Entre roçados e reuniões: memórias de assujeitamento e a condição quilombola diante dos desafios de gênero e geração em Matão-PB.

Abstract

The Brazilian scenario, after the Federal Constitution of 1988, opened space for the recognition and regularization of the quilombola territories. In order to understand the diversity that these territories possess, this thesis was constituted. Based on a research exercise carried out in the Agreste region of the State of Paraíba, in the Matão Quilombo, to which we had the opportunity to arrive when it passed through the production process of the Technical Report on the Identification and Delimitation of Territory (RTID), in the year 2008. Since then, we have established a research relationship that has been accompanying the various phases of the process of recognition of the quilombola territory. We seek to understand the efforts to maintain life and social reproduction in this land, given the adverse conditions to which they are subjected. To do so, we conducted a research that appreciated the understanding of everyday life through the stories of its residents, told in conversations and interviews. Also important were the moments of coexistence outside the locus of research, in neighboring cities, fairs and events. We find a situation marked by traditionally and historically constructed working and neighborhood relations, which refers to a condition of subordination and which is treated by the same through the category of subjection; this situation implied a struggle to ensure the survival and maintenance of the possession of its territory. This scenario has undergone a series of transformations with the participation of organizations that work with the quilombola cause. The process of self-recognition has a direct impact on their lives, builds new worldviews and opportunities for negotiation. However, we understand that this universe is cut out by internally constructed elements that dictate the life and the way of insertion in the scenario of the claims, namely: gender and generation. It is through these elements that the residents experience the consequences of the involvement in the universe of the claim of specific rights and that legitimize or not the participation of the same ones in these scenarios. During the research, we come across the stories of lives and the demands of men and women, young and old. Their life projects and practices are, according to gender and generation, distinct and, in some cases, conflicting. It is through these local markers that one feels the impacts of selfrecognition, and it is they that legitimize the participation of each resident in the elements brought to the place, through their recognition as quilombolas.