wigstheone
Nov 30, 01, 8:33 am
SALVADOR DA BAHIA, Brazil — Take a heaping of skinless black- eyed beans, pound into a paste, add onions, deep-fry in palm oil, cool and slice open. Stuff with coconut-flavored shrimp, nuts, chili peppers and cilantro — and you have acarajé, the savory, African-inspired fritter that is as integral a part of life here as soccer or samba.
But these days you also have a recipe for unending controversy.
Acarajé (pronounced uh-kar-uh- ZHAY) is inextricably linked to candomblé, a mixture of Roman Catholicism and African polytheism that is the dominant faith in this lush, tropical port city of 2.2 million, Brazil's third largest. By tradition, acarajé vendors are considered "daughters of Iansă," the candomblé goddess of the wind. They dress in the same white hooped skirts and lace blouses as candomblé priestesses and set up their stalls at sites said to be chosen only after divine consultation.
But the dish has grown so popular in Brazil — and even abroad — that disputes involving religion, gender and race have pitted traditional vendors against newcomers over who has the right to make acarajé, how it should be prepared and where it can be sold.
In recent years, some vendors have converted to evangelical Protestant denominations and now refuse to wear the full traditional attire associated with the priestesses, particularly turbans and the jewelry that bears symbols of orixás, or deities.
"An acarajé vendor with her hair loose is not only unsanitary, it's also disrespectful to the orixás and makes my blood boil," said Regina dos Santos, 49, one of the city's best known vendors. "I learned how to make acarajé from my grandmother, who was a priestess, at the same time that she was teaching me about candomblé, and that's the way it should be."
The official position of the 3,200- member acarajé vendors' guild is that people of any religion, sex or race can sell the snack, so long as their product meets sanitary standards. But that does not satisfy some candomblé devotees, who take umbrage at kiosks advertising "Jesus' acarajé" and want the city to enforce a 1998 law that requires acarajé vendors to wear "garments that are in accordance with the traditions of Afro-Brazilian culture."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/30/international/30BRAZ.html
But these days you also have a recipe for unending controversy.
Acarajé (pronounced uh-kar-uh- ZHAY) is inextricably linked to candomblé, a mixture of Roman Catholicism and African polytheism that is the dominant faith in this lush, tropical port city of 2.2 million, Brazil's third largest. By tradition, acarajé vendors are considered "daughters of Iansă," the candomblé goddess of the wind. They dress in the same white hooped skirts and lace blouses as candomblé priestesses and set up their stalls at sites said to be chosen only after divine consultation.
But the dish has grown so popular in Brazil — and even abroad — that disputes involving religion, gender and race have pitted traditional vendors against newcomers over who has the right to make acarajé, how it should be prepared and where it can be sold.
In recent years, some vendors have converted to evangelical Protestant denominations and now refuse to wear the full traditional attire associated with the priestesses, particularly turbans and the jewelry that bears symbols of orixás, or deities.
"An acarajé vendor with her hair loose is not only unsanitary, it's also disrespectful to the orixás and makes my blood boil," said Regina dos Santos, 49, one of the city's best known vendors. "I learned how to make acarajé from my grandmother, who was a priestess, at the same time that she was teaching me about candomblé, and that's the way it should be."
The official position of the 3,200- member acarajé vendors' guild is that people of any religion, sex or race can sell the snack, so long as their product meets sanitary standards. But that does not satisfy some candomblé devotees, who take umbrage at kiosks advertising "Jesus' acarajé" and want the city to enforce a 1998 law that requires acarajé vendors to wear "garments that are in accordance with the traditions of Afro-Brazilian culture."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/30/international/30BRAZ.html