Care and healing in the Amazon: an analysis of the experiences of women healers in Pará - (nineteenth and twentieth centuries).
pajelança, decoloniality, gender, healing practices.
This thesis problematizes the role of female healers in Pará, Brazil, from the beginning of the Republic, during the validity of the Criminal Code of 1890, and the consolidation of medical discourses in the country. The aim is to understand the experiences, tensions, and power relations experienced by men and women who practiced Afro-Indigenous healing practices in the Amazon region, considering the discourses present in the local press and in cases of crimes related to this magical-religious practice presented in criminal processes of the Paraense justice at the time. Additionally, following a decolonial gender approach, this research questions how gender stereotypes may have contributed to the persecution of healers, midwives and others in a highly racialized context marked by distinctions between masculinity and femininity.