“Building Community through Death”: Freed African Religiosity and Faith-Based Social Networks in Nineteenth-Century Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

This article adds to existing discussions on slave religions by offering the analysis of four post-mortem testaments left behind formerly enslaved African women in nineteenth-century Salvador da Bahia elucidate different roles that faith and religiosity played within their lives, communities, understandings self. After contextualizing these primary sources relevant historiography descendant Atlantic societies, it focuses centrality baptisms, strong pleas for forgiveness, elaborate funerary arrangements, irmandade membership, lives spent precepts Roman Catholicism present testaments. It also considers realities enslavement trade as important factors shaped considerations freed Africans when faced with imminence death. In a world where life was fleeting, death became major site community formation, assertion principles, exercising agency. The proximity societies libertos’ justice honor, well final rites they required dignified passage afterworld. concludes diaspora constantly managed, negotiated, enlarged small spaces self-determination, preservation recreation identities which were left, while carved out other parallel themselves. Among these, Catholic-derived religious communities affiliations, continuation creative adaptation practices, essential importance formations libertos.