Memórias e saberes das benzedeiras e/ou parteiras quilombolas da comunidade do Itacuruçá - Abaetetuba/Pará.

Abstract

This dissertation has as its object of study the Traditional Knowledge of Quilombola Benzedeiras and/or Midwives from Itacuruçá – Abaetetuba/Pará, addresses the process of blessing and/or giving birth. In order to understand the construction process of learning traditional knowledge. To undertake the work, we used a qualitative approach, with a methodology based on oral history with ethnographic resources. As a theoretical contribution, it is based on authors such as: Charlot (2000); Portelli (1997); Pinto (2002); Geertz (1989); Le Goff (1990); Quintana (1985), authors who discuss the understanding of the theme and among other references that will be used. We applied interviews as a research instrument, based on a script of questions. How did these women build or appropriate this knowledge of the practice of blessing and/or giving birth at home and how does this process take place? We identified that these practices are seen as a vocation, a gift received from God, to help and care for other women. Studies show us that the practices of blessing and/or giving birth are learning built within the family context and are considered by the research subjects as a way of resisting and existing, that there is also a strong connection between these subjects and a transcendent. And in this bias of construction and learning of this knowledge, we soon identified that there is a devaluation of this traditional knowledge of the practices of blessing and/or giving birth in contemporary times, by the new generations, with this a decrease in the number of healers and/or midwives, that these knowledge is threatened in the community. Facts that the research subjects attribute to the advancement of medicine, technology and access to information and scientific knowledge.