Parentesco e renovação do patrimônio territorial camponês: diversidade de expressões em comunidades tradicionais no Médio Mearim, Maranhão

Abstract

In this doctoral thesis, we analyze rules and processes associated with inheritance in two traditional communities in Médio Mearim, Maranhão, a region of late enslavement that underwent intense land conflicts. Formed from the dismantling of slave plantations, forced displacements, and, more recently, mobilizations for rights that resulted in the recovery of access to land, the peasantry in the Médio Mearim has differentiated territorial expressions, with specific arrangements and forms of land appropriation, use, and inheritance. In order to analyze the diversity of existing territorial expressions, we studied two communities built from the reappropriation of space by a black peasantry and its ethnic fusion with other social groups. Located in the municipality of Bacabal, Aldeia do Odino has families who became beneficiaries of land regularized as a Settlement Project in the 1980s, while the families of Nova Olinda, in the municipality of Lima Campos, are holders of land registered by a community that is self-recognized as a remnant of quilombos. In this thesis, we observe territorialities that challenge state land regularization regulations by highlighting their limited possibilities for recognizing rights, and we question the adoption of land tenure modalities that homogenize the forms of land appropriation and use. As a theoretical contribution, we rely on the proposition of fragmentation zones to understand the process of formation of the communities studied, as well as the approach to infrapolitics, to understand the multiple mechanisms created to escape state control and which, even if unintentionally, become modes of quilombola resistance. These contributions are linked to the concepts of kinship, patrimony, and inheritance, since local strategies are not dissociated from the need to build a patrimony that can be passed on to descendants. The study is based on bibliographic and documentary consultation, combined with semi-structured and interactive interviews. The experiences and lives of traditional communities have allowed them to build a specific way of inhabiting their lands, not based fundamentally on common use, challenging the conventional understanding of black territoriality. We found that common use or collective tenure cannot be treated as an essential characteristic of black people or peasants, but rather as the result of socially and economically constructed relationships. We also argue that inheritance, from the perspective of the groups studied, has obeyed criteria established in local contexts of sharing, just as legal norms have been invoked to validate customary practices.