Mobilidades, encantamentos e pertença: O mundo ainda está rogando, porque ainda não acabou

Abstract

This article explores the intricate web of relationships woven by caboclos (descendants of Amerindians) and negros (Afro-descendants) who, in their efforts to make a living for themselves, undergo several ethnic-political and economic conversions in identity: from “peasant” to “urban worker” and from caboclo and negro to quilombola (lit. maroon, that is, a dweller in a community historically associated to runaway slaves which has been certified as such by the State). These transformations occur in spite of the continued adherence to a local world of long term mutual obligations between partners in durable processes of neighbourly and/or kinship relation. It is proposed that these relationships are vicinities which spread beyond the villages, arriving in São Luís and São Paulo, where the houses are extensions of a “founding house” in this starting place. The article deals with fundamental aspects of cohabitation, such as the “criação” (lit, upbringing) of children, which affect the constitution of the person. Relations among people, as well as between houses and places of life, are relations of mutual constitution, and to remind people of that, the “encantados” (lit. enchanted ones) evoke an ethic that governs relations between people and also between these people and certain places.