Em Pau d`Arco, muitas flores: memória, território de parentesco e fronteira étnica

Abstract

The promulgation of the Brazilian Federal Constitution in 1988, through Article 68 of the ADCT (Act of Transitional Constitutional Provisions), brought, for the first time, at the same year of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, the guarantee of the right to land, historically denied to the black population during slavery and after its abolition, causing the emerge of recognition processes of the so-called quilombo communities reminiscents countrywide. This enabled an emergence of studies on formation and trajectory of the rural black people groups, that Anthropology, in its resemantization of the concept of quilombo, named as ethnic groups. Regarding to this, the present ethnography is aligned to this national conjuncture through the study of a rural black community located in the countryside of Alagoas, more specifically, in the municipality of Arapiraca / AL, the quilombola community of Pau d'Arco, aiming to follow the paths of origin and territory of this specific group in an inter-group context started at the second-half of 19th century, which dialogs with the origins of the municipality, where the community is located, as much as, with the vey formation of the semiarid of Alagoas, concerning to its link to one of the poles of colonization of Alagoas, the city of Penedo / AL. In the context of a greater effort, I have pursued to reconstitute the trajectory of the founding families of Pau d'Arco, using both genealogical and social collective memories, which made possible learn how the social difference was built and how this group was nominated by its ambiance as a group of black people, a fact which led to the creation of belonging sensation mediated for family and color, as well as the sharing of a common origin e the stigmatization that they suffered in a collective way which explains the identity elements of ethnical character brought to establish affiliation and exclusion criteria. I have also pursued to understand how was set the process of recognition, that is, of the claim of the quilombola identity in the case of Pau d'Arco, as well as the creation and exercise of the Quilombola Association in the community and current demands of the quilombos in Alagoas.