Cosmopercepções, territorialidade, racismo ambiental: conflitos ontológicos nas compreensões territoriais quilombolas em Monge Belo, Itapecuru-Mirim/MA

Abstract

Brazil has a vast territorial occupation and an extremely diverse population, the majority of whom self-define as brown or black, with a significant number distributed in traditional quilombola communities. Understanding this profile, the general aim of this study is to analyse the foundations of environmental racism related to environmental licensing processes for large projects in traditional quilombola communities, conceiving them as territories conditioned by colonising cosmophobia. The methodological approach was structured on the basis of exploratory bibliographical and documentary research, combining critical-scientific theory with oral history. The sample field was the Monge Belo Quilombola Community located in the municipality of Itapecuru-Mirim/MA, in the transition belt of the legal Amazon, making up the Upaon-Açu/Miritiba/Alto Preguiças APA with an area of 2,857.18 ha. The municipality is recognised in Maranhão as one of the benchmarks in demographic density for traditional quilombola communities, where of the 60,440 people registered in the IBGE census (2022), 14,511 were quilombolas. Many of these communities, in the state's legal process, have their territory permeated by major undertakings, such as the Carajás Railway in the Monge Belo Quilombola Community. At the same time, they face situations of territorial conflict with landowners. The State Secretariat for Human Rights and Popular Participation (SEDIHPOP), which is responsible for overseeing the licensing processes, is also part of the samples and is proposing to ensure that traditional peoples and communities are consulted, with a script of open-ended questions, at a place and time agreed in advance. The first chapter of the dissertation analyses the historical constitution of the Monge Belo Quilombola Community. The second chapter analyses the categories of territory from geography, through anthropology and into the meaning given to the community. Finally, the third chapter presents a proposal to analyse environmental licensing processes based on the experience of the Monge Belo Quilombola Community, crossed by the proposed development of large enterprises. Through this, it was possible to recognise the licensing process in a dynamic of structural interventions named as sustainable and globalised, carrying out significant mobilisations in the territoriality of the communities, while the territories continue without the materialisation of effective public policies, which in general conditions these spaces to the subjugation of environmental racism, favoured by licensing processes as a mechanism of territorial control.