Between roads and veredas: messianism in the hills of the State of Rio Grande do Norte (1898-1899)
Messianism. Fanaticism. Religiosity. Sertão
This work proposes to problematize the sertões as spaces for the construction of messianic movements, taking as object, the messianic movement of Serra de João do Vale, led by the blessed Joaquim Ramalho at the end of the 19th century in the sertões of the State of Rio Grande do Norte. The problem arose from a scarce historiographical production on the movement at regional and national level, evidenced initially in the writings of Luís da Câmara Cascudo in an article published in the Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Rio Grande do Norte (IHGRN) and in the Commercio newspaper from Rio de Janeiro in 1941. For a better analysis we look at works such as “Messianism in Brazil and in the world” by sociologist Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz; "Readings of" religious fanaticism "in the Brazilian hinterland" by Cristina Pompa. We adopted the Discourse History approach to the analysis of the sources, which are: articles in newspapers and magazines, private archives and interviews. Despite the research being in an embryonic phase, it was verified in the speeches present in some of the sources that the messianic movement of Serra de João do Vale was taken to marginality, being designated as a movement of “fanatics”, a pejorative discourse built from the “other” that disqualifies not only the movement and its supporters, but the Sertão as a space for their construction.