O futuro ancestral da comunicação política: análise e reflexões sobre as primeiras candidaturas indígenas para deputadas federais do Pará

Abstract

In the last seven decades, indigenous peoples began to elect their first representatives for elected positions, and the growth of this participation in electoral processes in Brazil has drawn researchers' attention to reflections on this expansion as a sociopolitical phenomenon (Baniwa, 2003, 2006, 2010, 2022; De Paula, 2017, 2023; Harari, 2023; Jecupé, 1998; Lima, 2010, 2022; Oliveira, 1968; Oliveira, 1983; Pataxó, 2023; Terena, 2021; Tuxá, 2020; Verdum, 2004, 2023). The communicational dimension, however, still intersects these studies in an incipient manner. Few studies have explored how indigenous peoples engage with political party communication, their contributions, the impact of campaign strategies on electoral mobilization among both non-indigenous and indigenous people, and the cultural barriers faced by these groups. Despite the Federal Constitution of 1988 recognizing the social and cultural organizations of indigenous peoples as the basis for differentiated citizenship – a notion that is explained, according to Baniwa (2022), to the extent that indigenous peoples have specific rights, in addition to those extended to the rest of Brazilian citizens, representation in the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary is still proportionally incipient for indigenous people to participate politically more actively in decisions that concern their peoples and the country, as a whole. The right to differentiated political citizenship, and the gaps in studies on the challenges of partisan political communication of indigenous people in Brazilian elections are the starting point and justification of this study, which aims to analyze the candidacy of the first two indigenous women for federal deputies in the state of Pará, their ontologies and reaffirmations of themselves as indigenous candidates, seeking to understand the strategies and challenges of electoral communication, especially in view of the structural inequalities of the electoral process in Brazil. For this, we use the concept of Countercolonization by Nego Bispo (2015), the Critical Studies of Whiteness by Deivison Faustino (2017), Priscila Elisabete Da Silva (2017), W. E.B. Du Bois (1920, 1935); Frantz Fanon (1952); Albert Memmi (1957), Steve Biko (1978) and Alberto Guerreiro Ramos (1957), Lourenço Cardoso (2017), Daniela Núñez Longhini (2022), Lia Schucman (2017), Bento, (2002) and the communicational vision of Paulo Freire (1976, 1981, 1986, 1987, 1994), through a mixed and in-depth investigation of the candidates' campaign, complementing the reflections with theorists of resistance to coloniality. Among the various asymmetries (ontological, structural, financial, racial), the need to implement a special and differentiated election for indigenous peoples, with reserved seats in Parliament, proved to be a proposal for urgent debate and implementation.