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Photographs and text through Stephanie Foden
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with restrictions around the world, we present a new series, The World Through a Lens, in which photojournalists help you send it, virtually, to some of the most charming and intriguing places on our planet. This week, Stephanie Foden stores a collection of photographs of the Brazilian state of Bahia.
The first time I told someone traveling to Salvador, I was discouraged from going there, heading south, bordering the coast, when a Brazilian woman I had befriended at an inn explained the gravity of the situation. It was the crime and how I was robbed.
Despite your warning, I’ve been there.
As a naive 22-year-old naive backpacker, I’m not one to replace my plans based on a person’s advice. From what I had read about the area, it is dynamic and unlike any other component in Brazil. But when I arrived at my hostel in Pelourinho, Salvador’s caramel-colored old town and a UNESCO World Heritage site, I continued to hear warnings that the city is unsafe.
As a general rule, when I get to a new place, I go out to explore each and every corner and run. I walk down the alleys and I like to get lost before I find my way back. This time it was different. I felt shy and insecure where to go, some streets, warned me, were forbidden areas, I could not rest or enjoy the city.
The next day I met an eccentric Brazilian with a hobby for the state of Bahia and the rest of northeastern Brazil, it’s refreshing to hear his edition of Salvador, we’ve become quick friends and he’s become my guide, appearing everywhere. City It is lovely to see the position through your eyes.
I fell in love Salvador. Me fell in love, so much so that, before I knew it, months had passed, then years. I savioured my house for almost a decade.
I have sought to share with others the edition of the village that I met and enjoyed, the edition described through the outstanding editor Baiano Jorge Amado: “The village of Bahia, black and religious, is almost as mysterious as the green sea”.
Photographing here has been a joy: the colors are abundant, the brightness soft and the other people, they are everything. Even in a country as culturally exclusive as Brazil, the state of Bahia still leaves me aside like no other. There are sounds, smells, food and music are expressed in this area, at any time you can listen to drums in the streets, smell the aroma of the moqueca (a fish stew with coconut milk) or meet an organization of capoeiristas (Afro-Brazilian martial arts dancers). ).
Salvadoran culture comes from its African influences: about 80% of the city’s population is of African descent, according to figures from the 2010 census.
The city was once one of the largest slave trading ports in America. For more than three hundred years, starting in the 16th century, around 4. 9 million enslaved Africans were transported to Brazil, according to knowledge of the transatlantic slave trade database. were taken to Bahia alone. By comparison, approximately 389,000 enslaved Africans were taken to the north american mainland in the same period.
Brazil was also the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. Today, despite centuries of repression, brutal remedy and collective trauma, African culture thrives in El Salvador, locating expression in afro-Brazilian music in the city, culinary, artistic. literary traditions.
Salvador faces many challenges. The state of Bahia is one of the least informed states of Brazil, it is also impoverished, suffers some of the country’s unemployment rates and, in recent years, economic inequality has come at a high price in the city.
Bahia has also stood out politically: it is one of 11 states, all grouped near northeastern Brazil, where Jair M. Bolsonaro, the far-right president, won the 2018 election.
His rhetoric has not made him popular with The Bayese. On a public occasion in 2017, Bolsonaro said that those who live in the quilombos, territories inhabited by descendants of slaves, many of whom are in Bahia, “are not even intelligent”. in procreation. “
It has also rejected the lifestyles of systemic racism and instituted policies that have harmed marginalized groups, although their popularity appears to be expanding among deficient Brazilians, i. e. thanks to recent housing and social coverage programs.
Coronavirus has exacerbated disorders in the region. More than 250,000 of Brazil’s 4. 3 million cases have been reported in Bahia. In the world, the country ranks third, only after the United States and India, in the total number of infections. . Bolsonaro, who himself infected, continually minimized the threat and called the Covid-19 a “miserable cold. “
As has been the case in other parts of the world, the pandemic has disproportionately affected Brazil’s deficient communities. Mortality rates in favelas, densely populated and deficient neighborhoods where around thirteen million Brazilians live were particularly higher than those in other parts of the country.
I left Salvador in 2018 and it was difficult to look from afar as the people battle the coronavirus pandemic, however, whatever the stereotypes of the region, intelligent or bad, frightening or colorful, I suppose Bahia will continue to challenge logic and expectations. , and I have hopes for your future.
Stephanie Foden is a documentary photographer in Montreal. You can stick to her paintings on Instagram.
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