diverse religious practices, in this article we will focus on the analysis of practices and beliefs arising from the Afro-descendant presence in the continent in general as well as in the region known as the Triple Frontier, in a particular way. The strong socio-cultural interrelationships feedback on the intense flow of people and material/symbolic goods, complexing religious matrices, reframing beliefs and resisting colonial violence. Our reflection is based on long fieldwork at the border towns Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), Puerto Iguaçu (Argentina) and Foz do Iguaçu (Brazil), with an ethnographic approach, documents, and bibliographic review. In this direction, this article seeks to discuss the way in which Afro-descendants have been organized and maintained in this dynamic and multiform religious scenario. Throughout this path, our intention is to characterize the specificities of the different manifestations of belief/devotion/practices of/in the region originating or re-signified by the African diaspora on the continent, at the same time that we will seek to configure the socio-historical context of the emergence of the referred religious groups. And we expect to have, in the end, an ethnographic and analytical picture of the religious effects of the African presence on the south of the Latin American continent.