In a state of Candomblé trance, women from Bahia, Brazil celebrate Yemanja, goddess of the sea. Africans brought to the “new world” didn’t often fully accept the Catholicism of the Portuguese and Spanish. Nor did the indigenous tribes of the Americas. From Africa they brought their own tribal spiritual practices which survive to this day from Mexico and the Caribbean to the tip of South America. While these women did congregate in front of a Catholic Church in Salvador, Bahia , the priest did not allow the doors to be opened to them. Candomblé in Brazil and Santeria in the Caribbean, and many other African or indigenous religions are often quite secret having been at odds with Catholicism for over 500 years. Most tribal practitioners will also go to church on Sunday and tell you they are Catholics. That was of course their survival mode in the earliest years of the Iberian conquest of the Americas.#Candomblé #bahia #brazil