From Marajó Island to the Marquês de Sapucaí: ontological translation and cosmopolitical efficacy of the Caruanas in the Beija-Flor de Nilópolis plot (1998)

Abstract

This article examines the cosmopolitical efficacy and the symbolic efficacy of Marajoara caboclo pajelança at Marquês de Sapucaí, based on the parade "Pará: o mundo místico dos Caruanas nas águas do Patu-Anu," with which G.R.E.S. Beija-Flor de Nilópolis won the 1998 Rio de Janeiro Carnival championship. Through ethnographic research and interviews with the pajé's daughter and two carnavalescos from the era's commission, the investigation details the insertion of a native Amazonian ontology into the institutional restructuring of a samba school afflicted by a fourteen-year title drought. It is argued that the barracão and the parade avenue constituted a complex zone of transcultural mediation and an expanded terreiro, in which Zeneida Lima's shamanic agency directed the terms of a precise cosmological and aesthetic translation, governed by an ethic of the gift opposed to commodification, a paradox intensified at the epicenter of Brazilian popular culture's most capitalized spectacle. The spiritual validation of the design sketches (croquis) and the ritualization on the runway attest to the articulation of a collective trance and of structuring symbolic efficacy, with ramifications capable of reordering the samba school's symbolic capital and echoing into the school's return to Marajó, planned for the 2027 Carnival.