CORN COUSCOUS RAVINES AND A RIVER OF MILK: FOOD, IDENTITY AND HERITAGE IN THE HINTERLAND OF CANUDOS

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how eating practices that contributed to the affirmation of identity milestones within the social movement led by Antônio Conselheiro, in the last quarter of the 19th century, have repercussions in that territory. In a fragmentary way, the references to food have long been in the debate on Canudos, sometimes associated with alleged manifestations of the Conselheiro’s mental imbalance and the thousands of men and women who followed him. However, the negative image attributed to the alleged "fanaticism" and alienation of the conselheiristas has retreated from that of the collective that sought to insert itself in the reality that surrounded it, from a particular identity perspective, affirmed by the religious dimension. The current process of patrimonialization of the conselheirista inheritance integrates this symbolic inversion, in which such particularities result in the submission of aspects of economic life to community norms of production, distribution and consumption, including food items that composed the feeding repertoire of the backwoods.