A Folia de Reis e Identidade: um estudo na comunidade quilombola Agreste no Norte de Minas Gerais

Abstract

My thesis has as it's object the discussion about the way that the agretinos affirm their identity on the ritual context of the traditional Folia de Reis at the Quilombola's Agreste comunity, approaching it's structural, historical and sociocultural aspects, as well as the importance of this tradition to collectivity. The quilombola identity, that emerges with the 1988's Federal Constitution in order to guarantee the rights for the quilombola comunities that claimed the territorial and cultural right, rests on a black ancestrality, on a territorial resistance and on a colective social organization. As every identity, the quilombola one intends to externalize the difference marks from the groups that sorrunds it. In order to mark the differences, the cumminities have been searching through it's cultural aspects those manifestations that define their differentiation from other cummunities, thus, these manifestations mark the symbolic borders stating the identity, delimiting the commom belonging and maintaining social ties. So in Agreste, the Folia de Reis' ritual is treated as Folia de Seu Lero and has it's own spacial and temporary characteristics, where the stablishment and maintenance of social ties are experienced annually. For the agrestinos , the Folia was stablished as a religious and cultural tradition in which the reveler, the party person and his family, some other residents and visitors make their praise with songs, prayers and chanting with Faith demonstration. For this thesis construction it was fulfilled conducted ethnographic research to apprehend it as ritual and as symbolic place of aggregation of links and identity demarcation to be one of the identity contents that enable Agrestinos to assert themselves as such. This traditional manifestation is feeded by the local colective memory, by it's symbolic dimension that inform behavior and people's way of life, organizers of a vast web of social relations expressed in their rituals. At the same time, the Folia de Seu Lero provides agrestinos to feel as members of the social whole, contributing to the maintenance of social bonds that underlie the belonging to this black collectivity.