Pretos velhos

Pretos velhos are ancestral spirits in Umbanda, described as wise African elders who guide their people through the history of deportation and enslavement. Their presence in the novel is explained through the ritual logic of possession, but also carries a historical memory that complicates Amparo’s rejection of religion as political opiate.

Identity and religious context

Aglie distinguishes Umbanda from candomblé by the beings who possess participants: candomblé’s orixás are not the focus of the Umbanda rite; instead, mediums may be possessed by eguns, spirits of the departed. Pretos velhos are among those spirits, alongside caboclos, who are identified as Indian spirits associated with original nature. Aglie describes pretos velhos as old African wise men who guided their people at the time of deportation, naming Rei Congo and Pai Agostinho as examples.

In Aglie’s account, the spirits embody a remembered phase of slavery in which enslaved Black people were treated as family dependents—as uncles and grandfathers—rather than as animals. The explanation places them within a religious world shaped by cultural blending: African orixás remain in the background, syncretized with Catholic saints, while the spirits of the departed intervene directly in the rite.

Possession in the rite

The medium, called a cavalo, is understood to receive a higher being during the dance and lose awareness of self. The possession is not presented as random motion: the movements disclose which kind of spirit is believed to have arrived. Some participants move gently, with hands held low and sweeping sideways; others bend forward and proceed slowly. Cambones, attendants who assist the mediums, use white linen cloths to shield certain possessed participants from view.

Those possessed by pretos velhos move with their bodies tilted forward and make hollow vocal sounds, a manner of bearing and motion associated with elderly people. The rite thus gives the spirits a distinct bodily expression, set apart from the sharp warrior cries associated with caboclos. The attendants’ intervention underscores that possession is also organized through roles and acts of care, not only through the medium’s experience.

Political and narrative significance

Amparo’s comrades disagree over the political meaning of Afro-Brazilian religions. Some interpret them as a return to cultural roots and resistance to the white world; others regard them as a means of diverting revolutionary potential; still others see them as a mixture of white, Indigenous, and Black traditions without agreeing on its purpose. Amparo herself dismisses religion as opiate, yet the narrator recognizes that she remains deeply attached to the cultural world she criticizes. Aglie later suggests that the orixás she believes she has rejected remain alive within her.

The spirits therefore connect ritual practice to questions of ancestry, displacement, and political interpretation. Aglie describes urban worshipers as uprooted people drawn into a city shaped by migration, while the rite offers contact with a remembered world. His account is an explanation offered by a character, not an independent confirmation of supernatural claims; its importance lies in how the novel sets that interpretation beside the narrator’s observation and Amparo’s ambivalence.