MARCAS DE UMA REGIONALIDADE INTERIORANA: COMPOSIÇÕES DE FESTAS DE PADROEIROS E TROPEADAS EM COMUNIDADES RURAIS DE IMBITUVA-PR

Abstract

The present study addresses the phenomenon of patron saint festivals with tropeadas in countryside communities of Imbituva-PR. It has as main focus of investigation events carried out in four rural communities of the municipality. The context of these localities is marked by the neighborhood groupings formed from the occupation of family groups. The relations of kinship, neighborhood and activities around the chapels of the Roman Catholic Church contribute in a significant way in the spatial delimitation of these rural communities. The objective of this work is to clarify the linkages between the composition of these festivals and the countryside regionality, which is understood as symbolic elements related to a geographic space of reference, stated by the subjects of the research as ―the countryside‖. The methodology is grounded mainly in field studies in rural communities, thus, investigations and the interpretations are built from observation and active observation in festivals with tropeadas combined with a semi-structured interview with people from the different categories of festival participants. Patron saint festivals with tropeadas are taken as a composition constituted by multiple moments and circumstances, in just one day, the celebration assembles the expression of faith in the saints, fund raising for church maintenance, the gathering, entertainment and expenditure, the tradition and the ritual. It was also found that the celebration is an important moment of social entanglement of rural communities and that some of the elements which constitutes them also comprehends symbolic markers that express and reproduce countryside regionality. The presence of horses, the highlight of the community, the agricultural products and the symbol of the horse riders enhance the purposes of a countryside festival, recreating symbolically elements that represents a spatial differentiation anchored to the concept of a communitarian countryside space.