Brazil's northeastern state of Bahia has built its economy around
attracting international tourists to what is billed as the locus of
Afro-Brazilian culture and the epicenter of Brazilian racial
harmony. Yet this inclusive ideal has a complicated past.
Chronicling the discourse among intellectuals and state officials
during the period from the abolition of slavery in 1888 to the
start of Brazil's military regime in 1964, Anadelia Romo uncovers
how the state's nonwhite majority moved from being a source of
embarrassment to being a critical component of Bahia's
identity.
Romo examines ideas of race in key cultural and public arenas
through a close analysis of medical science, the arts, education,
and the social sciences. As she argues, although Bahian racial
thought came to embrace elements of Afro-Brazilian culture, the
presentation of Bahia as a "living museum" threatened by social
change portrayed Afro-Bahian culture and modernity as necessarily
at odds. Romo's finely tuned account complicates our understanding
of Brazilian racial ideology and enriches our knowledge of the
constructions of race across Latin America and the larger African
diaspora.