ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes late nineteenth-century demographic changes in both cities and the transformations in religious practices that marked the consolidation and expansion of GegeNag candombls. It uses a variety of sources and methodologies, combining oral history, ethnographic data, and archival sources. Nineteenth-century Cachoeira and So Flix were centers of slave plantation agriculture and the ethnic composition of their large slave populations reflected the long-standing links between Bahia and West Africa. The growing number of candombls that appeared in cities at the end of the nineteenth century reflected the central role that Afro-Bahian religions played in the lives of the lower class. Candombls provided social services, and the evolution of their rituals and beliefs mirrored the gradual merging of religious cultures as Gege preeminence gave way to Nag predominance. The religious beliefs and rituals that survived in these communities reflected the ethnic composition of those slave shipments that had supplied the workforce for the surrounding plantations before the 1850s.
