Lamento de um povo negro: o trabalho da memória de uma mestra dos pontos cantados de umbanda na Comunidade Quilombola Namastê - Ubá/MG.

Abstract

This dissertation is the result of an ethnography shared with the Quilombola Master Maria Luiza Marcelino, having as main axis the sung points of the Terreiro Umbanda Caboclo Pena Branca as a working ground for the memory and updating of the community's bonds with its ancestors. Thus, we present the Quilombo Namastê in the city of Ubá-MG, which keeps alive, shelters and feeds this terreiro. The history of the quilombola community and the Umbanda terreiro are presented based on the stories narrated and written by Maria Luiza Marcelino, comparing to my ethnographic observations made between September 2018 and February 2020, in addition to a documentary and bibliographic research. An important collection of records of sung points and testimonies by Maria Luíza Marcelino about their ancestry and spirituality, as well as reports of the history of this community, was built throughout the research, and served as the basis for the information presented here. The sung points and the reports were chosen in collaboration with Maria Luiza Marcelino and her spiritual guides. The role of the Quilombola Master Maria Luiza Marcelino is highlighted as a historian, political leader, black activist, defender of the quilombola community, priest, messenger of multiple mediumship from spiritual guides, guardian and activator of the memories present in the community. The work of permanent remembrance in the thread of more than 200 continuous years of history of this black and invisible community, marked by the traumas of the violent processes of slavery, has in the points sung by Terreiro Caboclo Pena Branca the materiality of its fundamental practices of resistance, sociability and spirituality. From Quilombola Master Maria Luiza's writings and exegesis on the history of the black people and her people, and the strong relationship with the ancestral guides who form their spirituality, the lament emerges as the main mark of the sung points, crossing a history of suffering, resistance and historical awareness.