Mestre Sinhozinho: the cultural representation of a folk healer in the history of Mato Grosso (1940-1944)

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the representation of Sinhozinho as master of the people, in the municipality of Bonito-MS. The delimited cut is between (1940 - 1944), this period, coinciding with the government of Getúlio Vargas (1937-1945). In this research, we will use the methods of oral history, images recorded in the field and public interviews in the understanding that these sources published and collected in the stages of observation and execution of the research contribute to the production of historical knowledge. In this sense, the character under study is represented as an undefined figure for the residents of the time, and these report their arrival by people in the district of Bonito in the 1940s. Over other past periods, this same actor had been identified as a phenomenon of local popular culture over a historical, cultural and religious representation. Its existence is still mysterious and part of several events built in the performance of a master healer of the people, being persecuted by the owners of power with regard to various attempts to forget his passage through the silences imposed in society. As long as it would have disappeared at an unexpected time for the interviewees in 1944, while suffering persecution by the authorities. With the lack of documentary evidence that could prove the tortures and violent acts by the commandants of the time, the narrators transformed their little-discussed history into a significant legacy, so it was not emphasized in the problem of the object represented. The results obtained in the master's degree between (2017/2018) brought a decisive statement in which the character retains a strong popular devotion in the belief of the local population, and even with his mysterious disappearance under suspicion of his death by the local forces of the Estado Novo period, it manifests itself among the religiosities of the people strengthened by their absence.