Devotees take part in rituals and offer gifts in celebration of Yemanja Day, in Brazil, on February 2, 2012. Yemanja is an orisha, patron of the ocean, according to Afro-Brazilian religions. Photo: RAUL SPINASSE/AGENCIA A TARDE/AE. All rights reservedCharismatic Christianity is on the rise across Brazil. Even Rio, a famously libertine city, elected an evangelical mayor last year. Now, evangelical Protestantism is so far-reaching in Rio that even some of the city’s most notorious drug dealers claim to be spreading the gospel.
I study violence in Latin America, and I have observed a sharp increase in reports of religiously motivated crimes in Rio de Janeiro over the past year, in particular attacks on “terreiros” - the temples belonging to the Candomblé and Umbanda faiths.
Brazil’s Evangelical Turn
Persecution of these Afro-Brazilian religions, whose adherents are largely poor black Brazilians, has been around since the 19th century. But studies in Rio - both mine and those of other crime researchers - suggest that the current wave of religious bigotry is more pointed, and more violent, than in the past.
