OLIVEIRA/MG CARNIVAL AND ITS INTERPRETATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF RE-SIGNIFYING FESTIVE SPATIALITIES

Abstract

The loss of public  in Carnival festivities in Minas Gerais state hinterland (southeastern Brazil) is at issue in this paper,- which adopts distinctly geographic categories of analysis and interpretation paradigms–,It’s observed, by the way, that  this reduction in Carnival participants occurs somewhere while Carnival in Belo Horizonte receives increasingly tourists’ contingents. A phenomenological attitude was adopted to carry out the research and bibliographic research and conducting semi-structured interviews were adopted as methodological tools there. It was verified that festivals host cities try to adapt to the transformations in progress. Oliveira, home of a Carnival celebration with very peculiar characteristics, is the territorial focus of the research that seeks to understand how festive spatialities can be re-signified. We concluded that it is possible to observe an exceptionality of transformations experienced by Oliveira's festive place, while there is a generic movement in the same direction, in traditional Carnival centers in Minas Gerais hinterland, in an intense dispute for symbolic hegemony, and besides, in an atmosphere of symbols which thickens, during the festival period.