Saint's day and caboclo play: the festivities of saints in the Pataxó village of Boca da Mata

Abstract

Through an ethnography with the Pataxó inhabitants of the Boca da Mata village (Terra Indígena Barra Velha do Monte Pascoal, in Porto Seguro, Bahia), the general objective of this research project is to understand the ways in which the Pataxó relate to a category specific other-than-human beings: the saints and "caboclos"/"enchanted" ones that populate his cosmology, and that we can define, for analytical purposes, as a supernatural domain. To do so, I will have as the epicenter of investigation the festivities of saint held annually in the community and which, as I argue, consist of a point of concentration and meeting between saints, humans and "caboclos". In general, I aim to understand what the festivities of saint can tell us about the way the Pataxó understand and relate to the supernatural, and what this expresses in terms of their alterity regime. Furthermore, taking into account that incorporations occur at these parties, and they are predominantly female, I intend to analyze, at the same time, the role of Pataxó women in the phenomenon of incorporation to understand whether this can (and if it can, what can) express some inflection of gender in human-supernatural relationships, as well as a possible shamanic capacity of these women. The research will be based on four main axes: studies that focus on catholic festivities among indigenous peoples and rural populations; debates over indigenous christianity in the South American Lowlands; the bibliography of the Indigenous Northeast that focuses on the phenomenon of "caboclos" - also called "enchanted"; and, finally, the feminist bibliography in ethnology dedicated to gender reflection, emphasizing female agency in different domains of social life. I believe that the articulation of these axes as theoretical foundations for the theme proposed here, allow me to present new ethnographic reflections contributing both to the Pataxó bibliography and to the fields of study listed above. (AU)