Paper short abstract:

Holy Ghost festivals have played an important role in communities of Azoren descent in North America and Brazil. This paper seeks to address the interplay between claims of Azorean authenticiy and processes of ritual differentiation in two different contexts: Santa Catarina (Brazil) and New England (USA).

Paper long abstract:

Holy Ghost festivals can be characterized as a travelling ritual, whose diffusion in Europe and the Americas was strongly connected to processes of globalization of cultural forms liked to Portuguese colonization and immigration. Having originated in 13th century continental Portugal they have reached the Azores in the 15th century and from both the Azores and continental Portugal they travelled to Brazil from the 16th century onwards. Later, between 1870 and 1930 and between 1960 and 1980 they were recreated by Azorean immigrants in the USA and Canada.

This paper uses evidence related to Holy Ghost festivals in Santa Catarina (southern Brazil) and the USA, where the origin of the festivals is linked to Azorean immigration, in order to discuss the possibility of reconstituting the mechanisms of ritual differentiation of the festivals. The paper begins by pointing out the importance of narratives of Azorean descent of the festivals in both contexts, and the role played in these narratives by an ideology of sponteaneous diffusionism. Contrasting these narratives with available historical and ethnographical data, I critically explore the possibility of building a more complex assessment of the processes of historical differentiation of the festivals in both contexts, in which contemporary discussions on cultural globalization can critically dialogue with some of the concepts developed by diffusionist theorists.