From Ritual to HIV/AIDS therapeutic itinerary: Dona Nadine and her comings and goings to specialized services

Abstract

This work concerns ethnographic research carried out in the city of Rio Tinto, on the north coast of Paraíba, with Dona Nadine, a 60-year-old indigenous potiguara woman who has been living with HIV for 16 years. Based on the literature on ritual processes, especially those provided by Victor Turner (2015) and Van Gennep (1978), I seek to understand how this applies to Dona Nadine's HIV/AIDS therapeutic itineraries, who, in order to get her antiretroviral medication, consult with doctors and any other tests involving your serology, you need to travel to the capital of Paraíba (João Pessoa). This procedure reflects a structural remodeling that evokes the concept of liminality (Turner, 2015), proposing not only an intensification in the web of agents, but announcing old dilemmas permeated in the history of people living with HIV: subjection, territory and disease.