Matergraphy and Heritage: Marian Shrines as Symbolic and Vector Spaces of Latinity

摘要

style="text-align:justify;"> This article develops the transformation of studies on Brazilian shrines, based on the Catholic invocation of Our Lady of Conception (Concei??o Aparecida), in a cultural reflection on the notion of the symbolic space in Latin America. Considering the expressive historical, semiotic, and institutional aspects of Latin America’s cultural heritage, this study recognizes the emergence of a network of identification for religious spaces. A geography of cultural projection that helps to articulate the interpretation of symbolic vectors (in festivals, media, and tourism), facilitates both comparison with other localities (municipalities-shrines) in Brazil and Latin America, and the characterization of the theatrical aesthetic of devotion in the construction of continental heritage. Summarizing the qualitative verifications made during three years of research on strategies to irradiate devotion to the Virgin Mary, this study achieved an aesthetic strength evaluation of religious patrimony as a challenge to systems of the heritage of Latinity. We concluded that the greatest risk to religious cultural patrimony lies in the growth of fundamentalist ideologies, which seek to discredit the legitimacy of the Marian tradition, and the religious and cultural syncretism in continental identity.