Daime e liberdade religiosa

Abstract

Since immemorial times, the human being has come across questions with many answers, none of those definite and God may be understood as the greatest enigma of all.The daimismo, defined as one of the branches of the so-called ayahuasca religions, is just one of those answers.However, the quest for the spiritual transcendence by their followers suffers much criticism.By making use of daime, a substance based on an infusion of Amazonian herbs with potential psychotropic effects, the daimistas face a double reality: instilling religious tolerance and legitimating their ritual activities, for a long time tarnished in the criminal persecution by the frivolous connection with drug handling.In spite of much progress towards religious freedom, this subject still requires a detailed inquiry.The academic gap in the understanding of daimismo as religious manifestation, already cooled off in other academic fields, still resents a meticulous approach in the legal branch.Therefore, the contemporary gaze is first directed towards the past.The historical understanding of the ayahuasca religions and their particular development in Brazil indicate the starting point of a road with many crossings.One of them resides in the analysis of the legal, sp.penal, treatment that the daimismo -enshrouded in the vast heated discussion about drugs -has been granted by the Brazilian law, as much as by other countries.From the traditional prejudice-tainted point of view, typical of an age when religious persecutions still unravelled, to the laconic core of the standing Act 11.343/2006, which does not contribute at all to regulate the religious use of daime as cultural ritual product of many followers of poorly understood religions, condemned to obscure limbo of a persistent ignorance.One oscillates from indiscriminate penal punishment to the present mild legal tolerance, as a consequence of the emergent constitutionalism that hosted religious freedom as a fundamental right, but fails to protect beliefs and cults from minority religious groups from daily episodes of intolerance, often smeared by arbitrary arrests and unfair trials.The point is the enlightenment about daimismo, which -as an academic subject -reflects a longing for tolerance.