THE BAHIANIZAÇAO OF GOIANO BLACKNESS: HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS IN THE BANTU DIASPORA IN GOIÁS (18TH–19TH CENTURIES) AND IN 20TH- CENTURY IDENTITY RECONSTRUCTIONS

Abstract

This article examines, from a historical and anthropological perspective, the hypothesis of the “Bahianization of Black Goiás”, understood as the contemporary predominance of Afro-Bahian, Yoruba-based references in shaping Black identity in the state of Goiás, in contrast with the historically documented Bantu composition of the African diaspora in the region. Drawing on documentary sources analyzed extensively by Mary Karasch and Maria Lemke Loiola — including post-mortem inventories, baptismal records, bills of sale of enslaved people, ecclesiastical documents, and Black Rosary brotherhood archives — the study demonstrates that, between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, African presence in Goiás was fundamentally Central-African, rooted in societies from the former Kongo, Angola, and Benguela regions. Cultural practices such as congadas, moçambiques, devotional rituals, and community-based forms of sociability structured Black life in the region.

Throughout the twentieth century, however, urbanization, cultural whitening policies, liturgical reforms, and institutional silencing weakened the intergenerational transmission of these Bantu traditions, producing a symbolic void. In this context, Afro-Bahian repertoires — disseminated through candomblé (Nagô/Yoruba), the aesthetics of the orixás, Afro-Bahian musical movements, and the national cultural industry — became hegemonic references of Blackness, particularly among urban Black movements and religious houses linked to Bahian liturgical networks. The article proposes the concept of “Bahianization” as an analytical category to describe this symbolic shift, not as a delegitimization of contemporary practices but as a tool to understand the overlapping identity layers, memory disputes, and coexistence of the historical Bantu matrix with the contemporary Yoruba symbolic matrix. The study concludes that Black identity in Goiás is plural, formed through historical, political, and cultural layers that interact, create tensions, and reinvent themselves continuously.