Guerreiros de Cristo, bailarinos de Jeová: uma etnografia sobre ritualística reteté e política do sobrenatural em um contexto de favela

Abstract

Based on the analysis of the ethnographic data collected in 2018, the work analyzes the role of Pentecostals in the Corredor das Cores favela, in Campos dos Goytacazes, a territory dominated by the drug trafficking faction Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP). In the favela, by faction orders, the possibilities for religious exercise are restricted to Pentecostal manifestations. Thus, the research focused on the analysis of one of the existing churches in that context, Águas Divinas. From the study, I argue that Pentecostal denominations such as the analyzed church compose a face of a popular and enchanted religiosity, in which the Pentecostal experience influences and is influenced by the relational dynamics of the popular strata. In this movement, the warlike spirit, the heroic ethos and what I call the politics of the supernatural stand out. For the thesis, four chapters were written. In the first, the favela is presented from the domain of the narcotrafficking faction Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP) and from the relationship with the Pentecostal manifestations, which in that context, assume specific outlines, forming small churches with known rituals, in emic expression, such as reteté de Jehovah. In the second chapter, religious leaders are presented who, in handling the expressions of the Pentecostal supernatural, exercise political and negotiating roles before TCP and the other residents. In the third chapter, I analyze the conflicts in the analyzed church, conflicts that are often caused by gender relations. The intention is to highlight that, in addition to the networks of solidarity observed by the literature on Pentecostal experiences in popular contexts, conflicts and disputes also make up the plot of the relationships. In the fourth chapter, a closer reflection on the church ceremonies, highlighting the emotional and synesthetic character of such rituals, understood here as important locus of analysis for hyperbolizing broader social relations. In this way, the Águas Divinas church is inserted and forms the racialized context, marked by poverty and the violence of the enchanted favela Corredor das Cores.