UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA METROPOLITANA UNIDAD IZTAPALAPA DIVISIÓN DE CIENCIAS SOCIALES Y HUMANIDADES POSGRADO EM CIENCIAS ANTROPOLÓGICAS MARACATUS-NAÇÃO Y MERCADO CULTURAL: USOS DE LA CULTURA PERNAMBUCANA EN ESCALA GLOBAL (original) (raw)

Maracatu-nação is a traditional Afrobrazilian cultural expression, which popularity’s has increased over the past years. After years being considered as a culture designed for black poor people, maracatus are now the protagonists of Recife’s carnival as well as incite interest in white middle class people all over Brazil and some parts of the world, who build their own maracatu groups. This “spectacularization” caused several impacts into their meanings, internal structure, communitarian bonds, sacred dimensions, and the way they present their music, dance and performance in general, most of them with commercial purposes. The relevance of the market to those groups also appeared along their cultural inventory, project required as part of the process of registration as intangible heritage. Besides their recent visibility, for the majority of the traditional groups, turning into an official cultural heritage and touristic attraction did not bring them autonomy or dignified life conditions. In fact, the groups who maintain close relations to the middle class are the ones with better infra-structure, more financial resources and huger spaces on the market. Those few groups are considered models to be followed, encouraging a tendency of standardization among traditional groups and the decrease of their diversity. Despite of negative consequences observed in the relation between traditional maracatus and the middle class, youngsters believe their practice encourage cultural interchange and social justice. Considering this controversial situation involving traditional culture, safeguard policies, cultural market and consumers, the main goal of the research is to analize the relation between maracatus nação and cultural market. In order to achieve that the study will consider the past and present spaces designed for those groups, their strategies of insertion and negotiation as well as the changes of their internal structure and meanings encouraged by this context. The research will also analize the related processes like globalization, the emergence of new identities and imagined communities, the interest for world music and “exotic” cultures worldwide. Finally, the research will present a discussion upon cultural heritages’ policies in Brazil, through a study case of maracatus-nação’s heritage registering process where the power relations and expectations from different groups (maracatuzeiros, politicians and the agencies responsible for the heritage’s policies), revealed the several obstacles concerning the promotion of safeguard policies.