A cura enquanto processo identitário na Barquinha: o sagrado no cotidiano

Abstract

The present work had as main objective to look for understanding the cure as an identity-creator process, that takes individuals to the Spiritual Center Daniel Pereira de Mattos one of the churches belonging to the branch of Barquinha that joins them to the ritual and transforms them through their daily lives. The Barquinha is linked to the urban cult of Ayahuasca (called regionally as Daime) and the traditional religious use of this tea in the state of Acre is intimately related to the aspect of healing. The adopted methodology was supported by Clifford Geertz interpretatist theory and the obtaining of information and empiric data was possible by using the direct and participant observation approach, what in our viewpoint, expresses the need to place us much closer to the studied context, so that it is possible to observe and to witness the meaning that the private social actions have for the actors that practice them. We associated to it, the guided interviews and the reports of the members lives and we made photographic registration of the place, of the rituals and of the people involved in the research. In order to reach the intended result, we found it necessary to give relevance to the cultural references and doctrinary antecedents, to the meaning of symbolic and ritualistic space that the Center presents. We still tried to identify the elements and the symbolic conceptions used for obtaining the cure and, to verify as such elements are re-signified by the people pertaining to this cult, reflecting on their identity. After that, we could consider that the way to the cure is understood as the transformation process itself, during which the members of Barquinha gradually incorporate the ethos and vision of this religious doctrine, in order to act on their daily lives reality and in the relationship whit the other