The Saint Michael’s the Archangel Church, built between the XVII and XVIII centuries, is a symbol of catholic presence of the Portuguese colonizers, meaning a relevant landmark of Brazil’s territorial occupation.
Tumbled in 1980, by the IPHAEP (Artistic and Historic Patrimony Institute of the Paraíba State), it consists in a privileged space in the local population’s memory. Its symbolic value is associated to religiousness, to the myths that ground the construction of important aspects regarding the Potiguara cultural identity, connected to the colonization process of that region. Even the location of the building is an indicative of the strategies used by the foreign religious leadership, probably, to stablish relations of power and sociability, when inside indigenous territory, in their efforts to overpower and “civilize” them.