Entre ramos e rezas: saberes e práticas de saúde na comunidade Boa Esperança, Teresina-PI (2006-2023)

Abstract

The riverside community is located along the Parnaíba river even before the city of Teresina in Piauí was founded.This community has been fighting for the demarcation of its territory, thre-atened with expropriation by the Lagoas do Norte Program proposed by the City Hall which aims investments in housing, urban drainage and road infrastructure, however there is no parti-cipation of the local people.This research addresses the following problem: what are the health knowledge and practices about medicinal plants experienced by the people from the Boa Espe-rança community? Therefore, the general objective is to find out about the health knowledge and practices using medicinal plants in the Boa Esperança riverside community between 2006 and 2023. The theory is based on authors on the city and the history of Teresina such as Mon-senhor Chaves (2013) and Odilon Nunes (2007); history of health and community, as well as Ailton Krenak (2020), Chalhoub (2003), Pimenta (2003; 2018; 2022), Montardo and Rufino (2017), Little (2018), Kabengele Munanga (1999), Chimamanda Adichie (2009), Isabel Jardim and Lucineide Barros Medeiros (2019), among others. The methodology is based on the quali-tative research paradigm. The sources analyzed were testimonies contained at the Virtual Mu-seum of the Boa Esperança Community (in public domain), the documentary “Lagoas do Norte para quem?” and semistructured interviews; bibliographical and documentary review. The data analyzed has highlighted the importance of the popular therapists’ knowledge and practices as well as their role in society in a search for health and well-being for people; their actions which prevent erasing their knowledge in the community.Therefore, despite the official attempts to exclude the natural health therapies, this is knowledge that remains alive inclusively in the ur-ban environments such as in the Boa Esperança Community resisting to the criminalization of the Republic, urbanization and, now, it is resisting to the expropriation by the Lagoas do Norte Program also driven by the capitalism.