O Patrimônio cultural religioso: história e memória da Igreja Nossa Senhora Imaculada Conceição de Dourados/MS

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation was to assess the historic construction process of the Church of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception as a cultural religious patrimony of Dourados city. Thus, the word construction is understood herein as for a literal approach – as the building construction of the church itself – and a symbolic construction, surrounded by the immaterial elements that form this cultural religious patrimony. The story of the church intertwines the own story of Dourados. When a group of members formed by migrants organized construction of the first chapel in 1925, Dourados was still a small village, a district of Ponta Pora city. With the economic development of the village, other migrant groups arrived, building houses and businesses and working in the rural areas and – most of them – attending the church’ services, which took (still takes) place in the central area. Thus, we aimed to analyze and discuss the social relations - in this case, the religious ones - among the individuals who take part of this symbolic space which encompasses migratory processes, multi-culturalisms, relations of power and cultural experiences that, later, forged and accompanied the formation of the collective memories. Furthermore, we present the architectonic and symbolic elements that, for their historic, social and religious perspectives, have influenced and legitimated the expansion and consolidation of this cultural religious patrimony: the Parish House, the Employers of Minors house and the Antonio Joao square. Other important elements are also analyzed and discussed in an attempt of contributing for the understanding of relations that the inhabitants had with the Church of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception: the results from the performance of the Franciscans throughout the region; the conflict with the Protestants and the importance of the two agricultural colonies that propelled the migratory processes for the region: the National Rural Colony of Dourados and the Municipal Rural Colony of Dourados. In this perspective, we concluded that the contextualization of the church’s building cannot be split from the story of which it is witness or from the space where it takes place. Thus, if we aim a proper comprehension of the plurality of cultural aspects inherent to the cultural religious patrimony, we must consider the subjective aspects, including the sensations resulted from the collective experiences that extrapolate the sense of materiality.