São João do folclore e manjericos: a memorialistic representation of Amazonian folklore

Abstract

Generated from an analytical reading of the poem “São João do folclore e mangericos”, by the Pará poet Bruno de Menezes, published in the book Batuque, in 1931, this work is based on Aleida Asmann’s thought Espaços da Recordação (2011), under the opening of the return to the past to understand the situations of the present, marked by the transience of the poetic doing that pierces the time in the constant updating. In this sense, there is in the poem an approach to the festivities that take place in the June court, in Belém do Pará, portrayed in a memorial narrative which provides the evaluations of the social place of a past time, with the presentations of the characteristics of this folkloric manifestation, originated in the fusion of cultures that contributed to the formations of the Amazonian people, highlighting the peculiarities of the inhabitant formed by the mixture between the Indian,  the Portuguese colonizer and the Africans ethnicities. These cultures originated hybrid identity(ies) in the Amazon but specifically in the city of Belém, one of the first urban centers founded in the region, becoming on of the main starting points for the dissemination of these manifestations in other places in the region. It is also, considered the process of change of popular traditions, as a result of the changes of time, shown wistfully at the end of the poem.