Coloniality in Health Practices and Resistances of ‘Benzedeiras’ and ‘Mães de Santo’

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate forms of resistance among women that conduct healing and health practices, which consists of alternative methods to the hegemonic western medicine imposed on bodies by the coloniality of power, knowledge and being. This analysis is based on ethnographic research, with mães de santo, in two terreiros de Linha Cruzada, in Rio Grande do Sul, and with benzedeiras from the Movimento Aprendizes da Sabedoria (MASA) in Paraná. We propose to discuss, from what these women evoke and carry out, ways of know how that show ruptures to the western-patriarchal model of knowledge production about bodies and health. Their practices and knowledge of healing, stimulated in these two ethnographic contexts, produce intense relations with humans and non-humans (plants, water, earth, animals, orixás, popular saints, monks, etc.), in which different entities act as intensities and powers relational. Benzedeiras and mães de santo demand the recognition of their religious and healing practices that have historically been discriminated, censored, monitored and repressed by the State, as in cases where Afro-religious were persecuted and the benzedeiras held on charges of carrying out illegal healing activities.

Keywords

• coloniality; traditional knowledge of healing; benzedeiras; mães de santo; cosmopolitics.