O re-inventar das Cambindas de Triunfo: diálogos de corpo, memória e tradição

Abstract

The Cambindas de Triunfo is a popular manifestation that had its appearance around 1913 in the Alto da Boa Vista community, in the city of Triunfo, in the Sertão Pernambucano. As a carnival manifestation, composed primarily of mostly black men, Cambindas went out into the streets dressed as women to play and cheer the party where they passed. One of the characteristics of the procession was to pass in the houses where they were always received with food and drinks by the owners. The elders tell us that the residents of the whole city when the carnival arrived opened spaces in the rooms of their houses, because there had great possibilities of being contemplated with a visit from the cambindas. After decades of cheering for carnivals, Cambindas no longer take to the streets, and nobody knows the reasons that triggered the discontinuity of this performance within this community. Today what I believe to mediate as a popular teacher who teaches the ways of making Cambindas is a process of re_invention of this tradition (Hobsbawn, 1997). The objective was, from the reinvention acts with the group “Cambindas de Triunfo”, to deepen the relationship with the neighborhood cradle of this manifestation, broadening the understanding of its importance for the culture of this city. This research deal with the methodology of action research, life histories and critical ethnoresearch as methodological perspectives for this cultural mediation. I also understand that it is in doing research that the re_invention of Cambindas gains new meanings by strengthening the bonds of memory and triggering the symbolic imaginary of the bodies in the community that play, sing and dance.