abstract: The worldviews and associated healing traditions of West and West Central sub-Saharan Africans and their Afro-Mexican descendants influenced the development of curanderismo, the traditional healing system of Mexico and the Southwest United States. Previous research on curanderismo, e.g. Colson (1976), Foster (1987), Ortiz de Montellano (1990), and Treviño (2001), generally emphasizes the cultural contributions of Spanish and Mesoamerican peoples to curanderismo; however, little research focuses on the cultural contributions of blacks in colonial Mexico. Mexico had the second-largest enslaved African population and the largest free black population in the Western Hemisphere until the early nineteenth century (Bennett 2003:1). Afro-Mexican curanderos were regularly consulted by members of every level of Spanish colonial society (ibid:150, 165, 254–55; Restall 2009:144–45, 275), often more commonly than indigenous healers (Bristol and Restall 2009:174), placing Afro-Mexican curanderos “squarely in the mainstream of colonial curing practices” (Bristol 2007:168). Through analysis of literature on African medicine, enslaved Africans in colonial Mexico, and Afro-Mexican healing practices, I suggest that the ideas and practices of colonial blacks played a more important role in the formation and practice of curanderismo than previously acknowledged. The black population plummeted after Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821 CE; however, through analysis of African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latino religious and healing traditions, La Santa Muerte, and yerberías and their products in twentieth and twenty first century Mexico, I suggest that black healing traditions continued to influence curanderismo throughout Mexico’s history. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Religious Studies 2016

[pt] Trata-se de uma reflexão acerca da agencia das performances afro-atlânticas na perspectiva de uma descolonialidade epistêmica. A performance afro-atlântica é um conceito que deve ser compreendido como a maneira pela qual as marcas do oceano Atlântico e seus atravessamentos simbólicos se revelam na cultura, e aqui em específico no teatro negro brasileiro contemporâneo, através da relação com marcadores da colonialidade. O Atlântico é compreendido como espaço fundamental de reflexão para a História da humanidade, através do qual se formulam processos culturais resultantes das imposições relacionadas com a ampliação do mundo (tal como era concebido até então pelo Ocidente), bem como a partir de uma necessidade contínua de reformulações para a memória do trauma colonial. As performances são tomadas então como gestos artísticos que criam fissuras na colonialidade como visão de mundo e são forjados a partir de relações estéticas e conceituais marcadas por rotas atlânticas inacabadas. O estudo vai observar os espetáculos teatrais Traga-me a cabeça de Lima Barreto, Vaga carne e Oboró – masculinidades negras considerando os marcadores coloniais de tempo, espaço e palavra, numa perspectiva de que são projetos de anticolonialidade. / [en] This is a reflection on the agency of Afro-Atlantic performances from the perspective of epistemic decoloniality. Afro-Atlantic performance is a concept that must be understood as the way in which the marks of the Atlantic Ocean and its symbolic crossings are revealed in culture, and here specifically in contemporary Brazilian black theater, through the relationship with the markers of coloniality. The Atlantic is understood as a fundamental space of reflection for the History of humanity, through which cultural processes are formulated resulting from the impositions related to the expansion of the world (as it was previously conceived by the West), as well as from a continuous need of reformulations for the memory of colonial trauma. The performances are then taken as artistic gestures that create fissures in coloniality as a worldview and are forged from aesthetic and conceptual relationships marked by unfinished Atlantic routes. The study will observe the theatrical performances Traga-me a cabeça de Lima Barreto, Vaga carne and Oboró – masculinidades negras considering the colonial markers of time, space and word/language, from a perspective that they are projects of anti-coloniality.