The romaria in Círio de Nazaré: Social, interaction, reciprocity and an ethnographic look at pilgrimage

Abstract

The article studies the pilgrimage of worshipers, an event that precedes the Círio de Nazaré, a sacred festivity from popular attribute of the northern region. Inside of that context where several knowlegdges travel go around in the culture, we considered that the celebration, and everything rotates around it, carrying a social interaction potentiality, be through the popular Catholicism, it unites people of different visions and isms, culminating in a plurality of symbolic changes, besides the socialization, promoting the reciprocity among them involved. Thereforefore, in an endeavor to understand the pilgrimage as social fact and the practice of walking in the territory of the sacred, we aim to study the pilgrimage in the voice of the pilgrims, noting, still, the importance of pilgrimages who leave their homes and travel so many days by roads with destination to Belém-PA city. Many these pilgrims go on foot to pay out promises, while others course the same path in order to ratify the faith and belief in the patroness of Círio. Seen like that, the social interactions take on the form of an important ritualistic phenomenon based in the reciprocity from collective actions of people involved in the walking.