No pasarán

“No pasaran” is a repeated expression of resistance that Casaubon uses to reassure Amparo during their encounter with Aglie, and that Amparo later takes up herself. Its movement from his whispered comfort to her laughter makes the slogan at once political language and a private sign of their connection.

Reassurance in Aglie’s Presence

As Amparo recalls the stories she heard from her grandmother and laments having forgotten her country and race amid European thought and historical materialism, Casaubon squeezes her arm and tells her, “No pasaran, darling.” The gesture and phrase answer her distress with immediate solidarity. Aglie watches their brief whispered exchange in silence, while the conversation then turns to his account of how enslaved people, formally freed in the nineteenth century, were left without their family histories after the slave-trade archives were burned. Against that loss of inherited identity, the slogan accompanies Amparo’s effort to recover a past through memory.

A Refrain Between the Two

During a later explanation of the many spiritual lineages within umbanda, Amparo again reacts with alarm. Casaubon murmurs, “Oxala, you mean,” then repeats “No pasaran” as he tells her to calm down. The refrain returns not as an argument but as a familiar, intimate reassurance amid a confusing account of religious syncretism. The scene also places their private exchange beside a practice that protects initiates from the curiosity of outsiders: the ialorixa explains that mediums wear large straw hoods during trance, shielding them from profane scrutiny.

Amparo Takes Up the Words

Back home, Amparo comments on the ialorixa’s palm reading of Casaubon, interpreting the broken lines in his hand as the mark of a man who must have died many times. Casaubon answers with a joke about being the “World champion of the metempsychosis relay.” Amparo then says “No pasaran” herself, laughing. The phrase has passed between them: what began as Casaubon’s comforting address becomes Amparo’s own playful response, carrying their shared experience beyond the terreiro and into ordinary conversation.

Meaning of the Repetition

The expression’s recurrence gives it a double register. Its political force is explicit in the context of historical erasure and resistance to the Establishment; in the couple’s exchanges, it also works as a compact signal of care. The changing speaker matters: Casaubon first offers the words to Amparo, repeats them while steadying her during Aglie’s explanation, and finally hears her return them in laughter. The slogan does not resolve the histories or spiritual claims around them, but its repetition marks a small, reciprocal bond amid their bewilderment.