Festejos de Santo Antônio do bairro da Terra Preta (Manacapuru-Am)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Festivities of St. Anthony of Terra Preta neighborhood in Manacapuru, highlighting the uniqueness of the structure of the event, with music, instruments, organizers and own ceremonies that insert this party in the popular culture configuration. Following this insertion, St. Anthony became a sign, being celebrated as matchmaker, warrior and the saint of lost items recovery, among the several attributes given to him. These attributes were built thanks to his personal trajectory and active religious, as well as symbolically widespread in important moments of the history of the country and the Amazon region. And today this sign is present in various manifestations of popular Catholicism in Brazil, as in Manacapuru. Thanks to the peculiarities and the stories of these festivities, we conducted an ethnography, resulting from participant observation and countless conversations and reports with city's residents and organizers of the event and we found that pay promise and fulfill the obligation are the main terms for the realization of the party, but also reveal the entire network of family relationships that form a system maintained by alliances and tensions, associated with the theme of war and peace that surrounds the saint symbols; the same way as the origin of the party is related to the Cabanos war and to many obstacles of modern life that convert to daily wars experienced by promise payers, in the current context of the city.