Território e territorialidades na umbanda: usos e apropriações dos espaços urbanos na cidade de Parintins - AM

Abstract

This research has the general objective of analyzing the historical processes of constitution of territorial identity in Umbanda terreiros in the city of Parintins-AM and its relationship with the forms of appropriation of urban spaces. Proposes an analysis of the territorial dynamics of Umbanda in the city of Parintins - AM, investigating how afro-religious terreiros are constituted as spaces of resistance, identity and symbolic power in the midst of an urban landscape marked by christian-catholic hegemony. The work starts from the understanding that territory is not limited to the physical dimension, but is also a lived space, loaded with cultural, social and political meanings. Using a qualitative approach, based on ethnography and oral history, the study seeks to understand how Umbanda practitioners construct their territories, face processes of marginalization and build strategies for visibility and belonging. The empirical focus is on two terreiros in the city - the Centro Cultural Terreiro de Umbanda São Sebastião and the Centro Espírita de Umbanda Mãe Mariana - whose leaders and communities were accompanied during the fieldwork. The study also examines the work of the Parintintin Afro Movement, a recent collective that has emerged as an important political agent in the struggle for recognition of African religions cultural manifestations. The research shows that the terreiros, as well as being religious spaces, are territories of identity affirmation and disputes over rights, revealing tensions between centrality and marginality, tradition and modernity, visibility and invisibility in the Amazonian urban context.