"The sweat that marks the land": Work, quilombola rights and territory in the island of marajó - pará

Abstract

The Quilombola communities are fighting hard for the right to theirtraditional territories. A struggle which started before the legal instruments that influence the debates about the rights of rural black communities in Brazil were established in 1988. The struggles of these communities are for land not as a market good, but for a territory in which their own expressions and perceptions of the world are rooted. This article is based on field research conducted with the Quilombola communities, in the municipality of Salvaterra, Island of Marajó, Brazil and describes how these communities define the appropriation of spaces such as land, forest, rivers and houses. It reveals that the Quilombola spaces are imbued with the symbolic expressions of these populations' ways of being and living.