Entre “Banzeiros”: sofrimentos e resistências de mulheres amazônidas migrantes durante a trajetória de escolarização do ensino superior.

Abstract

Women in the Amazon have historically faced processes of exclusion and silencing, which are aggravated by geographic isolation. In addition, work overload and lack of pay make it difficult to access education, complete studies, and find employment, in addition to gender-based violence and subordination that affect the realities of Amazonian women. An intersectional perspective is therefore essential to consider the territorial context, also encompassing issues related to other social markers, such as gender, race, and class, which consequently makes it possible to amplify the voices of populations that have been silenced and oppressed throughout history. This research, therefore, analyzes the impacts of psychological and ethical-political suffering on reterritorialized and racialized Amazonian women who migrated from rural, quilombola, and indigenous communities to attend higher education in Amazonas. Here, reterritorialization is understood as the need for these women to move from their territories of origin to another, urban territory; and as racialized for not being white, therefore having the issue of color as an important social marker in their experiences, especially when considering their entry into the academic world, which is predominantly white. Starting from an intersectional perspective, it uses the concept of body-territory, for which there is an indissoluble relationship between bodies, stories, and land, and emphasizes the creation of spaces of resistance and valorization of ancestral knowledge. To this end, this work is based on qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive research, using the narratives of racialized and reterritorialized Amazonian women to understand how the impacts of psychological and ethical-political suffering were experienced in their higher education trajectories. The narratives refer, above all, to cycles of generational violence, sexual abuse, economic hardship, weakening of family ties, and food and housing insecurity. Such obstacles, added to the transition to higher education in times of pandemic, configure a complex and challenging panorama. Given this scenario, there is a need for public policies that go beyond access to education and promote permanence, mental health care, and the confrontation of structural inequalities, such as gender-based violence to which women are subjected and epistemic racism. Therefore, social assistance policies, extension projects, exchange programs, as well as links between teachers, colleagues, feminist collectives, and the connection with the Amazon forests are fundamental to permanence and the promotion of comprehensive health. Finally, an ecofeminist and decolonial approach is advocated to transform the realities of the Amazon, uniting social and environmental justice, in addition to recognizing the voices of these women as agents of transformation and resistance.