A cavalgada à Pedra do Reino, em São José do Belmonte, Pernambuco: por entre frestas literárias, experiências sertanejas e inventividade festiva.

Abstract

This study was produced through an ethnography about the festive complex of Cavalgada à Pedra do Reino. Since 1993, this celebration has been held annually in the last week of May in the city of São José do Belmonte, in the backwoods of Pernambuco state, and consists of Sebastianist narratives, the Armorial imagetic repertoire, the political and intellectual relevance of Ariano Suassuna, the strong Catholic religiosity, and the backwoods reality. Understanding the fest as a gateway to comprehend the social, the aim of this thesis is to identify how these important and unique festive constituents structure the social experience of the city of Belmonte. The thesis shows, therefore, how the fest can translate sociabilities in its social and symbolic hierarchies; mobilize local history and customs; expose political (including partisan) and religious orders; and also to produce speeches and images about the backwoods experience itself, accessing, in a peculiar way, Sebastianist historical narratives and Suassunian literature. I followed the anthropological premise of fest as a process and not as a simple event or product, therefore, the Cavalgada à Pedra do Reino becomes a paradigmatic example of how the festival engenders inventiveness and mobilization, reflecting social life while producing it. To achieve such goals, I performed participant observation between 2018 and 2019, in addition to producing semi-structured interviews and searching for documentary references in archives and museums, as well as photographic and journalistic records. The thesis immerses, above all, into the adventure of a city that decides to intrude in the fantastic and mysterious universe inscribed in the work of one of the most influential writers of the Brazilian Northeast.