INFLUÊNCIA RELIGIOSA NA EDUCAÇÃO INDÍGENA BRASILEIRA: A CONTRIBUIÇÃO DA COMPANHIA DE JESUS

Abstract

This research addresses various aspects of history and culture that characterize the formation of the Brazilian population, such as the education of indigenous peoples in Brazil, Brazilian indigenous culture and the Indian in the formation of national society, rescuing the Jesuit catechization and relating it. To the history of Brazil. In order to verify the catechization of the Indians in Colonia Brazil, the following research question was outlined: How did the Society of Jesus influence the education of the Brazilian Indians? The research aims to discuss this influence, contextualizing the history of Jesuits in Brazil, talking about the organization of the Society of Jesus and discussing indigenous identity before and after the presence of this Company. This study is justified by the fact that the Jesuits, through their educational project for Brazil Colony, had a fundamental role in the education of the country and for the Brazilian Indians. The educational model introduced by the Jesuits, based on scholastic principles, had strong significance for the formation of society in the colonial period of the country, meeting the needs of this period in Brazil. It was adopted as methodology the bibliographical research of several authors who gave theoretical support to the research, grouped in three chapters to deepen the theme. In Chapter I, it is raised about the issue of indigenous identity in the country, verifying various concepts based on the concepts of culture, identity and the perception of the Indian, addressing issues regarding cultural representativeness. Chapter II deals with the organization of the Society of Jesus, with its implementation in the country since the arrival of Portugal, commenting on the experience in several cities in Brazil. And Chapter III presents the Jesuit education in the Colonial Brazil period, talking about the relevance of the Jesuits to the education of the Indians, emphasizing the relationship between indigenous reality and catechesis, where primordial points such as the village process and the resistance wars of the indigenous people are pointed out. It was concluded that the catechization of the natives occurred through brutality and not through the conversion placed by the Roman Catholic religion. In the catechesis project, the natives were colonized as Christians through the imposition of a culture that was not theirs, seeking to remove elements from their tribes, such as customs, crucial aspects of indigenous life and their mentality. For the Jesuits, this process of devirtualizing indigenous culture represented the success of the villages. They claimed that the villages protected them from slavery and promoted the conversion of the Indians. Catechesis was an instrument in the process of cultural formation far beyond preaching, it was a submission of the indigenous to Portuguese customs and the Jesuits ended up becoming instruments of this process.