Lay Religious Associations in Extractive Zones: A Case Study of Diamantina, Brazil

Abstract

This article considers religion in extractive zones by focusing on a religious practice in an extractive zone, namely, an Afro-Brazilian Irmandade (Catholic lay religious association) devoted to Our Lady of Mercy in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It adopts approaches from history and cultural studies to examine art, architecture, archives, and material culture, and brings these methodologies into conversation with Mary Louis Pratt’s notion of contact zones, Charles Long’s connection between these zones and new religious practices, Eduardo Gudynas’ definition of extraction, and Macarena Gómez-Barris’ decolonial methodologies for approaching the study of extractive zones. This study is contextualized in the history of mining in Brazil, the connection between mining and enslavement of Africans in the Americas, and the enduring legacy of lay religious associations in Brazil. The article then examines the association’s church, focusing on its late 18th and early 19th century façade and the statues at its main altar, and its 19th and 20th century maintenance records. It suggests that the Irmandades are engaged in a unique religious practice that arises within an extractive region because of specific historical, political, and social reasons, and that they give their members a place within the existing structures even as they challenge them.