Saberes e fazeres de dona Santa: a vida comunitária de uma mulher negra benzedeira na Região da Campanha Gaúcha (RS)

Abstract

This monograph is intended to present the analyzes and the results of research done to complete the Postgraduate Course of Specialization in Education and Cultural Diversity at the Universidade Federal do Pampa (UNIPAMPA) on the theme "Knowledge and practices of Dona Santa: a community life of a healer black woman in the region of Rio Grande do Sul Campaign (RS) ". The interest in addressing this issue arose from my own career as a militant of the Black Social Movement operating in that region and the desire to be able to contribute to the understanding of cultural diversity in an area where still dominates heteronormative and exclusive cultural values, especially on the issues ethnic-racial. Grounded in cultural studies and post-structuralist theories, working with the Oral History researching the community life of Dona Santa, and from written materials and three women reports with which it lived, they analyze the complexity of social relations and modes how to produce identities and cultural differences at the local level, highlighting the cultural hybridization processes in the contemporary societies. I conclude that the community life of Dona Santa is a rich experience of cultural hybridization manifested through their religious practices of prayer and benzeduras and realization of the People's Party of Saints Cosmas and Damian which contribute to the formation of an african-Brazilian culture site. I believe that the greatest legacy of Dona Santa is the network of solidary community relations which was throughout his life path and religious practices that developed, which show a mixture of various cultural elements and at the same time retain trademarks of folk tradition whose potential is the resistance to the normative standard of biopolitics modernization.