A Refuge in Thunder: Candombl and Alternative Spaces of Blackness by Rach - Essay Example

Yet certainly, as I looked at Bahia and the other religious experiences that Harding reviewed, I felt that the ratio of Christianity to African religion had been overwhelmingly towards the white end in America while in Latin America it was very different. Voodoo, Santeria, Rastafarianism... these are very different. I was also reminded harshly of the way that, in Latin America, blackness is more complicated and yet still as important. We have a sharp divide between white, black, Asian, Latina/o, etc. But in Latin America, commingling and miscegenation between the native population, the slaves and the European settlers created a combination of skin tones and features ranging from almost entirely native to largely white. There's an informal array of power based off that. Finally, I was astonished by the way that the Salvadoran and Brazilian experience in everything from slavery to the vagabond issue varied from the American one.