Crusade in the Hinterland: Mediaeval Heritage in Cavalhadas and Cheganças

This paper aims at analysing the mediaeval traits and long-term inheritances pertaining to popular feasts called <i>cheganças</i>, in the Northeastern part of Brazil, and <i>cavalhadas,</i> in the country’s hinterland. These popular culture celebrations are annually held in some small and even somewhat pitoresque towns and villages throughout Brazil and evince the land’s strong mediaeval bequest. In these popular culture events, two cohorts of knights act out a sort of scenic combat, performing a joust between Muslims and Christians, which sets forth the profound Crusade spirit in the conquest of Portuguese America. We as well endeavour to postulate a long-term historiographic explanation for this ancestral patrimony still flourishing in the countryside. Henceforth, Luis Weckmann’s idea of a mediaeval heritage in Hispanic and Postuguese America, along with Werneck Sodré’s concept of a late Feudalism shall be mobilized in order to explain such immaterial patrimony. The paper attempts to address this intriguing cultural phenomenon from the point of view of Cultural History, interlarded with long-term political and macroeconomic issues, which brings us close to Karl Marx’s and Antonio Gramsci’s idea of a total analysis. From this scientific point of view, symbolic elements shall be highlighted and decipherd in order to set forth Brazilian mediaeval heritage. Henceforth, we do not pinpoint some elements of potential interest, such us tourism around the <i>cavalhadas</i> and <i>cheganças</i>, or microeconomic aspects surrounding the ineluctable commerce developing in these areas of Brazil. This would indeed surpass our goals in the present text. Along the explanation, we approach the origin of the popular feasts, which first came about merged with the celebrations of the Holy Spirit in Portugal and Leon. As a matter of fact, we advocate that the conquest and colonization of Potuguese America was a late-feudal process. Lastly, we endeavour to evince the late-feudal background of these cultural manifestations, thus proposing an innovative regard concerning what we could name profound Brazilian culture and long-term remains. In this regard, we affirm the binding of the <i>cavalhadas</i> and <i>cheganças</i> to the chevaleresque ideal of Crusade in Late Middle Ages. After all, we may state that this research is relevant in terms of exploring the profound roots of Brazilian, and Latin American in general, genuine culture, which endows us with the necessary knowledge not only to understand the pathways of Brazilian historical process, yet also to build up a rather promising future, based upon the singularity of the region’s past.