Bembé do Mercado : a cidade de Santo Amaro/BA como lugar de resistência

Abstract

This dissertation discusses the Bembé do Mercado Festival, a religious, civic, and cultural celebration of the traditional terreiro communities of the city of Santo Amaro, commemorating May 13th since 1889. The Bembé do Mercado, as it has traditionally been known, is registered as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage site with the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) and the National Institute of Intangible Cultural Heritage (IPAC). The objective of this research is to examine, from an Afrocentric bibliographic perspective, how the Bembé do Mercado Festival, through its dynamics and rituals, appropriates, sanctifies, and resignifies the urban public spaces, architecture, and natural landscapes of the city of Santo Amaro. To this end, we sought to describe aspects of its historical formation, map the Bembé ritualistic celebrations from different scales of territorial approach, and report on participation in the development and implementation of an architectural and urban redevelopment project for Largo do Bembé do Mercado, where the festival takes place. The documentary sources used were instruction dossiers from heritage agencies (IPAC and IPHAN), periodicals, interviews with festival keepers and participants, books by memorialists, and the oral tradition of the Candomblé community in the city of Santo Amaro. The research reinforced the idea of the Bembé do Mercado celebration beyond its religious and aesthetic dimensions, valuing and highlighting its importance as a political project of epistemic reconstruction and symbolic reterritorialization of African-based culture.