Abstract
This article develops the transformation of studies on Brazilian shrines, based on the Catholic invocation of Our Lady of Conception (Conceicao Aparecida), in a cultural reflection on the notion of the symbolic space in Latin America. Considering the expressive historical, semiotic, and institutional aspects of Latin America’s cultural heritage, this study recognizes the emergence of a network of identification for religious spaces. A geography of cultural projection that helps to articulate the interpretation of symbolic vectors (in festivals, media, and tourism), facilitates both comparison with other localities (municipalities-shrines) in Brazil and Latin America, and the characterization of the theatrical aesthetic of devotion in the construction of continental heritage. Summarizing the qualitative verifications made during three years of research on strategies to irradiate devotion to the Virgin Mary, this study achieved an aesthetic strength evaluation of religious patrimony as a challenge to systems of the heritage of Latinity. We concluded that the greatest risk to religious cultural patrimony lies in the growth of fundamentalist ideologies, which seek to discredit the legitimacy of the Marian tradition, and the religious and cultural syncretism in continental identity.
Highlights
This article develops the transformation of studies on Brazilian shrines, based on the Catholic invocation of Our Lady of Conception (Conceição Aparecida), in a cultural reflection on the notion of the symbolic space in Latin America
A geography of cultural projection that helps to articulate the interpretation of symbolic vectors, facilitates both comparison with other localities in Brazil and Latin America, and the characterization of the theatrical aesthetic of devotion in the construction of continental heritage
The symbolic construction of space allows us to identify selective places, especially those endowed with brands and identifications that differ from the banal condition: Cities, valleys, mountains, protected areas, forests, commercial zones, neighborhoods, or coasts—an entire locational denomination can constitute this kind of “white paper”, a generic graphical assumption over which there is an intentional drawing
Summary
The symbolic construction of space allows us to identify selective places, especially those endowed with brands and identifications that differ from the banal condition: Cities, valleys, mountains, protected areas, forests, commercial zones, neighborhoods, or coasts—an entire locational denomination can constitute this kind of “white paper”, a generic graphical assumption over which there is an intentional drawing. This drawing, humanely endowed with the artifice of remaking nature into culture, comprises the creative act of engendering meaning, or, in a similar metaphor, of communicating to the navigators that an ice island is submerged beneath the huge tip of the iceberg. The recurring concept of “sacred”, in its organicity, needs to be better delimited
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