Ver-O-Peso herbal women and heritage looks

Abstract

The Complexo Ver-o-Peso is the largest open market in the northern of Brazil. Located in Belém, the capital of the State of Pará, it gathers varities of the Amazonian biodiversity, as well as customs, practices, and common knowledges to the region. Based on its ethnography, especially in the Herb's Market, a traditional section of the fair, this research examines the influence of heritage quality around the image of the women who work at the market. Based on the analysis of heritage processes and inventory of the historical, landscaped, architectural and cultural elements of the Complexo Ver-o-Peso, the value of heritage and cultural property is discussed as prominent forms of touristic and leisure consumption of the fair. The women workers, associated with popular traditional knowledge intrinsic to their activities, are viewed through heritage discourses that perceive in them an attractive cultural potential for such purposes. These intentions are based on gender, objectification, and exoticization, causing their figures to become essential, providing stigmas and fading their agencies and configurations as subject citizens, sellers, professionals, and experts.