Trauma e Limpeza Ritual de Veteranos em Moçambique

Abstract

This article presents and discusses the cleansing rituals performed by healers on veterans of the Mozambican civil war, in the south of the country. Those rituals recycled treatments previously used for other stressful social situations, together with their rationale. Such cleansing rituals had a remarkably successful contribution to veterans’ social reintegration, largely due to their coherence with the local systems of misfortune interpretation, with the problem they intended to solve, and with well known and respected proceedings. However, their role was deeper than the reintegration of individual veterans; they also contributed to the acceptance of the former enemies as “people like the other” and of the pacific democratic competition, as a substitute to the military confrontation.

Keywords

• Mozambique
• cleansing rituals
• civil war
• violence
• trauma
• healers