Brazil Welcomes in New Year With a 15th-Century Africa-Based Rite

Before midnight they will gather around altars built in the sand. Dressed in white robes, adorned with beads and charms, chanting and swaying to the rhythm of drums, they will offer prayers and gifts to Iemanja, the sea-dwelling mother of gods.

As 1992 expires and the new year begins, millions of candle-bearing devotees of Umbanda will trace the coast of Brazil with flickering strands of light during a New Year’s Eve celebration whose origins go back to 15th-Century Africa.

Once practiced primarily by the poor black descendants of slaves, these venerable rites now include celebrants of all colors and social standings, including the most chic members of Brazilian society.

“All classes are going into these practices,” said Jose Neistein, director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington. “Umbanda provides hope and inspiration for all.”

Official statistics indicate that roughly 90% of Brazilians are Roman Catholics. But religious cults originating in Africa and brought to Brazil by slaves during the Portuguese colonial period--1500 to 1822--are widely popular.

Even though adherents pervade the culture, their exact numbers are hard to determine because most identify themselves as Catholic.

“Umbanda is almost a national religion, practiced by huge numbers,” said J. Lorand Matory of Harvard University, a specialist in Afro-American cultures. “It’s becoming an assertion of Brazilian national identity as a unique melding of European and African culture.”

Practiced most heavily along Brazil’s south central coast, Umbanda is similar to Haitian and Cuban voodoo, which sprang from the same African soil.

Umbanda is a somewhat westernized form of a more fundamentalist Africa-inspired religion, Candomble, which is practiced in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, the original port of entry for Ewe and Yoruba slaves who brought their beliefs with them.

Increasingly popular among a cross-section of Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Umbanda puts less emphasis on animal sacrifices and malevolent “black magic” than does Candomble.

But on holidays of the gods, affluent Brazilians nevertheless celebrate Umbanda’s origins by feasting and surrounding themselves with rich displays of African fabrics and ritual objects.

“Candomble and Umbanda, like other African religious practices, don’t make as big a deal as Christians do about the radical difference between the angels and the devils, those things that are purely good versus purely bad,” Matory said.

A central figure in the Umbanda pantheon is Iemanja, the sea goddess and, in an elaborate African legend, mother of three chief divinities: thunder, rivers and evil.

Like many other Umbanda and Candomble gods, Iemanja has a counterpart in Catholicism: the Virgin Mary. But the Umbanda version is far more human. She can be vain, spiteful and capricious, as well as magnanimous.

Iemanja’s tumultuous celebration takes place on New Year’s Eve on some of Brazil’s most popular beaches, including Rio’s Ipanema and Copacabana, within hailing distance of high-rise hotels and apartments, sophisticated nightclubs and incessant traffic.

Hundreds of thousands of worshipers, spectators and tourists mill about the beaches beginning early in the day. As evening falls, the scent of candles mingles with the fresh sea air and acrid gunpowder from exploding fireworks.

Priests, priestesses and merrymakers smoke cigars and drink cachaca , a potent, cheap rum. Some religious leaders tell fortunes and exorcise devils. Dancers whirl in apparent ecstasy to the throbbing drums.

At midnight, all head for the foaming surf, where they toss in their gifts, many of which are meant to appease Iemanja’s feminine vanity: flowers, lipstick, mirrors, beads and other adornments. Some celebrants wade in as far as possible and launch their presents aboard miniature blue-and-white sailboats.

According to tradition, the offerings that are carried out to sea are accepted by the goddess, and favors are granted. Return of gifts on the rolling breakers indicates displeasure.

Although the New Year’s revelries rival the springtime carnival in popularity and exuberance, and many are drawn to the beaches by the sheer spectacle, the underlying religious intentions are serious and last year-round. Devotees believe that during rituals, they may be possessed by the spirits to whom they are appealing.

Matory said that Umbanda and Candomble offer Brazilians spiritual benefits they don’t find in Catholicism.

“Brazilians like to appeal much more to personal friendships and feelings and contacts than to rigid, formal institutional structures of the sort that the Catholic Church often represents,” he said. “During possession, you can speak directly to these spirits and negotiate ways around your problems.”