Do congo à congada: ressignificações do cristianismo congo nas relações afrodiaspóricas goianas

Abstract

This monograph investigates how Congo Christianity, as a religious and cosmological matrix of Bantu origin, has been reinterpreted in contemporary Goiás Congada, understood as a territory of memory, spirituality, and Afro-diasporic resistance. The study's general objective is to analyze the continuities and transformations of Congo Christianity in Congada practices, unfolding into specific objectives that include understanding pre-colonial Congo, examining the agencies produced in the encounter with European Catholicism, analyzing the reworkings of the Bantu diaspora in Brazil, and interpreting the Congada as a space of ancestry and storytelling. The research combines a literature review, sensitive listening, analysis of oral, visual, and literary sources, and the method of historiographical storytelling, allowing us to traverse the silences of the colonial archive and access the bodily memories present in the festival. The results reveal that the Congada in Goiás maintains central principles of Congo cosmology, demonstrating that there was no passive assimilation into Catholicism, but rather the creation of unique forms of Afro-Brazilian religiosity. The political role of the Congada as a space for resistance to racism, community strengthening, and preservation of black pedagogies is also evident. It is concluded that the Congada constitutes a living archive of the Bantu diaspora in the Midwest, reaffirming the vitality of black epistemologies and the need to expand research on Afro-Brazilian religiosities in Goiás.