“Com dois te botaram com três te retiro”: as práticas educativas da reza e da cura no sertão paraibano (final do século XX início do XXI)

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the arts of healing promoted by women healers in the high sertão of Paraíba in the time span extending from the second half of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century. The prayers, as a means of promoting physical and spiritual healing of the sick, are constituted as arts of healing that were widely used in different times and spaces in the sertão of Paraiba. As much as the prayers were opposed to medical and scientific knowledge, they are sustained by their own characteristics of being a means of promoting care and health. To discuss the theme, dialogue with the concepts of sensibility, emotions, experience, memory, and arts of healing postulated respectively by Pesavento (2007), Corbin (2020), Larrosa (2015), Ricoeur (2007), and Miranda (2017). Methodologically, i use oral history to analyze the historical sources produced through the oral accounts of women healers. For this, we find support in the writings of Meihy and Holland (2018), Meihey and Seawright (2020), and Garay (1997), which guides the interviews and the way to analyze the oral discourses. I chose to make use of the oral life history and thematic of women healers from the cities of Monte Horebe, Bonito de Santa Fé, São José de Piranhas, Carrapateira, Cajazeiras and Cachoeira dos Índios. Finally, we conclude that the healing arts of the women healers have a history that is intertwined with the lives of the collaborators and their experiences, which speak to the history of health and medicalization in the high sertão of Paraíba.