Name: Roberta Casteglione Bettcher
Type: MSc dissertation
Publication date: 23/09/2021
Advisor:

Name	Role
Milton Esteves Junior	Advisor *

Examining board:

Name	Role
Clara Luiza Miranda	Internal Examiner *
Milton Esteves Junior	Advisor *
Ruth de Cássia dos Reis	External Examiner *

Summary: From the ethnographic immersion in the Macrina neighborhood, a black territory in
the city of Alfredo Chaves-ES, it is possible to notice that the joy of the parties
characterizes this community and keeps Afro-Brazilian knowledge alive, even with
the prevalence of European culture in this urban context. The scenery from which
these collective manifestations emerge is a hill meandered through winding and
narrow streets and alleys with the houses juxtaposed in strips that circle and follow
the topography, it is an asymmetry to the architectural and urbanistic, hegemonic and
European pattern, and this pattern, according to Sodré (2019), is also a means of
reinforcing cultural dominance in a territory. The distancing of blacks due to territorial
segregation at the end of the 19th century, was a recurrent practice in Brazilian cities,
there was State stimulus to the immigration of European settlers in the same spacetime in which the abolition of enslaved blacks became effective. Pessali`s narrative
(2010) about Alfredo Chaves emphasizes a white view that legitimizes a single
ethnicity (the Italians) in the construction of the city and includes blacks only in
excerpts about urban precariousness and the parties in the Macrina neighborhood.
The interest is to bring other narratives of this territoriality, from a cultural and urban
perspective, with active participation in the streets during the festivals. Through the
ethnographic investigation of the collective cultural actions of the Macrina
neighborhood, which territorialize the Afro-Brazilian culture in Alfredo Chaves, it is
possible to research three festivals: Saint Benedict’s Feast, Our Lady of Aparecida’s
Feast and Carnival. They converge on the religious theme, as they follow the
Catholic liturgical calendar, but the main interest is in the role of the streets in these
festivities. The thin threshold between the sacred and the profane, and between
public and private spaces, the cult of black saints, the jongo and congo of Saint
Benedict, and the masked characters of the Carnival (Zé Pereiras), are
manifestations that distinguish the Macrina neighborhood in the urban context of
Alfredo Chaves. By observing the dynamics of the festivals in the streets of the city, it
is possible to trace graphic representations of the festive movement, cartographies of
joy, a way of reflecting on the political role of Afro-Brazilian culture as a driver to
urban common territories

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