In São Paulo, Brazil, Latin America's largest city, the periferia, the periphery or working class neighborhoods in the city's outskirts, has a population that is predominately Afro-descendant with many being migrants or the children of migrants from Brazil's northeast region.  Many residents from these historically marginalized communities have faced discrimination based on race, class, and ethnicity.  They also experience higher rates of income inequality and violence in comparison to other areas of the city. 

In regards to violence, the Atlas da Violência 2020 (Violence Atlas 2020), which was compiled by the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (Applied Economic Research Institute), found that in 2018 Afro-descendants made up 75.7% of homicide victims in Brazil.¹  Additionally, between 2008 and 2018, the homicide rate for whites decreased 12.9% while it increase 11.5% for Black Brazilians.²  These numbers become more concerning when focused on Black male youth between the ages of 15 and 29. Homicide is the leading causing of death for this age group, and they make up over 53% of Brazil’s homicides in 2018.³ This disparity is also true in São Paulo when comparing homicide rates in the periphery versus higher income neighborhoods.

There are 10.44 deaths per 10,000 inhabitants in this age group in the Campo Limpo district, which is located in the south side periphery of the city while in Vila Mariana, a upper middle class neighborhood, the indicator for this type of crime drops to 0.642. Afro-Brazilian activists and intellectuals have labeled the high level of violence experienced by Black urban youth as a contemporary genocide that urgently needs to be addressed. 

Artists from São Paulo’s periphery communities have used their cultural productions as means of addressing the epidemic of violence their youth experience.⁴  An all male, Black theater group from São Paulo’s south side, Teatro Terreiro Encantado, calls upon the popular traditions based in their home communities to address this crisis impacting Brazil’s urban Black youth. This digital humanities project, therefore, examines how Black masculine bodies’ engagement with ritual as a form of cultural resistance in Teatro Terreiro Encantado’s theatrical work are rooted in Afro-centric cultural and spiritual practices that critique state violence against Afro-Brazilians by calling upon the legacy of slavery to frame the current genocide of Black male youth in São Paulo’s urban periphery. 


In a conversation with the author⁵, the founder and director of the theater group, Cleydson Catarina, highlighted the political nature of the group's work by centering the experiences of marginalized Black masculinities:

É um grupo de corpos pretos masculinos que trazem discussão sobre esses corpos.

It’s a group of Black masculine bodies that introduce a discussion about these bodies.
(author's translation)

The actors in the group use their own bodies as Black men framed by rituals rooted in African and Catholic spiritual traditions to understand how violence has marked the bodies of Black Brazilian youth and to find ways to survive and ultimately resist the lasting impacts of violence and white supremacy.

Explore the sections below to better understand the group's connection to the larger tradition of theater as a form of cultural activism in the periphery as well as the different cultural practices preserved and the social issues addressed through its dramatic works.