History Hidden in a children’s game (part 2)
Another example of this incorporation of local memories and concerns into the Boi, is that the healer cures the ox with the help of Saint Benedict. One of the few Black saints in Catholic iconography — and an important symbol of Afro-Brazilian cults in other regions of Brazil, such as the Tambor de Criola — I can imagine this inclusion as a way of dealing with the spiritual power and medicine of healers from the African diaspora. The most talented doctor of the South of the Island of Santa Catarina at the end of the 19th century, for example, was Batuel Cunha, who practiced at the foot of Morro do Lampião. He acquired a large plot of land there as a reward for his success as a doctor, something uncommon for Black people at that time.
Maricota exhibits the same phenomenon. After the departure of various animals from the zoo, a dancer arrives on stage, dressed as a large blonde doll. His swirling steps throw his long arms all over the hall. This character emerged from encounters with German women: blonde, tall, and lacking the graceful movement of the local women, they confused the traditional inhabitants. A traditional Maricota song illustrates this association with German food: “ She is big, a big woman; She eats rice and beans; But what does she eat to become so tall? Cabbage and potatoes.” Cabbage and potatoes are the classic foods associated with Germans in the south of Brazil: they inscribed their confusion with this new diet into the story they told in the Boi de Mamão.
But it is Bernunça, the symbol of the Boi de Mamão, that most clearly shows how this popular ritual both conceals and reveals the history of the Island. To analyze this, we have to go back to the Azoreans who came to populate the coast of Santa Catarina.
With the Spanish Inquisition, many Jews and New Christians — involuntary converts to Catholicism — fled Spain for Portugal. A generation or two later, with the arrival of the Inquisition in Lisbon, they fled again, this time to Morocco, Istanbul, Holland, Pernambuco … and the Azores. Not all the inhabitants of the Azores were Jewish or New Christians in the 18th century, but a strong Jewish tradition persisted. Synagogues, schools, and rabbis practiced somewhat secretly, but there was more religious freedom than in the urban centers of the empire. Staring in the 1750s, the Portuguese crown sent this mixed population to colonize the coast of Santa Catarina.
In interviews with various experts of the Boi tradition, they explained to me that the “Bernunça” is a mispronunciation of “renunciation.” A poem by Claudio Santoro makes the same argument.
The cry of the Bernunça baptizes,
announces.
It opens the way, opens
its mouth, tears
everything from its place,
swallows gulp by gulp,
and returns in a single blow not
what it had swallowed,
but something new,
the
fruit of renunciation.
Abrenuntio Dominum.
But what is the connection between “renunciation” and this monster in a folkloric ritual? Something that frightens and swallows?
All the children on the island know the song of Bernunça :
Olé, olé, alé olé olá,
Get out of the way, the bernunça wants to pass.
I was working when I heard about the war.
But it was only the bernunça that was coming down the mountain.
Bernunça is a fierce animal, it swallowed Mané João;
It eat bread, it eats biscuits, it eats everything they give you."
Renunciation defines the new Christian: renouncing Judaism and affirming oneself as a Roman Catholic is what opens access to the assets of the Portuguese state and its colony in Santa Catarina. The bread and biscuits eaten by the bernuça may also point to the host, the small wafer New Christians would be forced to eat to prove they were not backsliding into Judaism.
At the narrative climax of the traditional Bois de Mamão, the Bernunça, animated by several men, moves its immense mouth and pulls children from the audience inside itself. The monster swallows, incorporates. In some variations of the Boi, the Bernunça regurgitates the child; in others, the Bernunça gives birth to a little Bernunça — a new puppet where the swallowed child becomes an improvised actor. This experience inspires fear in many children — my daughter was terrified of the Bernunça — a fear that reflects the true fear of the Jews devoured by an enemy belief … and then transformed into it.
This is exactly what Bernuça represents: it literally devours Jewish children and transforms them into almost unrecognizable little Christians..
Different versions of the script used by different Bois give even more evidence that the renunciation of Judaism founds this ritual. For example, many versions play with the name Matthew, the owner of the ox. After the Herald declares that the ox "seems like something divine," the priest accuses Matthew of atheism.
The Priest [ interfering furiously ]
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is sacrilege ! To say that Is an ox divine? Are you crazy? Who owns that ox? You atheist, you atheist, you atheist !
Matthew
My name is Matthew, Your Excellency, and I am not an atheist. It 's Matthew, like the name of the holy apostle.
Here we hear the echo of the legal defenses of the new Christian, accused by the Inquisition. “I’d as good a Christianas the apostles!”
When the healer performs the magic to resurrect the ox, we understand even more the Jewish basis of the Boi:
Healer
By the symbol of Solomon
Audience
By the symbol of Solomon
Healer
I bless you with the blessed candle on Passover Friday.
Audience
I bless you with the blessed candle on Passover Friday.
Healer
The sun has thirteen rays.
The moon has thirteen rays.
Jump demon to hell
For this soul is not yours.
The “Symbol of Solomon” is the Star of David within a circle; it is a symbol of Kabbalah, the system of magic and mysticism of the Sephardic Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. The “blessed candle" has an important role in Catholicism, but a candle lit on Friday is a Jewish practice, since after sunset on Friday becauseone cannot light a candle on Shabbat — and even more the Passover Candle. And finally, thirteen — “thirteen rays of the sun … thirteen rays of the moon” — is an ominous number in Christianity, but a divine number in Kabbalah, where it represents the number of gifts God bestowed upon the people of Israel.