A construção de um povo e de um lugar: estratégias da criação da identidade sertaneja paraibana na obra Através do Sertão de Celso Mariz e sua diferença do projeto do IHGP.

Abstract

The studies on identity creation in Paraíba that focus on the rhetoric of IHGP historians depart from the proposition that paraibanity is the fruit of colonial conquest, and take as presupposition the coastal space, when the process of conquest of the territory of the royal captaincy. The foundation of the city of Filipéia deNSª. of the Neves and the events that had taken place therein would have been, thus, the epicenter of the captaincy itself, acting as a stage and as an agent of the identity symbology of the Paraibano. Such an approach, it is necessary to say, embodies the various fronts of colonization occurring within the captaincy in the symbology of local identity creation, reinforcing the coastal / sertão scission so present in twentieth-century Brazilian social thought, anchored in the simplistic dichotomy of the allegedly modern / archaic . Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the internationalization of the captaincy and the colonization of the sertão were too important themes in the constitution of the narrative of those historians, which leads us to inquire whether the identity of the Paraiba had its creation fostered in historiography from the regions considered sertões. Therefore, without any pretensions to re-issue discussions, our research is based on the writings of Celso Marques Mariz, a Paraíba and Sertanejo intellectual, who dedicated himself to the writing of the History of Paraíba, as a member of the Paraibano Historical and Geographical Institute, seeking to understand the leading personalities of formation of the society of the interior of Paraíba. We analyze how their rhetoric eschews the attempt to add a place for themselves, the fit of the "sertanejo" in the mosaic of the identity of Paraiba. We separate the discourses used by this author, which led us to affirm the idea that Mariz promotes an identity for the sertanejo based on aspects different from those posed by the IHGP in the initial process of the search for the identity of Paraíba. We conclude that Celso Mariz makes the sertanejo, a different Paraibano, who stands out in the "race", in the strength from differentiated food, in the form of religiosity, politics and other peculiarities.