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This article studies the intersections between race and regional identity in the 1940s and 1950s in Salvador, Bahia, a critical site for the African diaspora. It examines how tourist guides produced for domestic consumption, first by Jorge Amado and later by intellectuals Odorico Tavares and José Valladares, sought to frame the city in new ways around blackness. Grounding the production of such guides in national trends for mobility and travel, the article proposes that they provided a foundational site for the crafting of a regional identity. Critically, these texts established early links between a commodified black culture and tourism in ways that would prove exceptionally long-lasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing together diverse scholars such as Arthur Ramos, Edison Carneiro and Gilberto Freyre, Brazil's First Afro-Brazilian Congress of 1934 encapsulated a pivotal transition in the history of the social sciences and race in Brazil. The Congress, organised by Freyre, represented an attempt by many scholars to break with racial determinism and to emphasise the importance of culture rather than race. This approach seemed to offer increased potential for social equality. However, the new focus on culture reproduced the same hierarchies that scholars were trying to escape. As this article demonstrates, scholars at the Congress redeemed the black race through the use of a new cultural framework, but the role ascribed to African culture was still bound by the same concepts of superiority and inferiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]