A permanência do curandeirismo nas periferias de Chapecó entre os anos 1980 e 1990

Abstract

This graduate thesis aims to comprehend and analyze the permanency of faith healing in the suburbs of Chapecó between 1980 and 1990. There was a crescent offer of health services in Chapecó during this period and the Zoning Law of 1980 had a segregationist character, it sought to distance the lowest income people and maintain only people with more favorable socioeconomic conditions downtown. However, we used questionnaires answered by the women healers themselves to know their profile and the way they lived, how they acquired this ability, and also to discover the way they performed their healing rituals and used plants to bless and into the production of teas and herbs. This practice was very criticized by medicine, which considered it a technique for "ignorant" and "charlatan" people, in order to keep control over the body and the disease under state supervision. These women healers are highly respected in the communities they are inserted, and recognized by them as well, so we intend in this work to take this knowledge from the suburbs and bring it to the academic community. Thus, we will seek to contribute with this popular knowledge so that it does not end or sink into oblivion.