Simulating fisherfolk and performing heritage through ritual, history, and nostalgia

Abstract

Drawing on its reputation as the first official fishing colony in Brazil, a community in the periphery of Rio de Janeiro hosts some unique rituals, such as the annual Catholic procession on St. Peter’s day and the anniversary of the colony’s foundation with the presence of the Navy band. After a big fire destroyed most of the mangrove surrounding the colony in 1975, people strived to create spaces of order to offset what was perceived as a loss of the familiar. By forging a conception of the mangrove as heritage and enacting selected replays of the past, residents succeed in granting legitimacy to what would otherwise be a simulacrum of a fishing colony. According to residents, the rituals are performed in order ‘not to let the colony’s identity die’, and to preserve the most important ‘heritage’ in the colony, the mangrove. This paper focuses on people’s readings of history and on the local versions of how the mangrove was sculpted over time. It explores people’s nostalgic perception of land and community after the mangrove became environmentally precarious and started being administered by the municipal Department of Environment. Nostalgia mediates the tension between tradition and progress, refashioning the mangrove as a moral agent and re-negotiating the paradoxical outcomes of development.