Word: macumba
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Thousands turn out for such semireligious spectaculars as Lima's festival honoring Our Lord of the Miracles, but grandmothers and schoolchildren are often about the only worshipers at Sunday Mass in the ancient, silent churches. In Brazil, perhaps 25 million people are devotees of a voodoo cult called macumba. Across the continent, the zealous, fundamentalist Pentecostal sects constitute the fastest-growing faith...
...guides all three brothers is a love of Brazil, particularly the lush tropical flora of their native land, its vast resources and colorful peoples. Walter, who conducted the first performances in the U.S. of the work of his countryman Heitor Villa-Lobos, based his own Third Symphony on native macumba (witchcraft) themes. Haroldo glows over the beauty of his native tourmalines, topazes, rubies and garnets, shapes each gem in amoeba forms that follow the structure of the stone. Roberto is infatuated with the dense Brazilian foliage, with its leaves that can be mottled, snowy, blue, asymmetrical, metallic or blood-veined...
...Church of Santa Barbara in Bahia. In the city, Ze's wife Rosa is seduced by a sneering pimp. Next morning a vindictive priest refuses to let Ze enter the church, scorning his promise to the saint as a pagan vow made through an intermediary god at a macumba ceremony. "Black magic," cries the priest. Ze shakes his head sadly. "My church has no image of Santa Barbara." He is a Catholic, what else matters? The subtle dangers of syncretism are beyond him. He will wait...
...cooks answered with a macumba, a Brazilian form of sorcery much practiced by the poor and ignorant. Black chickens were killed at street intersections in the dark of the moon, crossed chicken bones were mailed to the former President...
Last week Linhares was still in the Copacabana. He had stayed out of airplanes, appeared in good health, had not hired a cook. Said one taxi driver: grateful ex-Cook Rosa must be blessing Linhares' fingernail parings, sacrificing white chickens at dawn-working a countet-macumba...