AFRO-BRAZILIAN RELIGIONS. The religious landscape of Brazil is rich and varied. It includes the Roman Catholicism that arrived with the Portuguese colonizers, Spiritism influenced by nineteenth-century French philosopher Allan Kardec, twentieth-century evangelical Protestant movements, and the Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism that immigrants from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe introduced to the nation. While all of these traditions have engaged and been transformed by Brazilian social realities, it is perhaps the religions of African influence that have been most strongly associated with the country's popular culture and most deeply resonant of the particularities and complexities of Brazilian national identity.

Candomblé, Umbanda, Xangô, Tambor de Mina, Tambor de Nagô, Terecô, Pajelança, Catimbó, Batuque, and Macumba are among the names by which Afro-Brazilian religions are known in various regions of the nation. Most of these traditions have roots in nineteenth-century Brazilian slave societies and are the creation...