A culpa é do Diabo: as políticas de existência na encruzilhada entre neopentecostalismo, varejo de drogas ilícitas e terreiros em favelas do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This ethnographic thesis investigates the complexity of the relationships established, in terms of political-religious disputes, between neo-Pentecostalism, illicit drug retailing and Afro-Brazilian religiosities in some slums in Rio de Janeiro, commanded by the TCP - Third Pure Command faction. The general objective of the work is to understand how the political subjects in the fields have negotiated their existence within a crossroads of practices and meanings, motivated by conflicts, disputes, approximations, divergences, tactics, violence, confluences and resignifications. Through the stories heard, felt and lived in the daily lives of different groups and people, who often operate from the perspective of being in the midst of war and crisis, I seek to weave narratives and interpretations about the multiple meanings and proposals in dispute. Although the main approach is ethnographic, I combine an analysis that combines the macro, meso and micro levels, seeking to articulate different layers and temporalities to understand contemporary conflicts. The thesis is divided into three parts. First, I carry out a historical analysis of the social-symbolic construction of the figure of the Devil, a central element for understanding this phenomenon. I focus, mainly, on the demonization and criminalization of religiosities of African origin, the result of racism that permeates the entire history of Brazil, with oscillations only with regard to the drivers of conflicts. Although, today, neo-Pentecostal groups have been identified as the great tormentors of the terreiro communities, I demonstrate that this is a much more complex process than the corporate media headlines present. In the second part, the focus is to bring a multifactorial perspective of the approximation between the retail of illicit drugs and neo-Pentecostalism and, consequently, violence to the shrine (afrobrazilian sanctuary) and their followers, who continue to elaborate responses. In the dispute for territories and repertoires, operationalized in turbulent and brutal episodes, the meanings of death, war, sin, struggle and exorcism are constantly activated by different groups, including the State itself. Although it is possible to trace common aspects to this whole tangle of events, they are not uniform, that is, each slums, each group, each location has its peculiarities, and that is what the third and final chapter is about. Thus, different codes of conduct mark the relationships that are irregularly drawn in each space, in each situation, but which are connected to larger projects. What happens today in relation to disputes and violence mobilized within a religious grammar, in the slums and suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, is only possible because there are previous and superior contexts and articulations (in terms of proportions and investments of symbolic capital, political and economic). However, often, what gains notoriety in official public speeches is just the end of a long rope, hidden by diverse interests. In this way, this interdisciplinary thesis contributes in the field of religiosities, and in other correlated ones, and in the broad political struggle, bringing complexity as an engine to help draw strategies in the transformation of practices and discourses identified as oppressive.