Brazilians Hope Ritual Will Bring a Better Year

By Jon Jeter
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 2, 2004; Page A13

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 1 -- In the champagne-colored dusk, Isabella Lopes da Silva stood at the ocean shore, dressed all in white, her head bowed in silent prayer as she clutched the hand of her 6-year-old grandson. When she finished, she knelt at the ocean's edge and cast into the sea a single long-stemmed gladiolus, then a blue, wooden toy sailboat filled with lipstick, candy, a bracelet and hairbrush.

"Iemanja is a quite vain goddess," she said, smiling as she watched the boat drift out to sea. "I hope that my offering pleases her. This has been a very difficult year, very difficult. I hope that she will bless Brazil in the new year."

Across Rio de Janeiro this week, Brazilians ushered in the new year with a prayer and offering to Iemanja, the African sea goddess who watches over her worshipers.

This nation of 182 million has more Catholics than any country in the world and more blacks than any country outside sub-Saharan Africa, and it blends the heritage of both groups into daily spiritual life.

The tougher the year, the more Brazilians cast their boats into the sea in the days leading up to the start of the new year, and for many this has been a tough one. Unemployment has hovered officially at about 13 percent and television newscasts have broadcast scenes of hundreds of Brazilians waiting in lines the length of a city block to apply for jobs as a grocery cashier or a bank teller.

With interest rates reaching 26 percent, recession has stalked the economy. Struggling to pay the country's mountainous foreign debt, government officials have slashed countless programs, including pensions and bus fare subsidies for students.

"I lost my job in February," said da Silva, 49, a secretary for six years. "My son-in-law lost his job in March and my daughter lost hers in May. It is all we can do some days to come up with enough money just to put food on the table."

And so she came, like millions of others, to this city's storied beaches, bringing their hope and tiny boats and digging makeshift altars in the sand -- shallow trenches filled with white candles.

"She is our protector," Helena Veira, 44, a switchboard operator, said of Iemanja as she struck a match to light candles she had carefully positioned in the sandy pit. "And here in Brazil today, we very much need her protection, her guidance. We have had a horrible year, really. There is just so much suffering."

Veira said her prayers were mostly for her 21-year-old daughter, who has been out of work all year. "She goes through the ads every day, making appointments, going on interviews. It's like a full-time job, and I know she takes it so seriously. I just don't want her to get too down, to get depressed. So many young people today just give up because they can't see a future for themselves."

During the colonial period, huge numbers of African slaves were brought here by ship. Forbidden to practice their religions by the slave masters, they learned to replace the names of their deities with Catholic saint names; Iemanja, over time, has become linked with the Virgin Mary.

At the same time, many Catholics here have adopted African religious figures as their own. Though Iemanja's devotees generally belong to one of two African-based religions, Umbanda and Candomble, many are Catholics. Brazilians often compare the annual casting of toy blue sailboats to sea to Americans' practice of leaving milk and cookies for Santa Claus.

With Brazil's economy plodding along, vendors who sell the miniature boats and kits of candy, flowers and soaps to offer to Iemanja say that their business in the past two weeks has been brisk.

"It is an inverse relationship," said Antonio dos Santos, who sells prepackaged offerings for between $1 and $20 on Copacabana Beach here, where tens of thousands of people made offerings to Iemanja on Thursday. "Our sales are like a societal index. If we're doing well, it means the country is not."

At the ocean's edge, da Silva raised her pants legs to her knees and dipped her bare feet into the water, while her grandson waded waist-deep in the waves. Her boat drifted out of view.

"I think 2004 will be a very good year for Brazil," she said as she stared off into the twilit distance. "Iemanja gave us 2003 so that we can appreciate it fully."