Psychosocial effects of religious racism (BahiaAlagoas): between historical pain and current struggles for recognition
Religious racism. Terreiro communities. Cultural trauma. Violence. Recognition
This research aims understand the psychosocial effects of religious racism in terreiro communities in the States of Bahia and Alagoas. The phenomenon can be understood as a specific form of religious intolerance in which the attacks there is a racial bias, specifically targeting practitioners of Afro-indigenous religions. We start from the contextualization of religious racism in the historical experience of colonial domination and subalternization of the original peoples and those brought from Africa, which also occurred in spiritual and cultural terms, and its connection with the notion of social trauma that echoes and is updated in everyday violence and contempt, with the limitation or taking away of freedoms and rights and denial of recognition in relationships with oneself and with the extended other (family, community, society, State). Aiming to highlight a type of suffering within a framework of cultural violence - of collective bases and not always palpable and visible - we use an expanded and complex look at the dynamics of subjectivity and emotions to carry out a qualitative listening to victims and also institutions that they welcome and deal with demands arising from religious racism. Subjects, community, Law and institutions are intertwined in a web, since relationships established through violence can represent a source of acceptance or deepening pain; of its repair or renewal. In this sense, through a qualitative design from varied sources, we propose to map these processes in a nonexhaustive, but significant way, in order to contribute to the debate and the expansion of the view on the topic, subsidizing responses and strategies from the perspective of and for the affected groups, as well as the formulation of more assertive policies by public authorities.