Sementes de esperança: militâncias-educadoras de mulheres do campo e a produção de territorialidades de vida e resistências na Zona da Mata Mineira.

Abstract

This text presents the paths and results of a doctoral thesis, which has as its object of analysis the relations between rural women, Popular Education and anti-coloniality. Operating with a conception of education that is not restricted to school education, but that extends to the production of ways of being in the world and the production of cosmoperceptions, we ask ourselves about the role, nature and educational meanings of the presence and action of women in popular struggles. Directing our interpretative sensibilities towards the presence and educational praxis of women on three fronts of struggle: the GENgiBRE project, the SAPOQUI Network – Rede de Saberes dos Povos Quilombolas da Zona da Mata and the Regional Commission for Combating Mining in Serra do Brigadeiro/ Puri. The objective of the study is to understand how women denounce and challenge colonialities in the countryside of Minas Gerais' Zona da Mata, including those present in popular struggles in the region, announcing anti-colonial perceptions, positions and alternatives. In theoretical-political-methodological terms, we rely on references defined as anti-colonial, such as works, reflections and actions guided by the processes triggered by colonization, perpetuated by coloniality in the conquered territories. Present here are authors of decolonial thought, as well as references from decolonial and countercolonial approaches. We also dialogue with the field of feminist epistemologies, in their multiplicity, such as subaltern and decolonial/decolonial feminisms, black feminisms and critical feminisms. In addition to these references, readings that debate Popular Education are added. With these authors, we reflect on education and coloniality, gender inequalities and violence, racism, Eurocentrism and epistemicide, as well as on resistance and the production of alternatives led by women. With reference to the Participant Research, we followed the militant action of five women, providing insights into such actions, which were recorded in field notebooks, shared with them, which we named Shared Reports. In addition, we conducted narrative interviews in the River of Life format. As research results, in dialogue with debates in the field of Social Movements and Education, we formulated the militant-educator category, understanding militancy as a producer of educational processes. It was also possible to affirm the protagonist and particular presence of women in social struggles in the countryside of the region in which they operate, identifying socially produced perceptions that mark their presence in the world and their militant action. The body, the care, the affection, and the solidarity appear as constitutive of these women's militant-educational activities, expressed both in interpersonal relationships and in the instruments they produce in the context of popular struggles. This research made it possible to identify elements that help to understand the dynamic and sensitive, but also contradictory, way in which Popular Education is (re)created in colonized contexts. In particular, it affirms the protagonist and central role of women in the defense and production of

territories self-determined by popular collectives in the countryside, from a popular, anti- capitalist, feminist and anti-racist perspective.