Eu sou quilombola! Identidade, história e memória no quilombo Pedra d'Água.

Abstract

This study resulted from a field research conducted in the rural community of Pedra D´Água, in the municipality of Ingá in the State of Paraíba. On April 19, 2005 the Fundação Cultural Palmares, an organ of the Ministério da Cultura do Governo Federal (Ministry of Culture of Federal Government) issued a self-acknowledgement certificate identifying Pedra D´Água as a remaining community of quilombos. The group that, before such a certificate, had long been ignoring their slave condition origin, they started to defend and articulate discourses related to quilombola identity, thus resulting in academic discussions aiming to bring their ethnic identity into the current social-political context. The black color, the group´s distinctive feature previously taken as the main reason for racial discrimination among the community dwellers, has become one of the struggle symbols for their demand for political space and their fair insertion into the social context. To understand the origin of this discourse and how it has been shared by the group, this study used Oral History as a research method by applying the interview technique to obtain data. This study prioritized oral information provided by the group highlighting their viewpoints in order to build their own history. Basically, it analyzed the quilombola identity process in Pedra D´Água based on the dialogue between History and Social Sciences, besides encouraging conceptual discussions on the terms which comprise this study such as ethnical identity, quilombo, quilombola reminiscences, and memory. This research shows that the building of quilombola identity in Pedra D´Água might favor the contribution of an external mediation. Such an identity construction is also based on color revalorization that, among other elements, have created a new environment in which the community dwellers started experiencing the condition of new political subjects capable of acting on their own reality.