When the human being creates something, Iku comes to the earth: Eshu’s mediation, the omnipresence of the death and the Covid-19 at two Afican Brazilian religious contexts

ABSTRACT

This article aims to reflect upon African-Brazilian cults’ reactions to the Covid-19 outbreak. Instead of making generalizing statements, however, this text seeks to unfold some specific ethnographic moments that have been located in two different contexts - the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul and the northeastern state of Bahia - through an online fieldwork experience. As one of the first results of a research in progress about Eshu, a powerful divinity that deals with movement and communication, it will additionally discuss the ideas of mediation, care and difference that characterize those religions and which attracted the attention of the recent specific bibliography.

KEYWORDS:
African Brazilian Cults; Coronavirus; Eshu; Difference and Mediation; Online Ethnography