“Aquela vida véia dali num é a vida daqui”: as influências da Igreja Católica e as consequências da modernidade e urbanização na religiosidade dos antigos moradores do povoado Canela, em Palmas-TO

Abstract

This thesis presents the cultural activities and religious practice of the Canela settlement native people, most specifically those carried out during the Holy Ghost festivities, like memory places that undergo change in response to the influence of the Church and the demands of urban life, in a chain of events that bring about new ways of manifesting their faith as well as other collateral changes to tradition, habits, values, way of living and the common identity of the community. Through a thorough examination of interpretations of culture and religiosity, those expressions and representations are heavily described, keeping as a reference the textual discursive marks – either oral and imagistic – of this riverside community, forcefully transferred to the city of Palmas when their homeland was drowned due to the implementation of Lajeado Hydroelectric Power Plant, in the Brazilian state of Tocantins. Etnographic research, corroborated by theoretical and methodological input from visual anthropology, was based on straightforward approaches and participative observation. Data have been described and interpreted from what has been collected during documental assessments, interviews, life story telling, photo records and audiovisual recordings. When narratives of memory and history are put side by side with the observations and other material produced during the Holy Ghost Festivity of 2010, one shall posit the popular religiosity practiced by the Canela community is deeply marked by traits of marginalization, mostly due to their resistance against the demands of both Church and general society, in a process that ends up to broaden this people’s practices of devotion to the saint, as to englobe familial affection and their effort to rescue and maintain memories from the past, thus constituting a Marginal Catholicism.