“Lembre de mim”: um olhar antropológico sobre o dia dos mortos no cemitério Senhor da Boa Sentença em João Pessoa/PB

Abstract

The work addresses the theme of the day of the dead in its ritualistic context in the city of João Pessoa - Paraíba, more precisely in the Senhor da Boa Sentence cemetery, located in the Varadouro neighborhood. The intention is to discuss the ethnographic experience from the process of visiting the dead as a way of being remembered, paying attention to the social and economic processes around that day. Special attention will be given to the visitation of a specific tomb, by the girl Maria de Lourdes, for its symbolic relevance in the place. It is about problematizing contemporary processes about visiting on the day of the dead and thinking of the cemetery as a significant space in the understanding of a social organization, as a fundamental part of a culture, and as a witness to the history of a society. In this sense, we understand the cemetery as a historical construction made from distancing, haunting and hygiene processes around death and the dead. In order to understand the elements that make up the social world of the cemetery, we look at issues such as the market inside and outside the walls, religiosity, symbolism and social representations of the agents that are part of the process, as well as the entire class division present in the structure. of the cemetery, which pervades the relations of the living and / with the dead. Thus, the perception of the social dynamics that surrounds the cemetery with its sociocultural practices, and the relationships built between individuals, helped to understand the cemetery space not only as a place of death, but mainly as a living space, social activity, memory. and symbolic continuity.