As marchas religiosas tomando as ruas de Pelotas (RS) : por vezes Orixás, por vezes Jesus

Abstract

This thesis deals with the public religious presence in the city of Pelotas (RS), qualifying it through two religious marches of different origins: the Marches against Religious Intolerance, whose mobilization is organized by leaders of the traditional terreiro community in Pelotas city; and the March for Jesus, organized by an association of evangelical pastors in the same city. The religious marches were followed between 2018 and 2019, which led to the understanding of the exercise of the streets as a space of production and religious agency. From the presence of religious marches in the streets, performativity became a key category for rethinking the place of the religious in the public space and revealing the different strategies of collectives to present themselves publicly. Thus, ethnography showed that with each path traced by the religious marches, different discursive and performance movements emerged that redefined the urban map, resulting in new meanings and perceptions of a city inhabited by actions and religious bodies. However, with the control of public spaces and social distancing due to the pandemic in 2020, ethnography began to trace new routes to accompany the religion-making that ended up on the internet. Observing the performance of religious actors in the marches in the virtual space, a relationship between the presence on the streets and the virtuality of the internet in the configuration of the public space was reaffirmed.