Abstract
The book brings together scholars from multiple disciplines to examine microhistories and written narratives, well-crafted public ritual, and social expressions and celebrations in ways that "move beyond analyses of African diasporic religious traditions that consider their Christian dimensions as inherently exogenous, imposed elements that enslaved or disenfranchised populations of African origins or descent" (1). The celebrations illustrated here create spaces and performances wherein freed and enslaved Africans and other agents were able to organize, express, and further cause political change, unity, and the mobilization of resistance to regimes of power of all levels. [...]the book's unifying current is a way to think through Afro-Atlantic religiosity that does away with tropes of survivalist syncretism-one that has been based on passive acceptance of a dominant religious doctrine that masks actions, beliefs, and worship of African-derived religions-and instead pivots the discourse to how such important Afro-Catholic festivals in the Americas are richly coherent and influential spiritual platforms for the negotiations of people of African birth and their descendants throughout the Americas. Departing from the idea that they originate solely with Buffalo Bill's 1884-85 Wild West tour, the actions of Mardi Gras Indians can be understood through the optic of the sangamento performances and related to Moorish and Christian battle reenactments as the military organization of the gangs; the strict hierarchy; the presence of the spy boy, flag boy, and medicine man; the importance of the pennant; the feathered headwear; the twirling of umbrellas by secondliners; and the modus operandi of the performance (the parade, meeting of the enemies, heated discussions, mock fights, the bowing of the defeated group) reveal striking parallels.
