| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Caribbean and Latin America

Elizabeth W. Kiddy. Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2005. Pp. xvi, 287. $55.00.
In 1642, the ambassador from Kongo entered Recife, Brazil, escorted by costumed dance troupes brandishing weapons to honor their homeland and hosts. Remarkably similar dances, performed by congada troupes from the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks, continue to be performed, according to Elizabeth W. Kiddy, the author of this impressive new study of lay religious organizations of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Kiddy's book is a thorough-going investigation of the meaning and function of devotional groups in the lives of enslaved and free Africans and their descendents in colonial and postcolonial Brazil.	1
In this book, the first major study of black brotherhoods in thirty years, Kiddy argues that the African slaves created "transnational and multiethnic communities" that "celebrated" spiritual powers of Catholic and African traditions, cultivated "unseen powers," and provided for a better afterlife through rituals and symbols during their activities in the rosary brotherhoods (p. 5). She explains that their religious life and ideas blossomed into a rich alternative tradition under the aegis of the church, adapting to historical conditions in Brazil. Rather than merely sketch the trajectory of beliefs or institutions, however, Kiddy weaves an intricate tapestry of the four centuries of the religious brotherhoods in Minas Gerais, drawing together information on the brotherhoods' institutional development, related political and economic circumstances, the history of race relations and social status, and the devotional practices of Luso-Brazilian Catholicism.	. . .

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