Quebradeiras de coco babaçu no Médio Mearim, Estado do Maranhão: (re)construindo identidades e protagonizando suas histórias em defesa de patrimônios coletivos

Abstract

In the Amazon, the advent of “new” social movements aimed at collective identities have demonstrated changes in the political organization of so-called traditional peoples and communities. After the experience of struggle against the cutting down of babaçu palms trees and the right to land in the late 1980s, mobilized agroextractivist women start to position themselves in the political sphere forming their own representative organizations, claiming rights based on recognition of the intrinsic ways to “create”, to “make” and to “live” of this group and procedurally triggering the collective identity like babaçu coconut breakers. Therefore this master’s thesis aims to analyze the process of (re) construction of collective identity babaçu coconut breakers, checking their association with the establishment of cultural heritage, with an emphasis on its current stage. The research was conducted in the Povoado de Ludovico, located in the countryside of the city of Lago do Junco, State of Maranhão, where it was found that the social and political identity and coconut breakers of the policy is based on the struggle for the preservation of babaçu palm trees and knowledge and inherited doings, which constitute their cultural heritage in the lived experience in the past and present time, the context in which the experience of children and young people, sons and daughters of coconut breakers, are also bringing new questions about the redefinition of collective identity and assets under which it is built.