Pelo sinal da cruz, ao som do tambor: interfaces da experiencia religiosa no Congado belavistano

Abstract

The contact between European Christianism and African religiosities took place prior to the African Diaspora, developing into an African Christianism. In Colonial Brazil, it was inserted into the popular Catholicism spread by the black religious Brotherhoods, most of all in Minas Gerais, where to this day the Congados and Reinados are still carried out. To understand the interfaces of the religious experiences as from a specific case study, the Congado de Bela Vista de Minas, constitutes this research’s purpose. While having a Christian Catholic guidance, the religious experiences of the congadeiros from Bela Vista, expressed in their rituals and narratives, have connections with elements that go beyond the contours of Roman Apostolic Catholicism. Additionally to the pursuit of the holy, through their festivities in devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary, the partakers experience the dislocation of individual and collective identities. Thus, through fieldworks, execution of semi-structured interviews, consults to primary sources, ethnographic description and bibliographic review, this thesis addresses, mainly, the thematic involving religious syncretism and religious identities.