Saudades, Reencontros e Manicuera: espetacularidades entrecruzadas de afeto na Iluminação dos Mortos em Curuçá-PA

Abstract

This study understands the otherness I experienced at the São Bonifácio and Bosque da Igualdade cemeteries with biscateiros, bereaved families, sellers of manicuera, tapioca sweets, flower wreaths and with practitioners of Illumination of the Dead in Curuçá-PA in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. Experience that brought to light the body of the research in its economic, social, symbolic and belonging dimensions as an important step towards the solution of mourning and peace between the living and the dead. With the epistemological dip in Ethnocenology, as an Ethnocenologist of Funeral Rites, the discussions about Spectacularities presenting the cemetery-body, territoriality inhabited by the dead who have tomb neighbors, tomb caretakers biscateiros (exclusive workers for construction, painting, cleaning and identification of tomb-houses) – the phenomenon's own nomenclature, which I understand as a social role within Organized Spectacular Human Practices and Behaviors (Armindo Bião). In Illumination of the Dead, tombs are decorated with wreaths of flowers, candles are lit and prayers are performed by participants who parade their chosen styles for that occasion in a true Fashion Cemetery, with personalized shirts honoring the dead family, being the body, the temple of affection (Miguel Santa Brigida) to honor his ancestors. To unearth the conceptions that surround the change of mentality about the death of oneself to the death of the other (Philippe Àries), by the displacement of the geographic space from the church-cemetery to the cemetery-secular, in the secularization of death (Cláudia Rodrigues) in Curuçá -PA, I moved my studies to the historic Church of the Third Order of Carmo in Sabará – MG, as it still conserves signs of a church-cemetery. Thus, I present as an epistemological contribution the Moving Field, a notion that allows the researcher to move their studies to another field/body that houses historical, territorial, symbolic end/or belonging similarities for the understanding of the studied phenomenon. In the trajectory of this research, I faced the death of my father in 2019, I went through the understanding of mourning, I accompanied the people of Curuça who reconnected to their loved ones with prayers and lit candles in backyards and cruises in the municipality during the Covid-19 Pandemi.