Urban Sorcery, Segregation, and Ethnographic Spectacle in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro

Abstract In twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro, police and local authorities addressed “black magic practices” through surveillance regulation that were related to new cartographic discursive imaginaries of urban reform segregation. Police raids a common occurrence, journalists who wrote about sorcerers sorcery participated in mapping Janeiro’s imaginaries. This article examines set public health laws policing tactics monitored the activities poor women Afro-Brazilian spirituality under assumption their practices constituted black magic. Accusations witchcraft represented spectacle which ideas adapted from eugenics racial science planning capitalist modernity enacted. Equally important, scenes present an important counter-narratives demonstrate ways residents deployed strategic performances as fortunetellers counter narratives considered bodies be heterodox inadequate for secular modernity.