O “dois pra lá, dois pra cá” dos trajes de folguedo da cunhã-poranga do Boi Caprichoso

Abstract

Brazil is a culturally plural country in ethnic and religious terms, which has fostered folklore manifestations such as the Boi-Bumbá, which is the celebration of the cultural identities of rural, riverside and pastoral Brazilian societies. In Parintins, in the Amazon, both the Boi Caprichoso and the Boi Garantido are “promise oxen”, which not only revive the festive tradition of walking through the city streets in a kind of procession by candlelight and lamps, chanting old tunes and looking for the heat of the bonfires of São João; but that left the alleys and wooden platforms for the arena, spectacularizing the history and poetic experience of the Amazonian peoples. Starting from the perspective of the Boi as a show, my objective is to expose the visual writings, which carry in themselves speeches, present in the merriment costumes of the character Cunhã-Poranga of Boi-Bumbá Caprichoso, which were presented during the 2019 Parintins Folk Festival. I intend to reveal how these female costumes move in the “two for there, two for here”, which is the traditional step of the Boi-Bumbá. In other words, I seek to show that, even in the face of an attitude of imminent and eminent female emancipation in the face of the stereotyped gaze of men, Cunhã-Poranga carries the legacy of a colonial, oppressive and patriarchal past. I believe that this work can propose a new look at Boi-Bumbá‟s clothing, thus adding a critical view that has been little explored about Amazonian folkloric clothing in terms of its cultural, aesthetic, historical and social importance.