Roça Quilombola: (re) existência secular das Comunidades Quilombolas no Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

The text I present is about the dissertation involvement, in the change from oral to written languages, in the PPGAnt (Postgraduate Program in Anthropology), in the Area of Concentration: Social and Cultural Anthropology, in the lines of Research Community, Network and Performance and Society, Environment and Territorialization. The universe of black ancestry, of quilombos in Brazil, is marked by oraliture and here we convert it into textuality. The dissertation deals with the process of involvement of quilombola communities in the south of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in the constitution of Roça Quilombola. Action that is the result of a historical perspective of the quilombolas, who have been establishing themselves in the Pelotas region for at least 300 years, as a form of multi-century resistance to the devastating actions of agriculture and overt cattle raising in the capitalist form. An action that we consider devastating and was established with the penetration of Europeans, initially the Spanish with the obvious raising of cattle and later with the establishment of agricultural monocultures. Devastating action, which always had a quilombola counterpoint. Resistance in the forms of planting and raising small groups of animals, with controlled management of territories, carried out by small rural producers and especially quilombolas, which this investigation is dedicated to elucidating. The study is the result of attentive listening to representatives of quilombola communities, from the region of former Pelotas, today marked by several different municipalities. The interaction, which I, as a quilombola, with higher education in the study area of Roça Quilombola, can place in this broad context of the doing/being of quilombolas, in southern Brazil. Anthropological action, which is marked by listening, interaction, and densified writing, makes it possible to present these results. The study shows how the Afro-centered perspective, brought and maintained by ancestry, can be clearly identified in African cosmogonic manifestations in Brazil (known as religions of African origin). They identify the meanings of the production of Roça Quilombola, as important for the maintenance of thought and connection with an Afro-centered ancestry of existence. This Afrocentricity presents itself in the planting and harvesting process in many ways, but here I focused on the production of healing herbs. Potions linked to sister entities, which are plants and with which, as quilombolas, we live and communicate in the act of perpetuating existence, on the material plane and in the re-presentation of the driving forces of existence, on the immaterial plane. The variations and their forces, linked to ancestral entities, are presented here, considering the values expressed in these forces. Roça Quilombola is a community in interaction with the quilombolas, an interaction marked by ancestry, of the various entities of force, which constitute it and which I show here to the extent of the nonrevelation of secrets, which must be preserved and which are not presented, nor as text nor as expression.