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according to Taylor, would ensure the transmission and permanence of knowledge. Archives and
documentary records in the strict sense, on the other hand, belong to the realm of writing and therefore have
the advantage of the fixity of the letter, but they depend on those who possess knowledge of written language
for their contents to be transmitted. Furthermore, they are not immune to exclusions and erasures of
statements, as Foucault (2008) warns us. Despite this, Taylor considers that archives and repertoires can
coexist in the same society, one does not exclude the existence of the other.
Thus, based on the theoretical assumptions presented so far, we will first look at the series of lists presented
by the narrator of Tenda dos milagres in the introduction to the novel. These lists appear to be records of the
ancestral culture rooted in the Pelourinho territory and can be thought of as notes on the repertoires and
performances of the knowledge contained in this culture (Taylor, 2013) or as notes that illuminate the power
of Afro-descendant heritage, bringing into discussion the clash between dominant culture and marginalized
culture, present in Latin American archival fiction from the 1960s and 1970s (Echevarría, 2011). In both
cases, the lists presented are undoubtedly a fictional strategy for archiving the cultural memory and identity
of the black people of Bahia.
As a discursive genre, lists are types of texts that relate things or people, with a criterion of sequencing,
whether alphabetical, temporal, or chronological (Costa, 2008); like a roll, an arrangement of a series of
names (of things; of people, living or deceased; of circumstances; of goods, amounts, etc.), arranged in an
order for formalization, registration, or remembrance. In the case of the novel, the narrator, a kind of double
of Pedro Archanjo (who wrote everything down in his notebooks and then transformed his notes into
documents, in this case books, with the aim of legitimizing what he observed and capturing the marginalized
collective memory through the printed word), introduces the reader to the narrative environment through the
"soundtrack" of the place, demonstrating the intense pulsation that exists there:
Here resound the atabaques, the berimbaus, the ganzás, the agogôs; the pandeiros, the adufes, the caxixis, the gourds: poor
instruments, so rich in rhythm and melody. Music and dance were born in this popular territory: Mr. Deodoro is an expert
in atabaques of all types and nations: Nagô and Jeje, Angola Congo, and Ilus from the Ijexá nation. He also makes agbês
and xerés, but the best agogôs are from Manu. (Amado, 1969, p. 11).
The instruments mentioned are closely linked to capoeira de Angola. This dance-fight is part of the
repertoire, act, and manifestation of resistance of Afro-descendants, inhabitants of Salvador, and especially
Pelourinho. The repertoire of moves, stored in the memory of the masters as "Budião, Querido de Deus,
Saveirista, Chico da Barra, Antônio Maré, Zacaria Grande, Piroca Peixoto, Sete Mortes, Bigode de Seda,
Pacífico do Rio Vermelho, Bom Cabelo, Vicente Pastinha, Doze Homens, Tiburcinho de Jaguaribe, Chico
Me Dá, Nô da Empresa, and Barroquinha" (Amado, 1969, p. 14), is transmitted through the performances of
their bodies to apprentices, in a spectacle of exuberant vitality:
the berimbaus command the varied and terrible blows: half-moon, rasteira, cabeçada, rabo de arraia, aú com rolê, aú de
cambaleão, açoite, bananeira, galopante, martelo, escorão, chibata armada, cutilada, boca de siri, boca de calça, chapa de
frente, chapa de costas and chapa de pé, são bento Grande, São Bento Pequeno, Santa Maria, Cavalaria, Amazonas,
Angola, Angola Dobrada, Angola Pequena, Apanhe a Laranja no Chão Tico-Tico, Iúna, Samongo and Cinco Salomão —
and there's more, oxente!, of course there is: here in this territory, capoeira angola was enriched and transformed: without
ceasing to be a fight, it became ballet. (Amado, 1969, p. 15-16).
These masters, by repeatedly practicing their craft, (re)affirm their ancestral identity. But it is not only the
capoeira masters who have their place in Pelourinho. The narrator lists several of them: miracle writers,
typographers (in the figure of Lídio Corró, a faithful friend of Pedro Archanjo, the Ojuobá), writers of cordel
literature, sculptors, herbalists, visual artists, tambozeiros, santeiros, silversmiths, among others.
In this territory filled with sounds and colors, the health of residents is in the hands of the "herbalists," who
possess knowledge of herbal medicine. It should be noted that the healing practice of herbal medicine, derived
from popular knowledge, is combined with religiosity and, ironically, is practiced just meters away from the