“Exu não bebeu nada, a garrafa está furada”: um estudo da relação entre umbanda e o uso ritual de álcool no centro religioso São Jorge Guerreiro em Rio Tinto - PB

Abstract

“Exu didn’t drink anything, the bottle is bored”: a study of the relation between Umbanda and the ritual use of alcohol in the São Jorge Guerreiro Religious Center in Rio Tinto, is an ethnography that arose from the attempt to give an account of two manifest traits in Afro-Brazilian religions: the rituals of possessions and the consumption of psychoactive substances, specifically of alcohol by the entities within the context of the religious events of Umbanda. This work departs, in a first moment, of a historical presentation on the issue of the psychoactive ones, analyzing as from several studies the importance of these substances to the human groupings. By means of these historical reports, stands out the importance of alcohol in different social groups and also of sugar cane brandy for the Brazilian cultural construction linked to its consumption, indicating its strong presence among the former Afro-Brazilian and indigenous groups, and the expansion of this drink as a national symbol, being present, inclusive, in the umbandistics rites described in this work. From this perspective, it is followed by an ethnographic description of the ambience where the research was based, presenting the Conjunto Durval de Assis, where the São Jorge Guerreiro Religious Center is located, thus arriving at the description of the main interlocutors who contributed to the research, highlighting their life histories, which directly reflect their relation with the religious manifestation that compose. Finally, in the last chapter, is caried out a description of the ritual and ceremony of Saída de Jurema [Jurema Exit], to which characterizes and reflects, inside the analysis and ethnographic cut, the relation between Umbanda and the religious consumption of alcohol. It tries to demonstrate in such a way, how this use differs from the "common", everyday uses, gaining a fundamental importance within the characterization and operation of the religious acts cultivated in the Umbanda found in the São Jorge Guerreiro Religious Center.