PEOPLE LIVING IN THE STREETS, MULTILICITIES AND SINGULARITIES IN CARIRI CEARENSE
Homeless; Ethnography; City; Cariri; Covid-19.
In this research, we seek to think about how a global phenomenon, the people living in the streets, is singularized in the region of Cariri, in the Brazilian state of Ceará. Our general goal is to analyze the singularities and multiplicities concerning the lifestyle of the people living in the streets, in Cariri, Ceará, and, especifically, to describe the historical elements that are present in the production of the people living in the streets, in this region and how they are maintained in a history of the present; to comprehend the lifestyle of the people living in the streets, of Cariri in the process of producing and being produced by the city; to identify the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the people living in the streets of Cariri. From the methodological point of view, we carried out an ethnographic orientation work, from which we made use of participant and itinerant observation, daily life conversations, and field diary records, which resulted in the construction of two axes of analysis: what is common in the Cariri people living in the streets and elsewhere, as workers, unemployed people, migrants, and drug users; what is unique about this population, typical of the region, which are the figures of the blessed, pilgrims, and remnants of the Casa de Santa Teresa Psychiatric Hospital. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, we carried out a research with reports, in which we sought to outline the actions taken in relation to the people living in the streets that exist through their relationship with the city, in a double movement of producing it and being produced by it. As for the pandemic, we identified that many actions aimed at the people living in the streets were carried out by civil society; not by public policies. The State was negligent in its actions or in the way it performed them, but we had a solidarity network that produced other ways of taking care of this population.