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Remembering the Baroque Era: Historical Consciousness, Local Identity and the Holy Week Celebrations in a Former Mining Town in Brazil

This article looks at how historical consciousness has been constructed and sustained through the Holy Week celebrations in Campanha, a small former gold mining town in southern Minas Gerais, Brazil. By drawing on ethnographic and archival material, it argues that ritual experiences play a critical role in shaping conceptions of the past. In Campanha, as in other former mining towns of the region, Holy Week is structured around a highly theatrical, “baroque” template and accompanied by a colonial musical repertoire. The celebration provides the local population with a context for a direct encounter with the town's glorious golden past, and for this reason it has become a major emblem of local identity. Yet in its efforts to implement the directives of Vatican II, the church is striving to eradicate “elitist” practices of the past and this is threatening the continuity of the Holy Week festivities. The confrontations between church officials and the faithful that this situation has generated have heightened local historical consciousness, but they have also drawn attention to the distinct conceptions of history held within the town. Ultimately, these differences rest upon disparate orientations to religiosity itself: while the clergy struggle to instate a “modern”, “popular” church, the local population engage in Holy Week as a source for “baroque experiences” that renew their links with the past.