Insurgência quilombola: a luta por cidadania no Quilombo Dom Joao

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the historical trajectory of the Black rural quilombola community of Dom João, located in the municipality of São Francisco do Conde in Bahia. I start from the assumption that this history is marked by the search for citizenship, which manifests itself through the struggle for land, work and ethnic recognition. I argue that the community's trajectory represents a practice of insurgent citizenship, and that its history is a critical and revealing case of the ways in which citizenship has been formulated in Brazil. My thesis is based on a case study of the quilombo's trajectory, which combines documentary research, narrative analysis and “observant participation”, and responds to three specific objectives and analytical levels: 1) the analysis of the quilombo's history of formation; 2) the territorial and environmental conflict that the community currently faces; and 3) the characterization of the forms of struggle engendered by the subjects of Dom João in their quest for citizenship. The formation of the community of Dom João dates back to the post-abolition period, when Black communities were formed on the fringes of farms and sugar mills, or in mangrove areas, as a way of building a project of freedom and autonomy, and interrupting the cycle of migration that marked the trajectory of the Black population of the Recôncavo da Bahia. Furthermore, I argue that the territorialization of the quilombo in this area, which its current location, represents a territorial recovery and the realization of a “fishing project” that combines land, family, and work. Telling the story about the community of Dom João is relevant because it was formed and reproduced on the margins of the wealth produced by regional economic cycles, and expresses a series of threats and successive processes of dispossession, including attempts at forced eviction. In the midst of the conflict experienced, the process of ethnogenesis as a quilombola community was an important milestone for the community's resistance, as it halted attempts at deterritorialization. After analyzing the trajectory of the Dom João quilombo, it becomes clear the emergence of a political subject that rebels against the two markers of inequality – race and land – that run through the trajectory of Brazil's rural Black communities and set limits on their citizenship. The struggle in Dom João represents an insurgency in terms of affirming citizenship, a struggle for ethnic recognition, against of racism and for the right to land.