Os mamelucos e o vinho da lembrança

Abstract

The mamelukes and the wine of remembrance

In this article I attempt to discuss the “mameluke identity” from the perception that the visitor Heitor Furtado de Mendonça had of them, during the First Visitation of the Holy Office to parts of Brazil, in 1591. Based on the cultural approach that resettles food, more specifically here, beverages, from the field of nutrition to its symbolic implications - the choices, the manners of preparation and consumption, the interdicts, the transgressions - , I quest to analyze the mamelukes and the practices of an amerindian religiousness, which the visitor himself was not able to find. Considering that he was prepared to identify and inquire heretics such as Judaizers, Moorish, followers of Luther, among other behaviors that were suspect of heresy, within the context of the catholic reform. However, the visitor was not prepared to meet the mameluke. The mamelukes' originality destroyed the competences of the visitor.