A Comunidade do Barranco de São Benedito em Manaus: Processos para o reconhecimento do território quilombola.

Abstract

The community of Barranco de São Benedito is located in the city of Manaus, specifically in the traditional Praça 14 de Janeiro neighborhood in the Center-South Zone of the city. This quilombolaterritory has been occupied since the arrival of Dona Maria SeveraNascimento Fonseca, 128 years ago, as an emancipated slave from the municipality of Alcântara, Maranhão. As she and her family settled in this space, Dona Severa brought her ancestors’ customs and traditions along with her, which today remain alive in the memory and narratives of her descendants—who are officially recognized by the Palmares Cultural Foundation as a self-denominated urban quilombo-descendent community. As such, I defined the objective of this study as follows: to verify the political and socio-cultural developments in everyday life in the community in the context of the certification process, as well as identify the history of these social agents and the difficulties that they encountered during the process. To carry out this study, fifteen people were interviewed. These interviews serve as the foundation of this work, supported within the perspective of American philosopher Nancy Fraser’s concept of “recognition.” In completing the research, I determined that the community’s historical trajectory has led to its resilience against stigma, despite the transposition of contemporary struggles—from racial stigma to the contestation of urban space with regard to their confrontation of modern processes of urbanization and real estate speculation.