Filhos de Deus e netos de Makunaíma: apropriações do catolicismo em terras Makuxi.

Abstract

This is a study about Roman Catholicism appropriations in Maturuca, an indigenous community at Raposa Serra do Sol Homeland, in Roraima, Brazil, where the central characters are the Makuxi, the most numerous ethnic group of the state. It aims at describing and analyzing, in a socioanthropological perspective, the uses these indigenous make of Roman Catholicism and how they resignify Christian teachings in the border outlined by Consolata Institute Missionaries evangelizing actions and cultural traditions of their people. Among the characteristics that reconfigure the relations between universal Catholicism and the indigenous local community, the harmony built between the evangelizing project and the Raposa Serra do Sol Homeland defense indicates the type of Catholicism offered in the village, marked by Liberation Theology principles, and opens a field for reflection on the contextualization of the Bible message and indigenous cultural traditions. For understanding the dynamics of these ties in an ethnic context, this research adopted interview proceedings, field notes and participation, as direct as possible, in the many activities lived by the Makuxi in their everyday life, especially those with religious connotation. Thus, the study focused on two sets of practices: the Christmas Mass and the Way of the Cross, as institutional rituals offered by the Roman Catholic Church, as well as Makuxi`s Christmas Feast and the ceremony named the Climbing of the Mountain (Subida da Serra), as rites marked mainly by evocation and reelaboration of these indigenous traditions. The many different forms of Roman Catholicism appropriations in the Makuxi community reveal the complexity of relations located on the narrow zones of cultural frontiers, for their dynamic, combinatory, permeable and unexpected nature.