Relações entre benzedeiras e plantas medicinais nos ofícios tradicionais de cura

Abstract

This thesis engages with the knowledge and practices of three traditional healers in the municipality of Pato Branco, focusing on their relationships with medicinal plants and other multispecies interactions that comprise their ways of life. The thesis aims to understand the knowledge and practices of these healers in their relationships with medicinal plants and other multispecies interactions present in their healing practices in the municipality of Pato Branco. The research methodology was constructed from a qualitative approach, emphasizing sensitive listening and attentive observation of the healers' practices in the municipality. Initially, a mapping of 15 people was carried out (12 female healers and 3 male healers), of whom three became central interlocutors of the research: Samaúma, Jatobá, and Cipreste, whose names are fictitious, chosen as a form of care and protection of their identities. The research engages with multispecies ethnography, inspired by authors such as Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, and Bruno Latour, recognizing the agency of plants, objects, enchanted beings, and other entities in healing practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, in addition to the use of charts to visualize the relationships of the healers. The healing practices of these healers reveal living and complex networks of relationships between humans, plants, animals, objects, spiritual entities, and other technologies. By adopting a multi-species perspective, it was possible to understand that these knowledge-practices do not operate in isolation, but are woven by affective, spiritual, and material bonds that cross boundaries between nature and culture. Each healer mobilizes, in her own way, elements that have their own agency in their healing processes. Jatobá organizes her spirituality around a domestic altar; Samaúma builds a broad network that articulates saints, food, and animals; and Cipreste anchors herself in memory, ancestry, and a strong ecological perception of caring for plants and the environment. The weavings here indicate that the knowledge and practices for these women are the result of compositions between multiple species. The relationships with medicinal plants go beyond therapeutic use and involve listening, reciprocity, and sensitivity. Thus, their practices reveal forms of resistance and existence in the face of modern logics of erasure, opening paths to other forms of knowledge and care for life in its multiplicity.