Sede eterna: as relações com os mortos no povoado de Almas

Abstract

This work deals with the relationships that are established between the living and the dead in the semi-arid region of Ceará. It aims to understand the dynamics of these relationships from the narratives of devotees and observers of ritual scenes according to the logic undertaken in the village of Almas, Cariré - CE. I propose an interpretative analysis of the ritual of worshiping the dead, taking the offering as a central element in the institution of relations between the living and the dead, which result in mutual favoring. I observe the periodicity and the meanings elaborated since the composition of the offering, in which water appears as the most recurrent symbol, guided by the belief in the need to quench the thirst of the dead. The ethnographic material described and interpreted was obtained during the field research, between 2018 and 2020, in the municipality of Cariré - CE. It appears that the belief in the action of the dead on daily life, individual and/or collective has its identification in the religiosity adopted by the devotees, because despite being a form of ritual outside the official precepts of religion in vogue in the village, practitioners of the cult perceive it as an expression of Catholicism, pointing to faith as the basis of votive activity. There is an active memory in the orality of the village, which acts on the transmission of belief and rites between generations.