“I respect your amen, do you respect my axé?”: an ethnographic study on candomblé terreiros as resistance organizations in the light of a decolonial perspective

Abstract

This article aims to understand how candomblé terreiros organize themselves as resistance to religious racism. Therefore, we developed an ethnographic research in a Candomblé Center of the Ketu Axé Oxumaré nation, located in Belo Horizonte (MG). Data from the interviews were submitted to narrative analysis. The results suggest that candomblé is perceived by the members of the casa de santo as a strategy, an organization for not only physical survival but also for subaltern lifestyles. It is about the resistance of Afro-Brazilian culture, an anti-colonial resistance that promotes, through religion, the political belonging of affirmation of blackness. It is a decolonial organization of survival, maintenance, and, above all, the perpetuation of traditions and ways of life in neglected, debased, denied, and subalternized terreiros by coloniality.