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Tata endy rekoe – Holy fire: Meetings between the Guarani, ayahuasca and Red Way.

Abstract

This research focuses the process of appropriation of ayahuasca and other related practices, such as the sweat lodge or temazcal and the vision quest, by the Guarani Indians from Yynn Morothi Wherá village, also called Mbiguaçu, located at the southern coast of Santa Catarina State (Brazil). The main objective of this ethnography is to reconstitute the history of the appropriation of ayahuasca by this village‟s dwellers, trying to understand the use of this beverage in their ceremonies, as well as in their discourse about guarani culture and tradition. The second central objective of this research is to outline the network self-called “alliance of the medicines”, formed during the last ten years among Mbiguaçu village‟s dwellers, members of an international spiritual group called Sacred Fire of Itzachilatlan, and members of the Santo Daime community Céu do Patriarca São José (Florianópolis, SC). The dialogues and negotiations between these different groups and actors have given place to an intense circulation of people, substances, images, ideas, rituals and aesthetics that I intend to map in this work. Among the main arguments developed here, are the emphasis in flows and circulations; in the dialogic and emergent character of culture; and the proposal of looking at shamanism as a dialogic category.