Blood & Sugar, Places & History
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Lodging in Salvador: Apartments and Guesthouses
A Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos (The Church Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks) is located in and dominates the Largo do Pelourinho. The church was built over a period of a hundred years or so beginning in 1704, by the enslaved members of O Irmandade de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Pretos do Pelourinho (The Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Black Men of Pelourinho) for their own use (they weren't allowed inside the other churches, you see). One probably would be hard-pressed to find many other churches with statues of black saints so prominently and forthrightly displayed. Work on the church was always done at night so that the slaves' normal daytime work would carry on uninterrupted. The Tuesday evening Mass (6 p.m.) is accompanied by (in part) African drumming and Yoruban liturgy.
A Igreja de São Francisco (The Church of Saint Francis) and its attached convent are up the cobbled streets and to the left at the far side of the Terreio de Jesus, standing at the end of an adjacent square (Praça Anchieta), beyond a large stone cross. This is where sweat was turned into splendor, and where the descendents of those not allowed to enter in centuries past now gather en masse for Tuesday evening masses (held at 6:00 p.m.). The place is awash in gold leaf, and it hosts a rococo gallery of saints and angels which, again, one would be hard-pressed to find in any other church -- lasciviously voluptuous cherubim (putti), others cockily propped, one arm raised, one hand resting on thrusting hips, protuberant manhoods now chastely and crudely excised -- all carved, of course, by slaves.
Thijs Weststeijn has a beautifully conceived and written monograph on the cloister azulejos here...
Above is a scene from the film O Pagador de Promessas ( The Payer - or Keeper - of Promises, which won the 1962 Palm d'Or at Cannes), set on the steps leading up to the Igreja do Passo. It features capoeira by Mestre Canjiquinha (1925 - 1994) and several of his students, one of whom went by two apelidos (nicknames)...Gigante (because of his small stature), and Bigodinho (because of his little moustache). Irony lost out, and nowadays he is known as Mestre Bigodinho. The putative day is December 4th, date of the Festa de Santa Bárbara, which to this day remains the area's biggest festival).
As for Bahia's oldest church (or more accurately, oldest still existent church), that would be A Igreja da Nossa Senhora das Neves (The Church of Our Lady of the Snows) -- built in 1552 and situated on the Ilha de Maré (Tide Island, itself set in the northern end of the Baia de Todos os Santos). Construction was mandated by Bartolomeu Pires, a catholic priest and owner of one of the island's sugarcane plantations, and, not surprisingly, on the far side of the island a Nagô quilombo was founded (still existent today as the fishing village of Praia Grande -- "Big Beach").
The
Mercado Modelo is, in my estimation, and
in spite of being a tourist trap, pretty cool. It is located in
the lower city across the street from the Elevador Lacerda,
and is the old Customs House now transformed into a warehouse of
handicrafts stalls. The rear part of the structure is given over
to bars (very local) and restaurants (on the street level, and upstairs
on a huge balcony). If you want to buy in the Mercado Modelo be
prepared to haggle, and be prepared to shake off vendors insistent
on selling something to you whether you want to buy or not. I like
the (again, very local) scene behind the Mercado Modelo on the lower
level, though I could do without the noise level produced by the
capoeira there; the drumming reflects from the overhanging roof
and can make conversation difficult.
The site of the old Mercado Modelo is now occupied by a statue by Mário Cravo, the statue officially entitled "Fonte da Rampa do Mercado" ("Fountain of the Market Ramp") but more commonly referred to by locals as "A Bunda" ("The Butt").
And a couple of hundred yards beyond this aptly nicknamed construction, out in the bay, there lies another christened comparison to a human part -- Jorge Amado's "belly button of Bahia" (o umbigo da Bahia) -- the Forte São Marcelo.
In 1912 the fort was actually used to bombard Salvador, in a battle of political succession! That little catamaran ferries vistors to the fort and back, leaving from the Terminal Marítimo (a nice enough but not terribly important little jaunt, the fort functioning as a something of a museum and housing a restaurant).
The Igreja de Bonfim commands a high position on the peninsula of Itapagipe (an area of land which spreads out from the cidade baixa into the bay) and is notable for being a place of veneration not only for Catholics but for Candomblistas. It is the endpoint of a yearly procession called the Lavegem do Bonfim (Washing of Bonfim), which is more accurately a reference to the washing of the church's steps by mães de santo (candomblé priestesses) who lead the procession from the Mercado Modelo to the igreja. This happens in mid-January, and the procession following the mães de santo is actually an enormous party, with drumming and dancing and eating and drinking slowly spreading from the area around the Mercado Modelo to the area around Bonfim. The church houses a curious room called Sala dos Milagres (Room of Miracles) where people leave votive offerings in thanks for cures, the votives forming a rather bizarre collection of hanging plastic replicas of multitudinous problematic body parts.
The Igreja do Bonfim is closely associated with fitas do Senhor do Bonfim ("fita" is "ribbon", and the Senhor do Bonfim is both Jesus Christ and his syncretized counterpart Oxalá), which are sold by wandering vendors both in Pelourinho and in front of the Igreja do Bonfim itself (unhappily, "sold" isn't really a very good way to put it, "pushed" and "foisted" being more like it). The idea behind the fitas is that they are tied around one's wrist with three knots, the knots corresponding to three wishes made as the knots are tied, and when the fabric wears out and the fita drops off...the wishes will be granted.
The length of the fitas (47 centimeters) corresponds to the length of the right arm of a statue of Jesus positioned on the church altar, the statue having been carved in Setúbal, Portugal during the 18th century. The original fitas do bonfim were first produced in 1809, in accordance with common Portuguese custom. They were made from silk, worn around the neck, and were hung with small medallions bearing saints' images. And they were used after a cure via miraculous intervention, after the placing of an image or wax representation of the affected body part within the church (per above).
You see them all over nowadays, one very common place to hang them being the rear view mirror of Salvador's taxi cabs (quite often together with a figa, a good luck charm used to ward off the evil eye).
The Faculdade de Medicina, located on the Terreiro de Jesus in Pelourinho, was the first medical school in Brazil (founded in 1808). It's a beautiful structure (originally the Colégio dos Jesuitas and currently in the process of being renovated), and it houses a couple of museums, the most interesting being the Museu Afro-Brasileiro (to the left as one enters the building). The museum's collection deals principally with artifacts and explanations (in Portuguese) having to do with the arrival of Africans in Bahia and the resulting cultural links between Bahia and Africa. Of particular interest are the enormous and awe-inspiring wood carvings of orixás by Carybé in a back room (you may have to ask how to get there).
Hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a five real entrance charge. There is a modest website here.
Beneath the Museu Afro-Brasileiro is the Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, worth a stroll (no extra charge) displaying artifacts unearthed in the Salvador area, from Indian utensils to remnants of colonial era living.
The Cruz Caida went up in 1999 and is set at the south end of Praça da Sé, on the bay side (to the west). It's a sculpture by Mário Cravo (of the Rampa do Mercado, above) representing the Igreja (Church) da Sé which stood in what is now the Praça da Sé and which, after standing for 380 years, was demolished in 1933 so that the city's streetcars (now long gone of course) might have a convenient looping-around point. The archbishop who authorized the church's destruction was paid off with a grand new residence close to Campo Grande, and an entire further block of colonial-era buildings went down along with the church. The praça has gone through a number of metamorphoses, to bus terminal, to public square, to bus terminal, back to badly conceived public square constantly in need of attention...
Located on the Praça da Piedade, the Gabinete is a reading library established in 1863...
You can get anything you want, at The feira is a vast labrynth of narrow passageways supplying the necessities of life in Bahia...religious articles of all types, incense, statuary, beads, plants and herbs, live chickens and goats, drums...there are vegetables and the products of butchers' stalls, tiny lunch stalls...beans and corn and farinha de mandioca, dendé and dried shrimp and peanuts and coconuts and banana leaves and garlic and clove and mint and cilantro, clay cooking vessels and wooden spoons and pots and pans. Most of the clay pottery comes from Maragogipinho, in the south Recôncavo. The Feira de São Joaquim is located on the water of the bay in the cidade baixa, just south of the ferry terminal, having moved to the spot in 1964 from Água de Meninos closeby when that feira burned down. Considering the two incarnations, it's been in existence since the 1920s.
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