“Tem que comer o que dá sangue”: saberes tradicionais e práticas culturais no cuidar e educar de crianças quilombolas

Abstract

This research was carried out in a community of Quilombola origin, called Colônia do Paiol, located in the city of Bias Fortes, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The Brazilian Quilombos, in which there were all the oppressed who sought to oppose the perverse and inhuman social, economic, and political structures, present at that time, inspired by African quilombos, were initially associated with the escape-resistance binomial. Throughout its chronotopic development, the concept of quilombos went through a process of modification, but without giving up the maintenance and reproduction of their origins, their ways of life, their ancestry, and resistance in a process of acquiring/maintaining the integrity of their lands by quilombolas. The research aimed at identifying and understanding how the practices of care and educating, based on ancestry and transmitted through orality, reflect on the experiences of children and babies in the Colônia do Paiol community. It is the research developed in a qualitative approach of an ethnographic nature, based on the historical-cultural approach, based on the relationships established between the environment and the subject through their experiences. In the field research, in which were observed: the (ac)knowledge(ment) of the community, the daily routine and the routine of care given to children and babies; methodological procedures were adopted, such as the conversation wheels, which involved the narratives of the subjects, resulting in a field diary of the subjects, production of images, photographs, filming, and drawings, as well as the production of experiential maps. The research findings evidenced the importance of traditions and knowledge related to caring and educating, present in cultural practices and memory, which materialize and are reelaborated in the daily way of life of the community, amid challenges and actions of resistance.