As carneiras da civilização caboclo-sertaneja no contestado: morrer e enterrar antes e durante a Guerra - uma primeira leitura sobre a cultura fúnebre, crematórios e valas comuns

Abstract

The following paper proposes a first analytic reading about a Geography of death for the Contestado war region (1912-1916) as part of the formation process of the ‘’sertanejo-caboclo’’ social group civilization on the backlands of the Paraná and Santa Catarina states. From the methodological point of view, three holy Fields and one crematory are described through photos captured in fieldwork in the region. It is written a draft of the concepts about the regional population’s mournful culture before and after the war, such as the burial of the bodies in the ‘’caboclos’’ secular cemeteries, common ditches, a product of the tifus and cholera contagions, and bombings from the massacre conducted by the legalist forces and militias in the final phase of combat. In the Contestado war region, the cemeteries, even those dominated by collective deposition of bodies, crematory spaces, and the ‘’caboclos’’ secular cemeteries in that area, are treated as holy ground, because in them are deposited the memories of the deceased and their social group, representing the cultural identity of the regional population, seen as fragments of its sotioterritoral and cultural materialities and immaterialities.