“I am the pulling strength”: the inter-epistemic encounter with Maria Luiza Marcelino, quilombola and umbandista master

Abstract

This article brings a brief report and comment about an ongoing experience at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), within the Transversal Program in Traditional Knowledge. Since 2014, this program has promoted dialogue between the knowledge of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous peoples and the academic knowledge. Taking as our starting point the characterization of the quilombola way of life by Maria Luiza Marcelino, caretaker of the Caboclo Pena Branca Spiritist Center in Ubá (MG), we describe how this inter-epistemic encounter took place, which brought into dialogue scientific knowledge and the knowledge guided by the Umbanda spiritual entities (caboclos, pretas and pretos velhos). The notions of healing and illness, far beyond the horizon delimited by biomedicine, permeated the interlocution between these two universes.