Caboclos

Caboclos are Indigenous spirits who participate in Umbanda possession rites. In the novel’s account, they represent the purity and force of original nature; when they possess a medium, their presence is expressed through distinctive movements and cries. Their place in the rite also shows how Afro-Brazilian religion combines different spiritual traditions rather than reducing them to a single system.

Identity and Place in Umbanda

Aglie explains that the rite under discussion is Umbanda, not Candomblé: participants may be possessed by spirits of the departed rather than by the Orixás. Among those spirits are the Caboclos, identified as Indigenous beings and contrasted with the Pretos velhos, the old African wise men associated with historical memory and guidance. Aglie characterizes the Caboclos as forces of original nature. Within Umbanda, the Orixás remain in the background, syncretized with Catholic saints, while beings such as the Caboclos intervene directly in the rite.

Possession and Ritual Expression

The medium, called a cavalo, is understood to receive a higher being and lose awareness of self while continuing to dance. The trance is not presented as undifferentiated: the movements reveal which kind of being is believed to have taken possession. In the gathering Casaubon observes, some participants move slowly while bent forward; others give out shrill warrior cries, and attendants help those who cannot bear the intensity of the experience. These ritual signs make the Caboclos legible through embodied performance, rather than through an abstract description alone.

Cultural and Narrative Significance

Caboclos belong to a religious landscape shaped by displacement and cultural mixture. Aglie connects the worshippers’ search for contact with the earth to the experience of people uprooted and absorbed into the city. Earlier, Casaubon hears competing political interpretations of Afro-Brazilian cults: some of Amparo’s comrades see them as a return to cultural roots and a challenge to the white world, while others regard them as a diversion of revolutionary energy or as a mixture whose purpose remains uncertain. The Caboclos’ role gives that debate a specific ritual form, while the account leaves the competing interpretations in tension rather than resolving them.

That tension also frames Amparo’s response. Although she dismisses such religions in ideological discussion, Aglie argues that the Orixás she has rejected remain within her through inherited cultural memory. The novel thus presents religious identity as something that can persist beneath conscious political allegiance. Caboclos, as spirits associated with Indigenous presence and possession, form part of the wider syncretic world through which that conflict becomes visible.