Quilombola women and the struggle for territory from the perspective of decolonial feminism

Abstract

The present work aims to analyze, from the point of view of decolonial feminism, and in an incipient way, the struggle of quilombola women for the recognition of their ancestral territories. Decolonial feminism, which can also be seen as one of the currents of subaltern feminism, arose from the study of gender coloniality by Maria Lugones, who, through the idea of coloniality of power developed by Aníbal Quijano, deepened the debate by understanding that his concept was insufficient to understand the gender issue since it was seen from a Eurocentric and heteronormative perspective. Lugones then deepened the theme and made an intersection between race, gender, and coloniality. Decolonial feminism manifests itself in the Latin American context, giving visibility to its subaltern representations, to Latin American, Afro-descendant, mestizo, and indigenous women, and in this scenario quilombola women are also included. In Brazil, decolonial theories and practices are drawn from theoretical discussions held by more classical theorists, such as Lélia Gonzalez and Sueli Carneiro, and contemporary ones, such as Carla Akotirene, to address issues that are closer to the reality of Brazilian women. The phenomena that support the theories are glimpsed in the daily struggles of black women, especially quilombolas, for the right to the recognition of their territories - denied by the State and which potentiates the various forms of violence, including gender violence. These practices are carried out by quilombola leaders in the private and public contexts and correspond to the notion of female empowerment linked to the collective context. For the analysis of the application of the theories and phenomena, the deductive method was used and as methodological procedures, the literature review and the analysis of available data and documents. We conclude that decolonial feminism should increasingly observe more the phenomena than the theories and that the feminine resistances in and through the quilombola territory go through struggles for the recognition of gender identities to mitigate the overlapping violence.