Vida, morte e memórias no quilombo Santa Rosa dos Pretos

Abstract

This research is located in the field of Materialist Discourse Analysis and investigates the effects of the meaning of quilombo, life and death that permeate the narratives of a quilombola community. In this way, we mobilize concepts from Discourse Analysis since we seek to think about life and death, as effects of meaning that constitute a relationship with the discursive

memory of the residents of Quilombo Santa Rosa dos Pretos, in the municipality of Itapecuru- Mirim, in Maranhão, seeking , among others, analyze which regions of memory support them.

This is an investigation, whose corpus is made up of testimonies from quilombolas presented in the documentary O mundo preto tem mais vida (2018). In this sense, this research analyzes the effects of complaints formulated in the documentary around the conflicts faced by the community in the face of attacks by the State and the private sector. To the point of identifying the way in which such effects are projected, we start with the following questions: How are the meanings of quilombo, life and death projected and permeate the discursive memory of the Santa Rosa dos Pretos quilombola community? Such narratives are related to a conflict over the maintenance of their lands, against the impositions regarding the use of the territory by the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT), which has progressed in the process of duplicating BR 135, aiming at the flow of commodities, and the company Vale S.A., also involving the duplication of the railways that enable the transport of iron ore extracted from the Carajás mines and the iron produced in a new mine in Pará, both managed by Vale S.A. Both the highway and the railways cut through the quilombo's territory and affect land titling. Under the impact of this event, we intend to understand what effects of meaning are projected in the statements about “life” and “death” in the sayings of the quilombolas and which memories support these sayings. We start from the hypothesis that there is a process of displacement of meanings of “life” as a continuity in time (the physical body dies and life continues as another way of existing), and, on the other hand, the meanings of “death” become constitute a duality: a white death where there is no life (as a project of capitalism against its way of life and its existence that resists in the Quilombo lands, killing the nature that sustains it) and a black death as a passage to another form of existence . Thus, this research discusses the meanings of “life” and “death” said by quilombolas, in a context of State violence (Mbembe;2014;2016] of neoliberalism, of struggle for the maintenance of territory and physical, cultural survival - spiritual. While also seeking to denounce the racist and predatory project present in the conflict with DNIT and Vale, it is proposed to reflect on the historical reality of the community and the social exclusion that quilombolas still face today in Brazil.