RESÍDUOS DAS COMUNIDADES ECLESIAIS DE BASE (CEBs) NO MARANHÃO: Atualidades no contexto urbano de São Luís e São José de Ribamar

Abstract

This research aims to reflect on the relevance of the Basic Ecclesial Communities (CEBs) in Maranhão urban context, from the testimony of seven participants who live in the cities of São Luís and São José de Ribamar. Recognized for its ability to mobilize popular front to the excesses of the military regime and the maturation of a religion permeated by libertarian mystic, the CEBs considerably marked the socio-political history of the country, as well as the life story of many men and women. In Maranhão, the first CEBs have arisen in the inner cities, in Tutóia and Bequimão, followed by Barreirinhas, Urbano Santos, São Benedito do Rio Preto, Santa Rita, Itapecuru and Lago da Pedra. After a period of great ferment, several changes in the social and religious context affected the CEBs, with the country's urbanization process. On the one hand, the democratic opening, the weakening of social movements, the rise of the left to power and the lag of its principles; on the other, the condemnation of liberation theology, the centralizing Vatican project, the advance of Protestantism and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, traits that make up the new modern environment which contributed to the significant loss of space CEBs, inside and outside the Church . In this scenario, we sought to understand what was the CEBs in Maranhão, specifically in the cities of São Luís and São José de Ribamar. To this end, it turned to the analysis of the history of life of participants and songs that are part of the repertoire of the CEBs. Interviews were located from two analytical perspectives: historical - reflecting the hike CEBs and participants, and the dialectic - that dialogues on the way of being church and faith relationship and life of CEBs in its urban context. I present also travel from field notes I took from the first movement of research by the interior CEBs as opposed reflective of the difficulties and impossibilities experienced by CEBs in big cities. Thus, this study is a small anthropological caught on CEBs, using references that intersperse the concepts of community psychology and liberation with the ideas of liberation theology, as well as other authors of sociology and pedagogy.