"O carro de boi é a minha vida": técnicas e expressões culturais entre carapinas e carreiros no interior de Goiás

Abstract

In this thesis I have analyzed the ways the oxen cart parade and the convoy pilgrimage that have been taking place during the traditional Festa do Divino Pai Eterno (Divino Pai Eterno’s Festival), in Trindade (GO), may be interpreted from the oxen cart perspective, from its historical basis to the varied techniques of its build and to the taming of the convoy oxen, which have permitted me to identify a set of cultural repertoires specific to cosmologies, ontologies and modus vivendi of country districts of Goiás, where rural features are currently associated to urban features by a group of relating hybridity factors. At the first part of the work, I have drawn my attention to the oxen cart parade in Araçu (GO) and to the convoy pilgrimage in honor of Pai Eterno (Eternal Father), which has been held in Trindade (GO) since the midnineteenth century. I have made a description of the parade and the journey I undertook with the convoy in 2019, in which I try to show how such parade articulates habits, traditions and organizational modes, beyond the sacred issue. That has led me to consider oxen carts as a central analysis category. Furthermore, by a historiographical approach, I have tried to show the origins and the widespread use of oxen cart in many historical periods, from its origin to its introduction in Goiás and its large participation in people’s daily life. In the third part, I have focused on my own research analysis, which were carried out with woodworkers specialized in the build of oxen carts, known as carapinas. In that topic, their build techniques have proved to generate a heuristic polysemy of anthropological meanings that I have tried to analyze more profoundly. In the following chapter, I have described the choosing and training (taming) stages of the convoy oxen so as to realize that such moments also articulate techniques and cosmogonies that involve the typical way of living of Goiás country populations. In the last part of this thesis, I have shown how labor represents a didactical and pedagogical power for the carapina and the carreiro (oxen cart craftspeople and oxen cart conductors), how oxen carts currently stir other social categories and even the political agenda. At last, I have displayed how oxen carts and oxen cart conductors may be seen as a living heritage for the concrete cultural traits and even the intangible knowledge that they hold.