A pajelança quilombola em Benevides - Aurora do Pará: etnoidentidade e território

Abstract

This thesis examines the religious expression known as Pajelança Quilombola, practiced in the Benevides community, located in Aurora do Pará, Brazil. The protagonists of this manifestation are quilombola peoples, descendants of ancestors who worked in 19th- century sugar mills, specifically the Engenho do Aproaga and Engenho do Calixto. In an effort to legitimize their inherited territory, the quilombolas—through partnerships with research institutions, agencies for ethnic and agrarian recognition, and social movements—undertook the cartographic mapping of their lands and mobilized their cosmologies as instruments of territorial defense and protection of traditional uses of natural resources. These resources are currently threatened by the expansion of agribusiness, large-scale farming, and kaolin mining operations. Within the scope of this research, Pajelança Quilombola is understood as a religious expression of resistance, aimed at safeguarding ancestral memories and affirming the community’s ethno-identity. This practice involves a bricolage and hybridization of elements from Catholicism, Umbanda, traditional Pajelança, and the guidance of ancestral spirits who are believed to protect the quilombola territory and its natural resources.