Collectivism, politics and religiousity in the case of Santa Dica de Goiás

Abstract

Benedita Cipriano Gomes, better known as the Santa Dica de Goiás, was an important female figure, born in the rural area of Pirenópolis (city in the interior of Goiás), who became an influential local religious leader, accumulating prestige and political power among workers rural areas of Goiás society in the 1920s. The growth of their power caught the attention (and created fear) of some of the local colonels (landowners). The distrust was due to the fact that the messianic movement that formed around religious worship, configuring itself as a movement with political objectives and a collectivist social dimension, initiating a transformation in the social organization around the Mozondó farm – through a process of collective use of land owned by their family and the imposition, on farmers, of a reduction in the weekly working days charged to their workers. Their influence on the working poor, their political and collective actions in relation to the function of the land earned them the nickname “Lenin of the different sex”. This work first intends to demonstrate the development of studies that have already been carried out on the messianic nature of the Dica movement; and second: articulate Dica’s movement with the theory of social movements. To do this, we will examine the objectives collectively constructed by this group of people, their organizational and mobilization dynamics ( which includes the role of religion in their formation). Finally, we will analyze the validity of the nickname “Lein of the different sex”, used to adjective Dica.