Sarau da onça: da ação pastoral comboniana à afirmação da identidade negra no bairro Sussuarana em Salvador-BA

Abstract

This research arises from the desire to understand the experience of a group of youth of “Sarau da Onça”. The project "Sarau da Onça" is a meeting of youth who make poetry, from the neighborhood of Sussuarana, in Salvador, promoted initially by the Comboni missionaries (a Catholic congregation). Through poetry in meetings, there is a sharing of the realities of discrimination, racism and rejection. In the form of literary languages of peripheral resistance, these poetry of affirmation and revaluation of black identity, are changing the way of living of this youth. Through interviews inside and outside the field because of the pandemic, this research sought to identify, in the events of Sarau da Onça, the processes that provide the construction of black identity as a new form of resistance to racial discrimination in the city. The issues addressed in this research, namely afro pastoral and the construction of identity in Sarau da Onça, seek to understand two dimensions of this process: the repercussions of this learning on the life of the participants and the unforeseen consequences (at least for religious) of personal motivations, that led these black youth to conform to the Afro-Brazilian Religions, as a source of identity, resistance and black pride, abandoning Roman Catholic Church to accept the "call of the ancestors", as they claim. From this point of view, the research problematized the ways in which conversion takes place, in this case, formerly Catholic´s youth who rediscover themselves in another religious experience. It historicizes the Catholic Church's discovery of the race problem, shows how this problem was faced by the Comboni missionaries, and points out the process of identity construction in the Sarau da Onça.