was born in Recife, Pernambuco, in March 1943. She entered the former Universidade do Brasil in 1963, studying Social Sciences at the National Faculty of Philosophy, in Rio de Janeiro. She participated in the National Program for Literacy of the Ministery of Education having been trained by Prof. Paulo Freire. She lived in Mexico in 1964. In the United States, she entered Temple University in 1965, where from she graduated in Psychology in 1969. She obtained her Masters in Social Anthropology from the New School of Social Research in 1977. She was a professor of anthropology at the
Institute of Social Sciences of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro from 1979 to 2000. She obtained her Doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1987 with the support of a doctorate grant from CNPq. She has published the books: Jurema´s Children in the Forest of Spirits: ritual and healing among two Brazilian indigenous groups (London: Intermediate Technologies Publications, 1997) and As muitas faces da Jurema: de espécie botânica à divindade afro-indígena (The many faces of Jurema: from botanical species to afro-indigenous divinidade) with Ulysses Paulino de Albuquerque (Recife: Bagaço, 2002). She has several articles
published in books and periodicals. She is also the ex-president of the National Association of Jurema. She is currently a professor at UFAL and is also a student in the Basic Course in Hypnotherapy at the Hypnotherapy Institute, Lafayette, California.