RELIGIOSITY AND POPULAR CULTURE IN SALVADOR'S CARNIVAL: SYNCRETISM, IDENTITY, AND RESISTANCE

Abstract

This article analyzes the intersection between Afro-Brazilian religiosity, popular culture, and social resistance in the Salvador Carnival, investigating how afro blocks and afoxés project symbols, corporeality, and liturgical principles of Candomblé into the festive public space of the Bahia capital. The research addresses religious syncretism as a historical strategy of ontological survival and cultural preservation, examining the construction of Black identity and the active confrontation of institutionalized religious racism. In hermeneutical dialogue with Liberation Theology, particularly Leonardo Boff's contributions regarding the dignity of the oppressed and the defense of life, the study interprets street carnival as an arena of liberation, assertion of rights, and counter-hegemony. Methodologically, it adopts a qualitative bibliographic and documentary approach, engaging classical social and religious scholars (Roger Bastide, Pierre Verger, Michel Agier, Reginaldo Prandi, Mikhail Bakhtin, João José Reis, and Muniz Sodré) alongside contemporary empirical and ethnographic studies (Claudia Novaes Machado and research on pedagogical and bodily practices in Ilê Aiyê). It demonstrates that the Salvador Carnival transcends mere commercialized entertainment, configuring a sacred and political territory of ancestral preservation, community pedagogy, and production of symbolic spaces of resistance.