Sectarian religious groups in Brazil, not of Afro-Brazilian origin, have been formed primarily in the backlands of the Northeast. There they have flourished during two approximate time periods, 1815 to 1840 and 1870 to the present. This paper will examine the religious groups of the Brazilian backlands as social phenomena.
The locale of the sects, the backlands sertão, is both a geographical and cultural subregion of the Northeast. The latter area is generally defined as comprising the states of Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Sergipe, Alagôas, and northern Bahia. Geographically the sertão is an area subject to recurrent drought, lying back of fertile coastal plains from Salvador in Bahia to Natal in Rio Grande do Norte, touching the coast in Ceará, and again retreating inland in Piauí.