Mulheres quilombolas : trajetórias de luta e identidades em construção.

Abstract

This work is based on ethnographic research which was aimed to reconstruct the history of black women in rural areas in the different municipalities of the south region of the Rio Grande do Sul state (Pelotas, Canguçu, Piratini, and São Lourenço do Sul), as well as to understand the meaning of maroon self-recognition in the gender constructions, and the impacts and changes that it produces in the ways of thinking about the feminine roles and protagonism within these communities, considering that a lot of women who have contributed to the research are politic leaders. Adding to the ethnographic perspective, I incorporated auto-ethnography, because I am a member of a maroon community, bringing to the work aspects of my trajectory and of women from my family group. The collaborators of the research are from different generations, allowing me to understand to what extent perceptions and behavior patterns have changed over time. Starting from the perspective of black feminist and intersectionality, I address the relationship of the stakeholders with the forms of survival, their insertion in rural and non-rural work processes, and coping with precarious living conditions. I continue to address how gender identities are built in everyday life since childhood, through playing, advancing to adolescence and youth, with the initiation into affective life and the respective moral standards that governed the behaviors. In addition to their own perceptions of the gender issue and the sexist context in which they were raised, there are experiences of racism. I conclude by pointing out the ways of facing adversities and building spaces of protagonism, through the cultivation and transmission of knowledge related to health care and life continuity; their experiences as community, and political leaders and the meaning of conquering the possibilities of education, highlighting the access to the university as a new alternative for the realization of dreams and new life projects. I intent this work to show the power, the courage of these women, in their most varied forms of knowledge and protagonisms, the importance they assume in the transformation of the reality of their communities and other social spaces.