Santos, espíritas e feiticeiros: o papel e os significados das práticas de cura mágico-religiosas em Juiz de Fora nas primeiras décadas do século XX

Abstract

This study objectivate to analyze the magic-religious healing practices in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, between 1910 and 1940. Throughout the work, the role and meanings of these activities and their representatives in the daily life of the population of the city are investigated. From the analysis of law suits and periodicals, the repressions that focused on individuals who acted illegally in the field of healing are analyzed, in a complex web of meanings that permeated their practices. Through the analysis of the collected data, the relationships established between “saints”, “spiritists” and “sorcerers” and a significant portion of the population in the early decades of the 20th century are understood. Some evidence and findings point out that such characters were essential for the restoration of the health of the body and soul of their patiens. As the thesis demonstrates, these members of the subaltern classes were the target of a systematic persecution headed by the hegemonic sectors of the society of their time and suffered condemnation of their habits and customs. But, despite this unfavorable scenario for their magical-religious practices and, even in the face of attempts by local "scientific medicine" to "sanitize" the urban space and to establish itself as the hegemonic "art of healing", these marginalized characters left their marks in the Brazilian religious field. Their actions and knowledge, through plural, fluid and porous therapeuticreligious activities, are part of a history of struggle and resistance of the subaltern classes of the first decades of the 20th century.