Carlos Leal Rodrigues, arquicancelário da Paraíba: narrativas de vida e arqueologia das mídias no percurso infomemorial do Babalorixá

Abstract

The name of Carlos Leal Rodrigues appears discreetly in some research, founder and president of the Federation of African Cults of the state of Paraíba from 1966 to 1981, defender of the practices of Umbanda and Jurema of Paraíba in Brazil, even in some important works on Umbanda and Jurema in Paraíba. In contact with the family, we had access to more than 600 slides, records of various events and his career in Umbanda, which were made available for our research. In view of the above, we ask: how does the imagery power of the set of unpublished slides, considered “memory media” and information, from the period 1966 to 1981, reveal the participation and importance of Arquicancelário Babalorixá Carlos Leal Rodrigues in the process of building and strengthening Umbanda in Paraíba? This study aims to understand the participation and importance of Arquicancelário Babalorixá Carlos Leal Rodrigues in the process of construction and strengthening of Umbanda in Paraíba, based on memory media. The research is exploratory and descriptive, and its methodology will be documentary archaeology in the media of memory, without losing focus on the documents that originated in iconography. We perform a technical scanning process on all slides and convert them into digital format, organizing them to facilitate the location, identification and analysis of images for information recovery. And bring them to the analysis of iconography so that each one or set of photographs brings something more than what is recorded. We made an analysis based on Arquicancelário is trajectory and analyzed the media of memory using Roland Barthes' theory with the help of documents (newspapers and periodicals), published research and the memory of those who lived with Arquicancelário to “raise the embers” of Carlos Leal Rodrigues' memory, especially his participation in the creation and development of Umbanda and the Jurema Cults in Paraíba. The memory media have become an informational powerhouse, ranging from technical treatment to the scientific analysis that we have brought to bear on what is recorded. This process has provided the ferment to meet the expectations of the researcher and the line of research to which we are linked. We point to Carlos Leal Rodrigues as a kind of ethnographer of Umbanda and Juremeiras practices in Paraíba, strengthening the memory of Afro-indigenous religion in Paraíba, highlighting his articulations as a communicator.