From tolerance to contemporary intolerances: sacred challenges of religious heritage in urban

Abstract

This paper proposes a discussion about the representations of cultural tolerance in the promotion of religious festivals as patrimonial assets in the cities. In this way, the patrimony, at state level, gains legal apparatus of the public policies of strengthening of the culture of diversity. However, these policies also suffer from limited initiatives and attitudes of intolerance in the use of public space. The present research developed as a qualitative and documentary study, complemented by field observations, in the city of Fortaleza (CE) and its festivities of August 15. The immaterial religious heritage (central object of the study) was demarcated by the media representations of the groups directly and indirectly involved in the celebrations of capitals of the North, South and Center-West of the country. This completed a survey already carried out on large cities in the northeast and southeast of Brazil in another stage of the study of the festive patrimony of the Marian feasts. As result of this path, we can observe the weaknesses of the recognition of the religious feast as patrimony; and it is confirmed the perception that the strategies of religious tolerance, faced with institutional and cultural intolerances, are amplified as the safeguard records become effective.