A
subspontaneous grove of African oil palms at the foot an intertidal mangrove
forest in the Pau d’Oleo district of Igrapiuna, Bahia. Photo by Case Watkins.
In
1991, the Secretary of Culture in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia
officially designated an eighty-kilometer strip of its Atlantic shores as the
Costa do Dendê, or Palm Oil Coast, in a formal nod to the dense stands of
African oil palms that had come to dominate local landscapes. Part of a broader
initiative to promote tourism, the move branded the region as the main source
of Bahian palm oil—long a fundamental material component of vibrant
Afro-Brazilian culinary and religious cultures practiced throughout the
country. Culminating at least five centuries of transatlantic social, economic,
and ecological development, Bahia’s African oil palm groves emerged as a
veritable Afro-Brazilian landscape.
Acesse
a página:
