Environmental Racism and the Suppression of Natural Liturgical Spaces of the African Rooted Religions: Dilemmas between Public Policies of Environmental Preservation and of Protection to Afro-Brazilian Cultural Manifestations

Abstract

The African-Brazilian religions hold intrinsic relationship between man and nature, featuring many rituals that use the natural landscape as a worship place. In the past, much of this space was within the territorial limits of yards known in Portuguese as “terreiros”, being also called bush space, coexisting with the urban space. However, due to the urban density of population, there has been a continuous process of deterritorialization of liturgical African religious spaces, demanding thus their reframing, characterized by the search for remaining green spaces in cities for the continuation of such practices. However, the historical use of these spaces is being threatened by the so-called environmental racism, embodied by the ban imposed by the government on the liturgical use of preservation of natural areas, which constitutes a threat to the future of these religious practices due to the overvaluation of preservation environment. In this sense, this paper analyzes the impact of the practice of environmental racism on the African-Brazilian religious cults and identify public policies to reconcile environmental conservation and the preservation of African-Brazilian cultural manifestation. It is concluded that the existing confrontation between two conceptions apparently antagonistic: orthodox x multiculturalism environmentalism can effectively be overcome from maintaining a dialogue to reconcile the interests of these two aspects. Such harmonization can be achieved through existing legal instruments in Brazilian law, the example of the City Statute and the Federal Decree 3.551/00.