One sabbath in the tropics: inquisition, memory and meaning production

Abstract

In this article we analyze three denunciations made by the Holy Office during its final visitation to colonial Brazil (1773-1779), against the indian Sabina, that allows us to understand some aspects of the process of identifying a multicultural people, the result of the encounter of intercontinental recollection, of processes of transfer and resistance. We analyze how fragments of Catholic and Pagan rituals were tied to a religion born out of resistance, generated by censorship which has grown in our memory, permitting differing meanings, resulting in the possibility to fluctuate between virtuous work and work of the devil, eventually stabilizing as virtuousness through the strength of a symbolic memory.