CONVERGING PLACES OF POPULAR RELIGIOSITY: USE, DI-SUSE AND ABUSE OF GEO-SACREDNESS IN THE SEMIARID LANDS OF CEARÁ

Abstract

Christian/Catholic religious precepts and worship in the semiarid lands of Northeastern Brazil interweave a melting pot of sociocultural elements which run through the Roman ecclesial heteronomic dogmatic heritage, and include in their praxis elements from African, Native American, European, Moorish and Asian cultures. Community places where religious manifestations happen vary from churches, sanctuaries and/or landmarks architected and institutionalized by the Catholic Church to a plurality of geo-symbols which we call converging places of popular religiosity, whose process of syncretic-religious formation in the semiarid lands is full of geo-sacredness. This paper has the purpose of analyzing use, disuse and abuse of outstanding religious practices in the Northeastern Brazilian culture with regard to contemporary ways of manipulating the masses, which generate spaces-worlds that are perpetuated as holders of power through religious illiteracy. All of that associated with political issues aim at the permanence of certain power cores in the semiarid lands.