O tempo de ser, fazer e viver: modo de vida de populações rurais tradicionais do Alto Jequitinhonha, MG

Abstract

In an attempt to know the life system of the population of the alto Jequitinhonha in the state of Minas Gerais, an ethnographical research was carried out a research covering several spaces that compose their environment as the farming, the extraction, the transformation, consuming and commercialization of produced goods. This region shelters people with a dynamic cultural load, gathering characteristics from different parts of the country through an intense historical migratory flux, wich resulted in a population that could be included among traditional populations. Never the less the migrant intensity of the people of the place, occurs a constant valorization of the local knowledge, through teaching and renewing from one generation to another. The diffusion of the cultural richness of the Vale is not expressed uniform and generalized knowledge in this population. On the contrary, it deals with specific knowledge, whose keepers are, most of the time, specialists in natural resources, herbs, medicine and local history. The combination of rural family activities has enabled this population to achieve its physical and social reproduction, having in local fairs a commercialization importam center where they not only sell their agricultural, extrativists and manufactured products, but also where they constantly interact socially valuing their cultural and local knowledge.