A Terreiro That’s “Too Young, Too gay”: Technologies of Persistence and growth in the W/world

Abstract

In this manuscript I present how in the city of Tabatinga (AM) -- on the triple border between Brazil, Peru, and Colombia -- the Father Jairo and His Children Network are engaged in a process of persistence, care, and growth in order to traverse a World that presents itself as a threat to their lives and their worlds. This process involves the consolidation of a technology of housing in the World, empowered by the grammar of Umbanda/Macumba, connected with youth, gender, and (homo)sexuality. Its material “ground” is the process of construction of the group’s terreiro. Based on 10 years of ethnography and in dialogue with theoretical discussions regarding cosmopolitics, materialities, and W/world(s) in de/anti/contracolonial perspectives, I argue that through this process, the network has built a world-for-them/us (wƒ#) that enables it to cross the World-as-Threat (WƒT) and to recall the World-as-struggle (W/s): WƒT>>wƒ#<<W/s.