Igreja Nossa Senhora dos Homens Pretos da Penha: Av. Penha de França, 4. Foto Vinicius O.F.P., abril 2019. Recorte do mapa do Google Maps.
Igreja do Rosário dos Homens Pretos da Penha, built in June 1802, belongs to a religous group called Irmandade dos Homens Pretos. These churches are built and managed by black women and men, and they work as a stage for several different ways of resistance since the colonial period.
The catholic brotherhood is present in many Brazilian, African, and European cities and it is a consequence of the African diaspora. Despite their territorial and cultural differences, they work as a place of resistance where black bodies and territories can meet.
Since 2022, Comissão do Rosário dos Homens Pretos da Penha de França holds parties to celebrate the existence of the patrimony and to make the population of São Paulo aware of its history of resistance and celebration.
As Beatriz Nascimento has said, the resistances were many and in all of them there is little bit of the kilombo.
Square located inside the Church
Capela de Nossa Senhora do Rosário of the old Irmandade dos Homens Pretos da freguesia da Penha de França, historical witness of solidarity, suffering, and hope in redemption. The command for its erection is from June 1802.
Text “Kilombo” de Beatriz Nascimento:
Just as in the ancestral quilombo and by initiatory rites, the strengthening of the individual is marked as a territory that moves in geographic space, incorporating a living and active paradigm in the American territory founded by its ancestors and quilombolas.
By acting in their places, whether in the mystical terreiro, in family communities, in favelas, in recreational spaces (manifesting music of African, Afro-American or Afro-Brazilian origin), the African peoples of America provoke changes in racial and social relations.
By occupying the space with their physical body (existential territory), they take over the city, reproducing the way of the former quilombolas, making themselves, like them, visible to the regime. They turn this space into something discontinuous in time, in which the “gaps” cause lines of flight and are elements of dynamism that generate a specific social environment.
This was the case with the quilombos and their counterparts throughout the history of America. This is how it is today with black or African-American groups.
(Published in Burkina Faso, Nommo.,1990)