In South America, African-inspired religions gain more followers

MONTEVIDEO: Thousands of devotees of different African-based religions on Friday flocked to the waterfront of the Uruguayan capital, part of an annual Feb. 2 offering to the Yoruba goddess of fertility and prosperity, Yemanjá.

“Water represents a return to freedom, to native Africa,” said Mother Susana Andrade, known as “Mae Susana de Oxum”, the president of the Afro-Umbandista Federation of Uruguay. “It was a way to escape the horrors of slavery and humanize the natural world.”

Followers of African-based religions are on the rise in South America new data shows, a reflection of how the region’s African heritage is gaining a greater voice beyond Brazil where such traditions are widely recognized. Surveys on religious beliefs in Argentina and Uruguay point to a rising number of people who identify with African-inspired faiths. Sasha Curti, who was brought up in a predominantly Catholic Uruguayan family had come down to Ramirez beach in Montevideo with members of her Umbanda temple to give thanks to Yemanjá.

“We are no longer hidden,” said Curti, who works as a hair stylist specializing in afro hair, a change she attributed to greater education about their history. “There is still a lot of discrimination and work that needs to be done.”

Along Ramirez beach, groups were digging shallow altars in the sand, laying candles, watermelons and corn as offerings to Yemanjá often called the sea queen to ask for good fortune.

Umbanda, like its sister Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, was first popularized in northeastern Brazil and has its roots in the transatlantic slave trade. Worshipers blended native Yoruba beliefs from Africa with elements of Catholicism and local Indigenous traditions creating syncretic religions so that they would go undetected by Europeans, according to researchers.