Sítio Caldeirão: a violência institucional contra uma comunidade fraterna (1889 1937) região do Cariri/Ceará

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Benedito Tadeu dos
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_SP
• Texto Completo: https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/12857
• topic: Beatos; Sertanejo nordestino; Religião; Trabalho; Anticomunismo; Violência do Estado; Retirantes; Ciclos das secas; Northeastern people; Religion; Work; Anticommunism; State violence; Retirees; Drought cycle; CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::HISTORIA

The brotherhood of Santa Cruz do Deserto was a community ceated in 1926 led by Beato José Lourenço, and initially composed of northeastern sertanejos who were devotees of Father Cícero Romão Batista. They went on a pilgrimage to Juazeiro do Norte in 1889, after the Eucharistic Miracle performed by Beata Maria de Araújo and along the course of 37 years, migrants from diferent Northeastern regions gathered in Cariri. This number increased substantially with the gradual arrival of the victims of the 1932 drought, which maximized the atavistic exploitation by the rural oligarchs, or so called colonels. At the Sítio Caldeirão, located in the municipality of Crato, in the State of Ceará, land of Father Cícero, José Lourenço and members of his community, grounded upon the inherited fraternal experiences of Father Ibiapina and common religious practices of the indigenous sertanejos, organized themselves according to the pillars which guaranteed their material survival and spiritual fulfilment: work, prayer and common sharing of all goods produced. This community structure was considered by the dominant social segments of Ceará, a threat to the established social order. By means of its hierarchy, committed to the romanization project and to the local agrarian oligarchy, the Roman Catholic Church dismissed such religious practices as fanaticism. Added to this, there was an intense dissemination of accusations of communist practices and dangerous grouping which helped form a public opinion favorable to its repression. A military campaign unleashed on September 11, 1936, formed by the military and the civilian police from the municipality, from the state of Ceará and with the help of federal forces, resulted in the dispersion of community members and the evacuation of the lands of the Caldeirão, finalizing, in May 1937, with a raid of these forces against the remaining members, who had taken refuge in the Mata dos Cavalos, in the Serra do Araripe. The Sítio Caldeirão, along with the movements of Canudos and Pau de Colher, expresses the violence of the State towards the organizational forms arising from that society. Their only sin was to fight poverty abiding by the norms and rules of their own culture as established by the State and the Catholic Church. The analysis of the present theme was based on several documents, such as periodicals, letters, police raid reports, the testament of Father Cícero, Dr. Floro Bartholomeu s speech in the Federal Chamber in 1923 and testimonials (from remnants and contemporaries of Beato José Lourenço)