“If I don’t do good, I don’t do evil either!”: a sacred Afro-indigenous lived by the Cria-ú Quilombo benefitors in the Amapá state

Abstract

The article aims to investigate how are the religious practices of the Afro-indigenous matrix in the Quilombo do Cria-ú, analyzing the religious worldviews and healing practices performed through prayers, blessings, and use of medicinal plants carried out by the current community benedictors. For data collection, we used participant observation resources, semi-structured interviews, and descriptive analysis of data found in the field. As a result of this study we have the (re) knowledge of the benedictors as legitimate heirs of the Afro-indigenous religious traditions of the Amazon because, through their traditional knowledge, these black and Quilombola women perpetuate the memories, relationships, interactions and social networks woven between Africans and indigenous peoples in the Amazon territory.