Arts, Faculty of
Anthropology, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Brasil, Daniel Rodrigues
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
University of British Columbia
Various communities, including those glossed as traditional, indigenous, subaltern, Afro-descended, tribal, or, in an older vocabulary, primitive, pre-modern, non-civilized, barbaric, and polluted, in particular contexts, can find themselves in a situation I have come to refer as underdogs. Underdog references communities which are positioned to access various levels of historical consciousness in order to mobilize their struggles against impinging, dominant, homogenizing forces. These forces are based in a colonial culture against which communities resist. The strategies of resistance both refer to their traditions and to their historic circumstances, as well as their recognition of historical fluidity which allows them the possibility of facing, encountering and rewriting their histories. This resistance has made them resilient. Ethnographic research conduced together with the quilombola community of Periperi, in the state of Piauí, Brazil; the neighbourhood of La Marina, in Matanzas, Cuba, and the Hwlitsum indigenous people, in British Columbia, Canada shows that these communities in an underdog situation cannot back off from their challenges to existing modes of power of their local and regional setting in their efforts to mitigate their status as polluted. Experiencing being in such situations throughout their trajectory has led these communities to a condition they have not been able to run from, albeit finding new ways to embrace it, in the underdog world they live in.
THE UNDERDOG WORLD by Daniel Rodrigues Brasil B.Sc. in International Relations, University of Brasilia, 2002 M.Sc. in Sustainable Development, University of Brasilia, 2008 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (Anthropology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) December 2015 © Daniel Rodrigues Brasil, 2015 THE UNDERDOG WORLD Daniel Rodrigues Brasil Thesis presented to PhD Program of Post-Graduation in Compared Studies of the Americas of the University of Brasília for the title of PhD in Social Sciences Supervisor: Professor Stephen Grant Baines (CEPPAC/DAN/UnB) Supervisor: Professor Bruce Granville Miller (Anthropology/UBC) Examination Board: Professor Dr. Julie Cruikshank (Anthropology/UBC) Professor Dr. Alfredo Wagner Berno de Almeida (UEAM) Professor Dr. Rosa Elizabeth Acevedo Marin (UFPA) Professor Dr. Lilia Gonçalves Magalhães Tavolaro (CEPPAC/UnB) Substitute: Professor Dr. Camilo Negri (CEPPAC/UnB)ii Abstract Various communities, including those glossed as traditional, indigenous, subaltern, Afro-descended, tribal, or, in an older vocabulary, primitive, pre-modern, non-civilized, barbaric, and polluted, in particular contexts, can find themselves in a situation I have come to refer as underdogs. Underdog references communities which are positioned to access various levels of historical consciousness in order to mobilize their struggles against impinging, dominant, homogenizing forces. These forces are based in a colonial culture against which communities resist. The strategies of resistance both refer to their traditions and to their historic circumstances, as well as their recognition of historical fluidity which allows them the possibility of facing, encountering and rewriting their histories. This resistance has made them resilient. Ethnographic research conduced together with the quilombola community of Periperi, in the state of Piauí, Brazil; the neighbourhood of La Marina, in Matanzas, Cuba, and the Hwlitsum indigenous people, in British Columbia, Canada shows that these communities in an underdog situation cannot back off from their challenges to existing modes of power of their local and regional setting in their efforts to mitigate their status as polluted. Experiencing being in such situations throughout their trajectory has led these communities to a condition they have not been able to run from, albeit finding new ways to embrace it, in the underdog world they live in. iii Resumo Muitas comunidades, incluindo aquelas denominadas como tradicionais, indígenas, subalternas, afrodescendentes, tribais, ou, em vocabulário mais antigo, primitivas, pré-modernas, não civilizadas, bárbaras, e poluídas, em determinados contextos, podem encontrar-se em uma situação em que eu tenho me referido como “underdogs”. “Underdog” referencia comunidades que estão posicionadas a acessar vários níveis de “consciência histórica” no sentido de mobilizar suas lutas contra forças usurpadoras, dominantes, e homogeneizadoras. Essas forças estão baseadas em uma cultura colonial contra a qual essas comunidades resistem. As estratégias de resistência que essas comunidades se utilizam se referem às suas tradições e circunstâncias históricas, assim como a seu reconhecimento da “fluidez histórica”, a qual permite às comunidades a possibilidade de enfrentar, encontrar e reescrever suas próprias histórias. Essa resistência fez com que as comunidades se tornassem resilientes. A pesquisa etnográfica conduzida junto com a comunidade quilombola de Periperi, no Piauí, Brasil; com o bairro de La Marina, em Matanzas, Cuba; e com o povo indígena Hwlitsum, na British Columbia, Canada mostra que essas comunidades não podem se abster de sua situação de “underdog” e dos seus desafios frente a modos de poder local e regionalmente estabelecidos para mitigar seu status de poluídas. Tendo experimentado situações como essa em diversos momentos de suas trajetórias levou essas comunidades a uma condição diferenciada da qual elas não têm conseguido escapar, enquanto encontram novas formas de abraça-la, dentro do mundo “underdog” e que vivem. iv Resumo Muchas comunidades, incluyendo aquellas denominadas como tradicionales, indígenas, subalternas, afrodescendientes, tribales, o, en vocabulario más antiguo, primitivas, pre-modernas, no civilizadas, bárbaras, y contaminadas, en determinados contextos, pueden encontrarse en una situación en que yo tengo me referido como “underdogs”. “Underdog” referencia comunidades que están posicionadas a asesar varios niveles de “consciencia histórica” en el sentido de movilizar sus luchas en contra forzas usurpadoras, dominantes, y homogeneizadoras. Esas forzas están basadas en una cultura colonial en contra a cual esas comunidades resisten. Las estrategias de resistencia que esas comunidades se utilizan se refieren a suyas tradiciones y circunstancias históricas, así como a su reconocimiento de la “fluidez histórica”, a cual permite estas comunidades la posibilidad de enfrentarse, encontrarse e reescribir suyas propias historias. Esa resistencia hizo con que las comunidades se tornasen resilientes. La pesquisa etnográfica conducida junto con la comunidad quilombola de Periperi, en el Piauí, Brasil; con el barrio de La Marina, en Matanzas, Cuba; y con el pueblo indígena Hwlitsum, en la British Columbia, Canadá muestra que esas comunidades no pueden se huir de su situación de “underdog” e de sus desafíos frente a los modos de poder local e regionalmente establecidos para mitigar su status de contaminadas. Por tener experimentado situaciones como esa en diversos momentos de suyas trayectorias esas comunidades fueran llevadas a una condición diferenciada de la cual ellas no tienen logrado escapar, al mismo momento que encuentran nuevas formas de abrazar esta condición, dentro del mundo “underdog” en que viven. v Preface This dissertation is an original intellectual product of the author, Daniel Rodrigues Brasil. The fieldwork reported in the Introduction was approved, in Brazil, by the Center for Research and Post-Graduation about the Americas at the University of Brasília CEPPAC/UnB) (Appendix 1) and by the government of Cuba through authorization granted to the author by the Instituto de Investigacíon Cultural Juan Marinello (ICIC) and the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba (MINREX) (Appendix 2). Research in Canada was conduced with public spoke persons only. vi Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... ii Resumo .......................................................................................................................... iii Resumo .......................................................................................................................... iv Preface ............................................................................................................................ v Table of Contents........................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................... viii List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... xii Dedication .................................................................................................................. xvii Introduction: the Underdog Situation ............................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 - The Quilombola Bishop .............................................................................. 49 Chapter 2 - In Bispo’s Caravel ....................................................................................... 73 Chapter 3 - Dams through the “Mazeway” ................................................................... 89 Chapter 4 - The “negos” of Periperi ............................................................................ 122 Chapter 5 - Let’s Be Quilombola! Wait! We are Quilombola! ..................................... 159 Chapter 6 - Pollo por Pescado ..................................................................................... 192 Chapter 7 - The non-transculturation of the “Enciclopedia” ....................................... 236 Chapter 8 - Bendita Sea La Marina.............................................................................. 270 Chapter 9 - Pretty like a Saint, Ugly as it May ............................................................. 293 Chapter 10 - The “Papa Fría”, the “Papa Tíbia”, the “Papa Floja”, and the “Papa Caliente” ..................................................................................................................... 324 Chapter 11 - Discussions: into the “Mazeway” and out from the “Dirt”. .................... 347 Final Considerations – The Underdog Condition ......................................................... 388 Epilogue ...................................................................................................................... 394 End Notes ................................................................................................................... 396 Bibliography................................................................................................................ 429 Official Documents ..................................................................................................... 450 Appendix 1 – Research Presentation Letter issued by CEPPAC/UnB, in Brazil. ........... 452 Appendix 2- Authorization Letter for Research in Cuba, Issued by the ICIC. .............. 453 vii Appendix 3 – Amarante Public Notary’s Records =Mentioning Land Related to Periperi. .................................................................................................................................... 454 Appendix 4 – Situational Map of the Quilombola Community of Santana, Salgueiro, Pernambuco, Brazil, in 2007. ...................................................................................... 463 Appendix 5 - Situational Map of the Quilombola Community of Santana, Salgueiro, Pernambuco, Brazil, in 2009. ...................................................................................... 464 Appendix 6 - Physicians per 100,000 People, by Country. .......................................... 465 Appendix 7 – La Calle del Medio Newspaper Interview with Kimbo, Matanzas, Cuba, June 2015. ................................................................................................................... 466 Appendix 8 – Black Riverside Communities along the Parnaíba River in between Floriano, Amarante and Teresina, Piauí, Brazil. .......................................................... 467 viii List of Figures FIGURE 1 - KWAKWAKA’WAKW FEASTING BOWL, MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA. .................................................................................................... 4 FIGURE 2 – QUILOMBOLA COMMUNITIES CERTIFIED BY MUNICIPALITY IN BRAZIL ................................ 54 FIGURE 3 – MAP OF THE “DIRECT AND INDIRECT INFLUENCE AREA” (AHE CASTELHANO) AND “INDIRECT INFLUENCE AREA” (AHE ESTREITO), AMARANTE AND PALMERAIS, PIAUÍ, BRAZIL. ................... 100 FIGURE 4 - LOCALIZATION OF THE COMMUNITY OF PERIPERI BETWEEN THE MUNICIPALITIES OF AMARANTE AND PALMEIRAIS, PIAUÍ, BRAZIL. .................................................................................. 128 FIGURE 5 - SITUATIONAL MAP OF THE QUILOMBO OF PERIPERI, ELABORATED BY COMMUNITY'S LEADERS, PERIPERI, AMARANTE, PIAUÍ, BRAZIL............................................................................. 147 FIGURE 6 – GPS LIMITS OF THE QUILOMBOLA COMMUNITY OF PERIPERI, AMARANTE, PIAUÍ, BRAZIL. ... 152 FIGURE 7 - BOARD OF THE ASSOCIATION AND THE LIST OF THEIR MEMBERS IN 2007 - ON THE WALL OF THE BARN THAT HOUSES THE RICE-IMPROVING MACHINE, PERIPERI, AMARANTE, PIAUÍ, BRAZIL. ........ 156 FIGURES 8, 9, 10, 11, BAR, BAZAR, THE CHURCH, AND KIDS PLAYING AT THE SÃO RAIMUNDO NONATO’S FESTIVITY, PERIPERI, AMARANTE, PIAUÍ, BRAZIL............................................................... 170 FIGURE 12 - KIMBO WITH QUILOMBOLA SHIRT AND THE BLACK FIST, WHICH BECAME THE LOGO OF THE PROJECT “IDENTIDAD Y BARRIO LA MARINA”, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. ....................... 191 FIGURE 13 - “LLANURA” [COASTLANDS] HAVANA-MATANZAS, CUBA. .......................................... 259 FIGURE 14 – CORRELATION OF CABILDOS, TEMPLE HOUSES, AND ABACUÁ POTENCIES IN LA MARINA AND SIMPSON WITH TERRITORIES OF NIGERIAN NATIONS IN THE “YORUBALAND”............................ 265 FIGURES 15, 16, 17 - KIMBO’S MINUTES OF PROJECT’S MEETING; MILAGROS NOTEBOOK WITH INTERVIEWS MADE BY HER WITH COMMUNITY MEMBERS; MEETING WHEN THE PROJECT IDENTIDAD Y BARRIO WAS FORMED............................................................................................. 290 FIGURE 18 – KIMBO, SPITTING RUM AT THE EFFIGY AND BLESSING IT WITH CIGAR SMOKE, AT THE BURNING OF SAN JUAN’S EFFIGY, LA MARINA, MATANZAS.............................................................. 296 FIGURE 19 - GPS – PATH OF THE PROCESSION OF SAN JUAN’S EFFIGY – LA MARINA AND SIMPSON, MATANZAS, CUBA .................................................................................................... 297 FIGURE 20 – PROCESSION OF THE BURNING OF SAN JUAN’S EFFIGY, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. .. 298 FIGURE 21 - TIRRE BRIDGE ABOVE THE SAN JUAN RIVER THAT SEPARATES PUEBLO NUEVO FROM DOWNTOWN MATANZAS AND LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. ........................................... 301 FIGURE 22 - GPS PROCESSION OF THE VIRGIN OF THE ABACUÁ POTENCY EFI YUMANI, LA MARINA AND SIMPSON, MATANZAS, CUBA. ..................................................................................... 307 FIGURE 23 – ÍREME ENCAMINA AT THE PROCESSION OF THE VIRGIN OF THE ABACUÁ POTENCY EFI YUMANI, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. .................................................................................. 308 FIGURE 24 – IMAGE OF THE VIRGEN OF REGLA WORSHIPED BY THE ABACUÁ POTENCY EFI YUMANI, SIMPSON, MATANZAS, CUBA ...................................................................................... 309 FIGURE 25 – IMAGE OF SAINT THERESE (OYÁ) AND SAIN JOHN BAPTIST (OGGÚN), AT CLARA’S HOUSE, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. ...................................................................................... 313 FIGURES 26 AND 27 – PLASTIC ARTIST YALORISHA MERCEDES, WITH HER TWO FRANCISCAS AND WITH HER “SOPERAS”, LA CEIBA, HAVANA, CUBA. ......................................................................... 316 ix FIGURE 28 – REPRESENTATIONS OF YEMANJÁ AND OSHUN AT MILAGROS’ HOUSE, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. ................................................................................................... 318 FIGURE 29 – COMPARSA OF IMALIANA’S REHARSAL, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. ...................... 320 FIGURE 30 – TRADITIONAL FOOD FESTIVAL, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. ................................. 322 FIGURES 31, 32, AND 33 - THE CHILDREN OF LA MARINA AND THEIR DRAWINGS ABOUT THE NEIGHBOURHOOD, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. ......................................................... 325 FIGURE 34 - MAP OF THE “BLACK NEIGHBOURHOODS” OF MATANZAS, CUBA - LA MARINA, SIMPSON AND PUEBLO NUEVO. ...................................................................................................... 329 FIGURE 35 – SEAT OF THE STEVEDORES OF THE PORT OF MATANZAS’ SYNDICATE, LA MARINA, MATANZAS, CUBA. .................................................................................................................... 342 FIGURE 36 – HWLITSUM’S MAJOR PLACES OF CULTURAL IMPORTANCE, PICTURING THE TERRITORY THEY HAVE HISTORICALLY USED, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA. .................................................. 348 FIGURE 37 – HWLITSUM’S TRIANGULAR FISHING TERRITORY. CANOE, POLIER, AND ACTIVE PASSES, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA ................................................................................................. 353 FIGURE 38 - DIFFERENT TYPE OF LANDS THAT MAKE UP THE TSAWWASSEN FINAL AGREEMENT LAND PACKAGE, BRUSWICK POINT, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA. ................................................ 354 FIGURE 39 – TSAWWASSEN LANDS UNDER THE TREATY, BRUNSWICK POINT, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA. ............................................................................................................................ 360 FIGURE 40 – TSAWWASSEN TRADITIONAL TERRITORY UNDER THE TREATY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA. ............................................................................................................................ 360 x List of Abbreviations ABA - Brazilian Association of Anthropology ACRC - Asociación de Combatientes de la Revolución Cubana ADIN - Direct Action of Unconstitutionality AHE – Aproveitamento Hidrelétrico ALR - Agriculture land reserves ANEEL - National Electricity Agency ARAAC - Articulación Regional Afrodescendiente de las Americas y el Caribe CAME - Council of Economic Mutual Aid CDR - Comitês de Defesa da Revolução CEPPAC/UnB - Center of Post-gradution and Research about the Americas at the University of Brasilia CHESF - Companhia Hidrelétrica do São Francisco CIR - Comite de Integración Racial CMMLK - Centro Memorial Martin Luther King COMECON - Council for Mutual Economic Assistance CONAQ - National Coordination of Articulation of Quilombola Communities COSUDE - Norwegian International Cooperation Agency CUJAE - Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría DIAND - Indian Affairs and Northern Development DOU - National Official Diary EIA - Environmental Impact Assessments Emater - Empresa de Assitência Técnica Rural FCP - Palmares Cultural Foundation FMC - Federación de Mujeres de Cuba FUNAGUAS - Fundação Águas do Piauí HTG - Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group IBAMA - Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente ICAIC - Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos ICAN - Instituto Cubano de Antropología ICIC - Instituto de Investigación Cultural Juan Marinello ILO - International Labour Organization Convention INAC - Indian and Northern Affairs Canada INCRA - National Colonization and Agrarian Reform Institute IPHAN - Instituto Nacional do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Magin - Associación de Mujeres Comunicadoras MIR - Movimiento de Integración Racial Juan Gualberto Gómez MOA - Museum of Anthropology MOV - Museum of Vancouver MW - Megawatt xi PAC - Program for Growth Acceleration PBQ - Brasil Quilombola Program PCC - Partido Comunista Cubano PVN/CCN-MA - Projeto Vida de Negro RDS - Sustainable Development Reserve RIMA - Environmental Impact Reports SEPPIR/PR - Secretariat for the Promotion of Policies of Racial Equality UBC - University of British Columbia UEAM - Universidade Estadual do Amazonas UNEAC - Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas Cubanos UNESCO - United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization xii Acknowledgements Through the joyride that became the work that finds this thesis as a crossroad I should like to honour the community around me that, as it is often the case, made it possible to take the roads less traveled by, and made all the difference. I am completely aware that the difference was not in the places, amongst the people or their nationalities I came by. It was made of the interaction they allowed me to have with their life histories. Bispo, Kimbo and Chief Rocky were critical to my insertion in these life histories, as they shared their historical connections to the territories of the peoples and communities we worked with, and made it possible to create the trust we needed to push our endeavour forward. In Periperi, Seu Antonio, in memorian, took me in and made me feel home, opening his house and heart to me while we walked together through his community and their struggles. Seu Raimundo was always ready to educate me on the community’s history and present. With Nilda, I went in and out of the community, relativizing the narratives of community members through her own narratives. Nevertheless, without the narratives about Periperi that came from Chica, Luiza, Eduardo, Henrique, Érica, Marciana, João, Zé Filho, Seu Manoel, Seu João, Santo, Dona Maria, Dona Marcelina, Chico, Evangelho, in memorian, Cícero, Osmarina, Luiza, Chica do Antero and Antero Flor this work could not exist. So it was in the other quilombola and black communities of the state. Chuta, Pequeno and Nene, in Riacho dos Negros; Dona Raimunda, in Brejinho; and Washinha, Flávio, and Sabino, in Saco do Curtume. In Amarante, Socorro Leal welcomed me to the history of her family in the Fazenda Araras; Nega Ana took me through the archives and local and regional literature at the Municipal Library; Ronaldo Moura allowed me into his own private museum of Amarante; and Dió Veloso shared the history of his family. The members of the Project Identidad y Barrio La Marina should also be honoured in this work - Kimbo, Diana, Berta, Jesus, Lizandra, Sandra, Milagros, Yudania, Amanda, Obechê, and Giusette – for their outstanding commitiment. I aslo thank the members of the neighbourhood - Raimundo, Gordito, Clarita, Deosdato, Fedor, Lídia xiii Mercedes, Tony, Maria Mercedes, Lizmari, Fernando, Enildo, Valentin, and Martha Beatriz - for their narratives. I thank Beatriz Zulueta, as Vice-President of the city’s Popular Government, for her support to the research. Leonel Orozco, city’s Heritage Curator for his contribution in filing in the gaps of the history, and for Marbelys making it possible. I also thank Yodekis, Cultural Promoter in Pueblo Nuevo, for sharing his work in the neighbourhood; and Laydis Daniel, at the Province’s Cultural Direction, for informing about the Sociocultural Project. I thank the members of the Hwlitsum First Nation - Janice and Lindsay – of the Upper Skagit Indigenous Tribe – Scott and Larry – and of the Sto’lo Nation – Sonny – for allowing a quick insertion into their realities and for thrusting me with their narratives in such an open and strait way. I deeply thank anthropologist Bárbara Oliveira for the many conversations we shared throughout this thesis, for reading my manuscript, for helping me with the photographs, for sharing her ethnografic work, and for allowing me into the broad picture of both Cuban and Brazilian realities that inform the struggles of the communities part of this work. Thank you for being there with me, Bongô. I also thank Givânia Silva and Jhonny Quilombola for the always rich exchanges on the quilombola issue and for their friendship that brought us together to Piauí. My family in Piauí took me in unconditionally. Luciano, Sebá, Maria Amélia, Petrônio, and Vovó Conceição thank you for your care. My family spread out from Cuba to Brazil and Canada was key in different ways to arrive at a completion of this endeavour. Bárbara, João Caetano, Dandara, Josélia, and Isabel accompanied me in Cuba, shared the load, and saw this thesis in the making. I also thank Josélia for her careful and caring aid in helping me with the transcriptions. In thank my Mom for giving me the auxiliary support necessary for managing my multiple tasks in the numerous places I went in the course of this work. My Dad and my Sister brought me ease in troubled times. Vovó thought me the emotional content necessary to deal with the changing world around me. Thank you all my family in Brasília. I also thank tio Chiquinho for sharing his life histories, and William for making it possible. Lorraine and Bruce were xiv my family in Canada and I deeply thank them for the careful way they had me there. Thank you Lorraine for swimming my worries away. Several academics played significant roles in informing about the different contexts I was basing my research at. These include Alfredo Wagner Berno de Almeida, Rosa Elizabeth Marin de Acevedo, Reginaldo Conceição, Daniel Viegas and Isabela Sales, from the New Social Cartography Project, who have allowed me distinct insights coming from the plural descriptions their work with traditional and indigenous communities throughout the world has given them. I thank the insights on the power and legal configuration in the state, as well as the literature and documents shared by professor Maria Sueli, of the Federal University of Piauí. Isis Lustosa and Matilde Ribeiro for delightful conversations about geo-social dynamics in Piauí and racial issues in Brazil, respectively. I thank Jacques de Novion for his contributions, and Rebecca Igreja, Ana Flávia Granja Barros, and Jenny Phelps for their support to the construction and implementation of the joint PhD. Maritza López, La Presidenta, and Rolando Zulueta, El Chichi, for their friendship and support to the research, and for sharing some of the moments of the ethnographic work in Havana and Matanzas. Urbano Carmenate, historian in Matanzas, Cuba, also illuminated aspects about the city’s history. At the ICIC, I am grateful to Caridad Masson, Rodrigo Espina, Guillermo López, and Elena Socarrás for their support to the research. My special thanks to Caridad for simply making it possible for the research to take place in Cuba, and yet more, for her care with every member of my family while in Cuba. Tato Quiñones, Irene Ester and Tomacito Robaina, in Havana, shared their life histories and their activism, key to undersanding to logics of anti-racist movements in the Island. I thank Alejandro de La Fuente, in Harvard, for the conversations about racial issues in the country. My insertion into the Coast Salish World was boosted by the open exchange with scholars who have been doing excellent grounded work with the indigenous peoples in both Canada and the United States. I thank Bill Angelbeck for our conversations on the maps made about the Hwilitsum uses on their claimed territory; Julie Cruikshank for our xv Corner Stone coffee-shop exchanges on the social life of narratives from the native peoples of the Yukon; Dave Schaepe, for insights on the Sto’lo Nation activities; Harold Chesnin, for our exchange on legal issues concerning the Upper Skagit, Jan Perrier, for sharing her experience in mapping and design production for numenrous indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. I thank Susan Rowley, Jennifer Kramer and the Musqueam band for inviting me to speak at Musqueam 101 and being able to share with them some of the struggles of La Marina and Periperi. My collegues at the UnB and UBC PhD programs - Renata, Estevão, Rosângela, Sandra, Terêncio, Verônica, Thiago Garcia and Tal – I thank for the conversations we had about methodology and theory that aided the constructions made here. I thank Javier, Danay, Oscar, Gilberto, Odalis, Gilberto, Tiago, Thiago, Talita, and Fred for easing our mornings and aftenoons at the Embassy into colourful discussions about the research I was making. Liban, Lismari, and Maruche for sharing their life histories, for allowing me a differentiated look into the Cuban reality, and for all the support you have given our family. My friends Pedro, Edson, Nuno, Vinicius, Bia, Paula for our life exchanges and for being part of my community. I recognize the support given by the accurate transcription work made by Damayante Matos Abreu, Olga Lídia Tio Valencia, Yoana Valdés, Marina Ruiz, and Josélia Oliveira. I thank Alastair Miller for editing my manuscript. Reginaldo Conceição for helping me with maps in La Marina and Periperi. Also, Eduardo, at the CEPPAC, Eleonore, at the UBC Anthropology Department, and Henry, Anita, and Lila, at the ICIC, for their support with the huge administrative proceedings necessary for the accomplishment of the PhD. I should like to register the exquisite and rich contribution my supervisors, Bruce Miller and Stephen Baines, have given to this work. The committment they brought onto the research was key to making it possible. Thank you for seeing me through. This work is as much mine as it it theirs. However, as it is always the case, any erros in fact or interpretation are my own. xvi I finally thank the board of examinors, Alfredo Wagner Berno de Almeida, Rosa Elizabeth Marin de Acevedo, Julie Cruikshank, Lilia Gonçalves Magalhães Tavolaro, and Camilo Negri for reading the present work. The National Research Council (CNPq) and the UBC Faculty of Graduate Studies provided field work and travel funds, respectively, to help carry out this research. xvii Dedication To the quilombola community of Periperi, the neighbourhood of La Marina, and the Hwlitsum indigenous people for their struggle in recognizing conditions of possibility to push their collective mobilization forward. To Bispo, for his wit; to Seu Antonio, for his care; to Kimbo, for his grit; to Chief Rocky, for his temperance. To my family who have not ceased to surprise me with new ways of being different among such impinging forces that force us onto polluted places. To Bárbara who has always helped me to find light when all I saw was dirt; to Luiza for allowing the possibility of doubting about my assured realities; to João Caetano for showing me brand new ways of thinking different; and to the giant little Dandara who has given me the outmost gift: comfort. I dedicate this thesis to the people, family, and community around me that have allowed for conditions of possibility to exist. 1 Introduction: the Underdog Situation It was a rainy afternoon in Vancouver when we strolled down from the UBC Department’s parking lot into the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) with Professor Miller. Bárbara and I had been in the city for almost a week but could not get used to the cold breeze that seemed to find every inadvertent hole on your clothes, like that that caught us a few steps from the Museum. If the fact that we are Brazilians was not enough to vouch for our feebleness in the face of cold weather, we had been in Cuba for nearly a year now working on our PhD projects. The work that I was doing then unfolded in many different directions; one of them this present thesis about shared ethnographies among communities that are in a situation that allows them to reposition themselves in the local and regional social arrangements, by means of mobilization that is based on their collective identity. As a result of their mobilization and defiance of the establishment they are often perceived and find themselves in a situation I have come to relate as underdog1 in this polluted game of changing rules and co-existing histories. I had been working in Cuba with the neighbourhood of La Marina, in the city of Matanzas, some 92 kilometers from Havana. The “Marineros” claim their collective identity based on African traditions preserved and re-signified in “religious-mythic-political territories” (Sodré, 1987). In these territories their exiled, fragmented culture is re-territorialised amongst their family of blood and “of saint”, and a sense of belonging to a collective ritualistically comes together. In those territories, the neighbourhood has resisted homogenization and stigmatization throughout the colonial, republican and revolution years. From those territories community is organizing their present struggle 1 According to the Merrian-Webster online dictionary, underdog is “a person, team, etc., that is expected to lose a contest or battle; a less powerful person or thing that struggles against a more powerful person or thing (such as a corporation); a loser or predicted loser in a struggle or contest; a victim of injustice or persecution”. It might acquire negative connotations, via the "dog" part - an animal, not human or subhuman – in some specific contexts like in the United Kingdom (Baines, personal communication, 2015). However, in North America and widely across the continent, underdog or the idea it conveys relate more to the expected looser, victim of injustice or persecution, who, if hard working and lucky, might even win the crowd and turn the odds into his favor. 2 for the institutionalization of their claims to local and provincial governments as well as demanding their existence based on their collective identity rather than as a mere unit under the dominant idea of a Cuban ethos. In doing so, they seek to re-write history on their own terms, encountering and facing histories that are told (and untold) and others that they tell about themselves. A couple of years back, I had started working with yet another community in the state of Piauí, municipality of Amarante, Brazil. Members of Periperi collectively identify with being quilombola, communities that auto-define, through their relations with land, territory, kinship, ancestry, and traditions embedded in the notions of belonging to traditional cultural practices. There is a presumption of black ancestry, according to a singular temporal process, which does not bind them to the slave period. Quilombola communities’ access to their territories was recognized by the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, however the implementation of article 68 has generated a bloody battle that takes distinct shapes within specific regions of the country. The impact of the potential implementation of a power complex in the river that boards the community has activated several levels of historical consciousness (Miller, 2003) that allowed them to push their struggles for recognition forward. Historical consciounesses arise, as anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff (1987) have elegantly put, in between history and culture. They are activated in different levels that are interconnected. Anthropologist Molly Malone (2013) has encountered them at individual, family, and community levels at her research with the Upper Skagit indigenous people at the Northwest Coast of the United States and Canada. These are the levels that I also worked with within this study. They deal with history since historical consciousnesses challenge or legitimize dominant versions available. And they deal with culture because they challenge or legitimize these dominant versions supported on their own experiences and perceptions of history that are connected to their community, family and individuality. Consciousness is best understood as the active process— sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit—in which human actors deploy historically salient cultural categories to construct their self-awareness. Its modes may be subtle and diverse; and it is as crucial to explore the forms in 3 which a people choose to speak and act as it is to examine the content of their messages (Comaroff; Comaroff, 1987: 202). Being in Vancouver that rather chilly afternoon was not a coincidence. I had just spoken with Chief Rocky, Lindsey and Janice of the Hwlitsum indigenous peoples, and agreed to follow up on their struggle to regain their territory and collective rights as a band, as part of the comparative research base for this thesis. The Hwlitsum face a lawsuit against the Crown that is built around their belonging to a place of ancestry from which they were forced to leave in the 19th century following an attack by the British Navy. The Hwlitsum have gathered archeological and anthropological data to support their claim to fishing and hunting rights and access to their ancestral land base. The lawsuits have mobilized the band and may be an opportunity to reclaim their position after almost two hundred years of history. After we passed the totems in front of the Museum, the first hall opens to several pieces of indigenous art, one of which caught my eye for its majestic presence in between two gigantic totem poles. The feasting bowl (Figure 1) reminded Professor Miller of another at the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) across town, for the grandson of the original owner had recently attempted to claim the piece, sold to MOV by the son-in-law. What interested me was how MOV argued that, according to Kwakwaka’wakw2 tradition, ownership of the piece should pass on to the son-in-law, not the grandson. Otherwise, the grandson could hold a potlatch and claim the feasting bowl before his community. It is been a year since I was told this account and the grandson, now deceased, has given up his claim. The case underlines how traditions are and have been part of socioeconomic relations, and not just some primitive tale, forgotten or, in a better case scenario, rescued by folklorists. These traditions are embedded into different levels of historical consciousness that are activated by individuals and communities in appropriate moments. What is unique about the case is that these 2 The Kwakwaka’wakw are indigenous peoples in Canada. The centre of Kwakwaka’wakw territory is Queen Charlotte Strait on the Central Coast of British Columbia (between Northern Vancouver Island and the Mainland). The Kwakwaka'wakw live along the outer coast from Smith Sound to Cape Cook, on the shores of Queen Charlotte Strait and the inlets leading into it. https://www.sfu.ca/brc/virtual_village/Kwakwaka_wakw.html, 01.09.15 4 traditions are also being accessed by “official society” (Carneiro, 2011 [1958]) and producing unexpected forms of historical consciousness back and forth that challenge the dominant version of history. That is one of the main issues I raise in the thesis. Figure 1 - Kwakwaka’wakw Feasting Bowl, Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Source: Picture by the author Date: August 2015 The literature on subaltern studies, traditional communities, and decolonization has helped to build my theoretical grounding to address such issues, although there are problems in each approach. Particularly, Scott’s (1986) idea of “everyday forms of resistance”, as it relates to the strategies of resistance communities have engendered in their struggles for collective mobilization. I see no problem in recognizing that these forms of resistance are also forms of collaboration for the maintenance of the dominant system. They may not end up in rebellious acts or promote revolution in their local and regional arrangements of power, but they are important elements for the community’s 5 survival, base for their collective identity, and examples they draw from to construct their present struggles. Scott defines “everyday forms of resistance”, as actions, which do not “present any public or symbolic challenge to the legitimacy of the production and property arrangements being resisted […] neither required any formal organization […] had no authors who would publicly take responsibility for them” (Scott, 1986: 10) I trace no boundaries in this work and various forms of opposition are seen as resistance, for I believe, along with Seymour (2006), that these interactions between communities and their exterior environment are intentional and counter-hegemonic. Therefore, whether they take public responsibility or whether they have any formal organization that clearly states that is challenging the legitimacy of the production and property arrangements being resisted is less important than their intentional and counter-hegemonic nature. If they are trying to resist, their actions are counter-hegemonic and with intentionality, otherwise we would be dealing with classification of several levels of resistance and scales of effectiveness that would frankly take us nowhere. In a context of differential power relationships, resistance refers to intentional, and hence conscious, acts of defiance or opposition by a subordinate individual or group of individuals against a superior individual or set of individuals. Such acts are counter-hegemonic but may not succeed in effecting change. They can range from relatively small and covert acts […] to an organized feminist demonstration […]. In each case the act is intentional […]. By contrast, the organized demonstration is an example of overt consciousness-raising for the purpose of effecting change (Seymour, 2006: 305-306). Ortner’s (1995) work is key to understanding the internal dynamics of communities caught in the dominator-dominated dilemma, as they represent different forms of resistance, some that may de-romanticize the existence of communities and their inhabitants as merely played-out, submissive, non-participatory, and accepting. This relationship between communities and the exterior world occurs at different levels and scales, ranging from the individual, family, and community. The micro relations in between these levels are also fundamental to understand the strategies communities engender to resist both external and internal pressures towards fragmentation. 6 If we are to recognize that resistors are doing more than simply opposing domination, more than simply producing a virtually mechanical re-action, then we must go the whole way. They have their own politics – not just between chiefs and commoners or land lords and peasants but within all the local categories of friction and tension: men and women, parents and children, seniors and juniors; inheritance conflicts among brothers; struggles of succession and wars of conquest between chiefs; struggles for primacy between religious sects; and on and on (Ortner, 1995: 176-177). Some forms of accommodation may also be seen in the light of resistance. I find that the distinction between resistance and accommodation is connected to the struggles communities engender. Other classifications are in the eyes of the beholder. That is why the internal dynamics are important for the analyses of the relations communities have with their local and regional settings, as they reveal how communities operate, how they benefit, or how these relations present a challenge to their social organization. It was important to understand the context in which specific territorialities arise, based on the traditional practices of common use of the territory. These practices are related to communities’ cultural, social, religious, ancestral, and economic reproduction and are transmitted through tradition (Almeida, 2005), concentrated in a “religious-mythic-political territory” (Sodré, 1988), in which cultural manifestations and communitarian political struggles find their scale of mobilization. For Sodré, these territories are places of re-territorialisation of fragmented, exile cultures. Evaristo (2010) stresses that these cultures are not only re-territorialised but also condensed within these territories. They are where the “individual will seek the sense of belonging to a collective and will ritualistically come together with his nation” (Sodré, 1988: 50). I was quite interested in what triggers and re-triggers collective identification and leads communities into “transitional periods” (Peluso; Watts, 2001) or “transition moments” (Almeida, 2008), following collective stress situations (Wallace, 1956). These triggers may be external forces that led the community into a “transitional period” where the historically woven power relations are forcefully reorganized, like in the case of the quilombola community of Periperi, for instance, in which the potential construction of power plants threatens to flood the area. 7 We find that environmental violence frequently intersects with other forms of violence emerging from racial and ethnic tensions, state forms of violence, and other social tensions that either come to the surface during transitional periods when social and spatial power relations are rearranged or create those transitional periods. (Peluso; Watts, 2001: 31) They may be internally driven, as in the case of the neighbourhood of La Marina, in which the internal collective frustration with outside intervention projects pushed the community to reclaim their role as protagonists of their collective identification process and drove them into a “transition moment” of identity formation. Almeida (2008) stresses that there are peculiar historical situations which lead collectives to realize the conditions at place to advance their basic claims. The anthropologist defines “transition moments” as Peculiar historical situations in which social groups and peoples realize that there are ‘conditions of possibility’ to advance on he basic claims, in order to recognize their collective identities and mobilize forces around them, as well as turn their practical knowledge into a vigorous formal-juridical instrument [Translated by the author from the originali] (Almeida, 2008: 17). Sometimes the last resort for triggering community collective identification is in tradition, as in the case of the Hwlitsum indigenous people who, without a land base, fight to have recognized their collective rights to fish and hunt and to reclaim their territory. Facing the implementation of a pipeline and the enlargement of the port of Vancouver with direct effects to their claimed territory, and an impending future based on a lawsuit that addresses these issues, the Hwlitsum cope with both external and internal pressures on their community cohesion. In all three situations, I argue that the collective stress is such that communities may reassess what Wallace (1956) calls their “mazeway”, or a mental image of any given society and its culture, forcing them into “transitional periods” or “transition moments”, depending on centrifugal or centripetal forces. These triggers occur in various situations, in which collective identification is accessed. These triggers seem to be intertwined, since in the “transitional periods” external forces push the forceful reorganization of the existing power relations. The other side of the coin are “transition moments”, when internal forces push a community towards mobilization. But, the levels of collective and individual stress may be 8 unbearable and cause community fragmentation. They may also provoke community reorganization through reinforcement of their traditional practices or through accessing external sources or both. Collective identification is fundamentally anchored in the awareness of existing “conditions of possibility” within the community that may catapult them to a “transition moment”, in which they have the conditions to mobilize. That process may lead to accessing a form of formal judicial recognition, but it is fundamentally driven by a community’s collective identification. Wills’s (1977) work on the cultural opposition of British school boys to the school system was quite interesting in revealing how, at the individual level, identity is reworked by the groups’s counter-hegemonic drive. Willis argues that the identity is not a choice, but largely dependent on the context and internal references. The collective drive takes on the individual references. That individual reference, on its turn, is built within the context it is inserted, on prior instances of experience. In those prior instances, the possibility of change was born. That is why the communities’ collective identification is informed also by these prior instances, situations that are singled out in the narratives of community members. This means that identity is not a choice – a statement – independent of context and internal reference – that can be changed situationally. Any sudden change has to refer to the prior instance experienced by the subject in which the possibility of change was born. This means that the prior moments experienced of some parts stay as an inherent part of the identity. (Hadberg, 2006: 7) In the narratives of community members part of this study, those situations are often connected to resistance to both internal and external pressures and the ways by which they have sought to go around, resist, or overcome them. That infoms their individual references, as well as their family traditions and community shared realities. The possibility to create new and real meaning that can free the individual and its group from the determinacy of institutionalized power is determined by the establishment itself. It may remain a function of the reproduction of this establishment, as it is often the case. But it may, by the collective directed will, finally take over the outside 9 determination, and free itself from ever adjusting to the demands of the exercising power. The external pressures on communities cannot only be understood by the local or regional settings in which they are inserted. That is why decolonization theory helped unveil how local and regional strategies of domination connect to larger frameworks of understanding. Decolonialist theorists identify the permanence of colonialism in our post-colonialist world system. It materializes through what Quijano (2000) calls the “coloniality of power” embedded at all levels of our social relations. One of the fundamental axes of this model of power is the social classification of the world’s population around the idea of race, a mental construction that expresses the basic experience of colonial domination and pervades the more important dimensions of global power, including its specific rationality: Eurocentrism. The racial axis has a colonial origin and character, but it has proven to be more durable and stable than the colonialism in whose matrix it was established. Therefore, the model of power that is globally hegemonic to day presupposes an element of coloniality (Quijano, 2000: 533). The social classification of the world around an idea of race is not endogenous of the American continent. It is not even exclusive to the Occident and exists in Asia and Africa too, both in the form of local or regional racisms and re-appropriations of Western racism, which have been indigenized and turned into new forms. However, in the Americas the colonizer applied it to the colonial enterprise that was backed by a specific rationality: Eurocentrism. Of course there are specificities of each encounter in the continent and the products of these interactions that reverberate into the present. However, I must agree with Quijano and other decolonialists that Eurocentrism conformed a body of significance that informed the colonial enterprise. Such strong a body that has led Quijano to refer to the concepts and worldviews that arose from this enterprise as driven by a “particular Occidental European Ethnicity”. It is no less rational, finally, than the pretension that the specific cosmovision of a particular ethnicity be imposed as a universal rationality, even if such ethnicity is called Occidental Europe. Because that, indeed, is to award a provincialism the title of universality [Translated by the author from the originalii] (Quijano, 1992 [1989]: 447). 10 Taken literally Quijano’s argument is feeble, but as a metaphor of the origin of colonialism it is quite accurate in highlighting the endurance of practices, concepts, and worldviews that have intentionality but are taken for granted. Even though the conditions for colonialism are not present today, its logics, like an idea of a racialized society, continue to impregnate our contemporary worldviews, practices and concepts, and that is what Quijano refers to as “coloniality of power”. The right arm of this “coloniality of power” is development that, according to Blaser, M.; Feit, H. A.; McRae, G. (2004), is the heir of imperialism and colonialism in fabricating universalized concepts and worldviews. The endurance of the “coloniality of power” beyond the experience of colonialism has led to struggles and strategies of resistance that communities have engendered against local and regional structures of domination. However, my analysis was enriched by the tools Canadian indigenous theory has provided me. That is the path I took and it has made all the difference for my understanding the Brazilian and Cuban communities. It also made me move beyond subaltern and decolonization theory. It made me see communities from a different situational standpoint not simply as parts of a post-colonial peasant class struggle; as not only referring to their national specific contexts; as having other forms to connect than that of global and globalizing arrangements of a world-system’s theory (Wallerstein, 1997), in which the “coloniality of power” impresses its mark most definitely. It made me closer to the field where communities have not only survived, but resisted the homogenization provoked by this unidirectional, coloniality–oriented drive. They have resisted in the face of changing rules imposed by the state, and against very difficult odds provoked by co-existing histories about themselves, and being continuously polluted (Douglas, 1966) by external pressures. According to Douglas, these external pressures inflict a separation between levels of purity and impurity. Applied to social life, these notions carry a dangerous symbolic load that demarcates boundaries and establishes punishment for those who cross it. Communities who venture beyond those boundaries are seen, in Douglas words, as an “untidy 11 experience”, formless, disordered, and polluted. Nevertheless, communities have found new ways to be different and yet remain the same, as Carlson (2010) points out. It is what made them resilient (Miller, 2003) and not transculturated (Ortiz, 1965), or incorporated to a melting pot (Gleason, 1980), or to a cultural mosaic (Gibbon, 1938), or even to a racial democracy (Freyre, 1933). That is why they all have a source from where to draw from. The “conditions of possibility” (Foucault, 1966 apud Almeida, 2008) that allowed them to resist were driven from their traditions, but were expressed through several levels of historical consciousness (Malone, 2013). These historical consciousness lie in between history and culture (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1987) and are activated in a “religious-mythic-political territory” (Sodré, 1988). They are conscious and unconscious thoughts that emerge from the interplay between culture and history within communities’ territory, shaping behaviour at different levels. Building on intensive and extensive ethnographic work with the quilombola community of Periperi (6 months), the neighbourhood of La Marina (18 months) and the Hwlitsum indigenous people (3 months), I look at historical consciousness at individual, family, and community levels. These different historical consciousnesses are trigged by a collective determination to face the ever-changing “floating signifiers” (Hall, 1996: 6), inflicted on communities by disadvantageous settings that made them wander without the possibility of being home (Florencio, 2014). This permanent doubt about the possibility of being home is at the heart of the feelings of belonging that troubles communities from La Marina, experimenting with a new field of significations that is arising with the “economic actualization” the country is going through presently; to Periperi, and the potential implementation of the power complex that threatens to flood the community; to the Hwlitsum people facing a lawsuit that throws it all on the line. These new fields of significations create transitional non-belongings and a permanent desire to “perambular” [wander], “to pass, to go through spaces and things” (Florencio, 2014: 69), and also to experiment, to prove oneself against the odds, to live a 12 different life, without exactly knowing what to expect, and wishing for something more, which is, nonetheless, unknown. What do I mean by a floating signifier? Well to put it crudely, race is one of those major concepts, which organize the great classificatory systems of difference, which operate in human society. And to say that race is a discursive category recognizes that all attempts to ground this concept scientifically, to locate differences between the races, on what one might call scientific, biological, or genetic grounds, have been largely shown to be untenable. We must therefore, it is said, substitute socio-historical or cultural definition of race, for the biological one. (Hall, 1997: 6) “Floating signifiers” as race operate as classificatory systems of difference that can be characterized as “systems of exclusion”, in Foucault’s terms. These “systems of exclusion”, are identified by “the forbidden word”, “the segregation of madness”, and the “will of truth” (Foucault, 2006 [1971]: 19). The “forbidden word” is present in the racial relations in the three communities. In Periperi, discussions about the assumption of their quilombola collective identity gave wing to racial disputes and significations both in relation to outsiders as to members of the community. In La Marina, the contact of the leaders in the neighbourhood with anti-racist movements of Havana made them incorporate on their communitarian demands the racial issue. That has provoked a reaction on Matanza’s society that draws back on ideas of national unit and the Cuban ethos. The Revolution would have done with racism, and, although discussion about the issue is being made in Havana and other cities in the country, including Matanzas, the “forbidden word” is still present in communitarian life in relation to the issue. Economic interests, related to fishing and hunting rights, of other tribes and Canada have suffocated the claims of the Hwlitsum, up to a point where they were not only dispossessed of resources, but of their own ethnicity. They are not even a people to both Canada and to the other tribes. They are themselves the “forbidden word”, being no more than a floating indigenous race. Furthermore, by “the segregation of madness” the Hwlitsum are trapped in between not being recognized by the Canadian State and not being recognized by the other indigenous groups because they are not recognized by Canada. Their discourse is simply null and void. In La Marina the affirmation of “mestizaje cultural” [cultural mixing], base for the “ethos cubano” [Cuban ethos] is a discipline that eschews other 13 ethnic and racial identification. Being a quilombola community was something unimaginable to black communities in Amarante’s municipality where Periperi is situated, because they were all mixed and their “true” “blackness” could not be determined; because they could not trace their origin accurately enough; because they could not determine their state inheritance rights. Finally, the “will of truth” completes this “system of exclusion” in labeling black identification “racistamente exclusivista” [racially exclusivist] in La Marina, reserving fewer social positioning for individuals and collectives trying to address racial issues in the Island, let alone racial identification. In Periperi, claims of authenticity were generated by the local “official society” that framed the community of Mimbó, the only certified by the State quilombola community in the municipality, until this year, the sole exemplar of “quilombolaness”. Addressing static, historically atomized understandings of what a quilombo would be, “official society” has been preventing self-identifications of black communities in the region by imposing upon them parameters that are oftentimes impossible to attain. Mimbó was singled out as the only “true” quilombo, and the other communities remained as “just” black communities. In Canada, blood quantum definitions imposed by State legislation as well as the tribes have shattered indigenous peoples that were once whole. The Crown and later Canadian and American post-colonial States’ necessity to divide the several bands of the Coast Salish world, to which the Hwlitsum belong, runs in contradiction to the logic of recognition of these peoples amongst themselves. The Coast Salish peoples were recognized by their presence and importance in the region, or else by their interaction amongst themselves. The creation of reserves in Canada and reservations in the United States, along with the imposition of the boarder in between the two States was made without including indigenous uses, customs, and kinship, often times in both sides of the boarder. These boarders also created limits of membership, like the blood quantum. If the Hwlitsum succeed in the recognition as a band under the Indian Act3, they will have to face a 3 “The Indian Act is a Canadian federal law that governs in matters pertaining to Indian status, bands, and Indian reserves. Throughout history it has been highly invasive and paternalistic, as it authorizes the Canadian federal government to regulate and administer in the affairs and day-to-day lives 14 further challenge in determining who is a member and who is not (Miller, personal communication, 2015). Hwlitsum who cannot trace their lineage to Si’nusuctun, a Coast Salish chief and his son Caluxton, born in the early 1800s, will not be recognized as members. Caluxton is the great grandfather of Hwlitsum’s current chief, Raymond Wilson. But there are other families that identify as Hwlitsum and the Hwlitsum have married within other tribes and with non-indigenous. Finally, the percentage of Hwlitsum “blood” will be the base for devising their rights as members of the band, according to the legislation in place. These “systems of exclusion” reinforce the idea of “classificatory systems of difference” that inform these “floating signifiers”. Rules are never clear for communities and that is why they need to be constantly adapting to a field of significations that is agreed despite their existence. That is also why their identities shift, and are fragmented, contradictory, unresolved, at times. That is also true for the identities members of the “official society” construct about themselves. The difference is that they are more often part (or think they are) of the agreement that is made on the larger field of significations, which makes them feel that they have a balanced, coherent “self”. Another difference that derives from this latter is that by being ousted of a part and a role in the agreement on this larger field of significations, when communities mobilize around a form of collective identification they do so in a counter-hegemonic way. Yet these are exactly what are now said to be "shifting." The subject previously experienced as having a unified and stable identity, is becoming fragmented; composed, not of a single, but of several, sometimes contradictory or unresolved, identities. Correspondingly, the identities which composed the social landscapes "out there," and which ensured our subjective conformity with the objective "needs" of the culture, are breaking up as a result of structural and institutional change. The very process of identification, through which we project ourselves into our cultural of registered Indians and reserve communities. This authority has ranged from overarching political control, such as imposing governing structures on Aboriginal communities in the form of band councils, to control over the rights of Indians to practice their culture and traditions. The Indian Act has also enabled the government to determine the land base of these groups in the form of reserves, and even to define who qualifies as Indian in the form of Indian status. […] The Indian Act is administered by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), formerly the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND). The Indian Act is a part of a long history of assimilation policies that intended to terminate the cultural, social, economic, and political distinctiveness of Aboriginal peoples by absorbing them into mainstream Canadian life and values”. http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-indian-act.html, 02.09.15. 15 identities, has become more open-ended, variable, and problematic. This produces the post-modern subject, conceptualized as having no fixed, essential, or permanent identity. […] It is historically, not ideologically, defined. The subject assumes different identities at different times, identities which are not unified around a coherent "self." Within us are contradictory identities pulling in different directions, so that our identifications are continuously being shifted about. If we feel we have a unified identity from birth to death, it is only because we construct a comforting story or "narrative of the self" about ourselves […]. The fully unified, completed, secure, and coherent identity is a fantasy, Instead, as the systems of meaning and cultural representation multiply, we are confronted by a bewildering, fleeting multiplicity of possible identities. Any one of which we could identify with - at least temporarily (Hall, 1996: 598). Accessing their oral traditions and histories (Vansina, 1985) through the narratives of their elders and young, men, women and children, communities on this work could face their own history of adversity. Activating historical consciousness made communities aware of historical fluidity (Sider, 1993) and the possibility of different versions of history about themselves within settings of asymmetric power relations. That possibility inevitably embraces histories about themselves that are not fully resolved or that are fragmented within the community. Therefore, it is not a simple reconstruction of a history to “legitimize” the present struggle communities are undertaken, as Sider reminds us. To urge people to claim a different version of the past and a different vision of the future is to mobilize people to accept a new history that does not fully make sense, that moves against the still strongly flowing currents of power and of present history. To say that this new emerging sense of history simply ‘legitimates’ new claims is to turn away from all the tensions, gaps, pressures, fears, and hopes that live in and between people’s multiple, uncertain senses of the past and of the impeding future – the multiple, co-existing histories that people live within and against: the histories of their own dreams and hopes and fears, and the histories of power – of what they know has been, and still could be, done to them. (Sider, 1993: 8) In Periperi, the drive towards the certification of the community as quilombola awakened old grudges related to the implementation of local development projects and divisions in between the families that constitute the quilombo. Divisions are related to leadership; to inside racial differentiations amongst them; and to how each family and individuals in the community related to the “official society” and the effects upon the community. In La Marina, the neighbourhood’s affirmation of their heritage and place in the city’s development runs in contradiction to the image Matanzas holds of a city born of a 16 grand past that made them think of themselves as the epicenter of culture in Cuba. To rewrite the history of the neighbourhood is also to rewrite the city’s present and expose the “systems of exclusion” that have kept the neighbourhood from the center of decisions, resource allocation, and recognition as bearers of African traditions in the country. After the British Navy bombed their village, Lamalchi, in Kuper Island, the Hwlitsum found out that the Penelakut had betrayed them in revealing their leaders who fought the British and were later hanged. In the process of recognition under the Indian Act as a band, the Hwlitsum attempted to enter treaty process, upon recommendation of the British Columbia Treaty Commission, with the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, following their linguistic identification, also shared by the Penelakut. The Hwlitsum had to deal with their past relations with this band and temporarily forget about that history in order to forward their claim. The claim did not go forward for “the two parties could not reach final agreement on the terms of their union for treaty purposes”4, but it has created divisions within the community that still inform the present struggles. Without necessarily representing professional categories or class segments, such groups have been organizing in consistent unities of mobilization […]. The value of the work force does not constitute their racial and declared base but, in spite of that, there is a high level of cohesion in their practices, making them agile and efficient forms of political organization. […] They compose, aiming at guaranteeing the effective control of domains represented as fundamental territories to their identity and, to some of them, to their ethnic affirmation. […] Ethnic, racial, and religious factors, usually used to reinforce solidarities and distinguish to denominated ‘minorities’, loose, in the context of these antagonisms, their strength in stressing differences that are not possible to overcome [Translated by the author from the originaliii] (Almeida, 2011: 15-16). Different “conditions of possibility”, however, allowed communities to become “units of mobilization” (Almeida, 2011: 15-16) and seize the opportunity to re-write their own history. In the process of doing it, they have had to face and encounter different histories that place their own community cohesion at risk; that challenge the “official history” that is told about them and their environment; and to strategically 4 Treaty Commission Update. July 2008. www.bctreaty.net-files-pdf_documents/summer2008update. 12.11.14. 17 supress or deal with portions of their own history that do not necessarily fit their purposes. They have also assumed different forms of identification in dealing with the “floating signifiers” available and those that arise from their struggles based on their collective identification. They have sought in a counter-hegemonic way to become “whole”, as Chief Wilson of the Hwlitsum (personal communication, 2014) stated, to have a coherent “self”, in Hall’s terms. That is the process that most engaged the ethnographic component of this thesis. Drawing from the ethnographies, I could approximate how “coloniality of power” works and materializes in their specific contexts. It was quite striking to realize that although the nation States in which these communities are inserted are post-colonial societies that are driven by relations based on the signs of the “coloniality of power”, the local and regional arrangements of power impose real life colonial settings on the communities. It is as if the conditions for colonialism still exist in the settings these communities are inserted. I will give the reader a few examples, because you might be quite as taken aback as I was. Present disputes about land titling in Periperi still refer to the “sesmarias” [Portuguese Crown land grants], because of a legal void in the distribution of land in the region. The “official society”, as Carneiro (2011 [1958]) puts it, or the ones who could access the means (political power and resources), nonetheless, was able to forcefully legitimize their land claims over the years. The ones who remain without title are mainly the black communities, like Periperi, and fewer disposed white families. Public records on La Marina, though the neighbourhood of a country in which equality policies have been sustained for over 50 years, are nowhere to be found. Inhabitants of the Cuban city of Matanzas still refer to the neighbourhood with fear of a conflictive, savage, mysterious place, where black people live and are contained at. The Hwlitsum indigenous people fight the Canadian State for the recognition of their land base that was taken from them after they were bombed by the British Navy. Canada says it knows of their existence, but because they do not have a land base in the present they cannot withhold them as a people under the Indian Act. 18 The endurance of these colonial settings became a fundamental ground for understanding power relations inside and with the outside of communities. Furniss (1999) helped understand these settings by what the anthropologist calls “colonial culture”. This colonial culture rests on a set of understandings about the relationship between the individual, society, and the natural world. Furniss (1999) writes that it provides taken-for-granted understandings of the past and rules for constructing knowledge of both past and present. Though nation states in which these communities are inserted are called post-colonial states (a hyper-capitalist Third World country like Brazil, a borderline socialist country like Cuba, or a First World capitalist dependent economy like Canada) the social relations that these communities have with their “official societies” (Carneiro, 2011 [1958]) are characterized by a colonial culture. I argue that colonial culture characterizes the settings in which these communities are inserted. The identification of these colonial settings was the basis for my comparison among the ethnographies in this thesis. The power, which maintains the political, economic, social, and cultural marginalization of communities such as the ones being studied here, resides not only in the policies, practices, and ideologies of state institutions and their officials, what would characterize the “coloniality of power”. In addition, colonial relations of power radiate globally generated frameworks of understanding which are manifested “in the everyday cultural attitudes and practices of ‘ordinary’” local people, like government employees, elected officials, sellers in stores, and the car keeper in the parking lot. They “knowingly or unwittingly, serve as agents in an ongoing system of colonial domination” (Furniss, 1999: 11). Note, the domination and marginalization of these communities cannot be reduced to “class relations created through the imposition of capitalism”. This colonial system of domination restricts the forms of identification, which occur on ethnic and racial grounds. Wade (1997) states that racial identifications lie within the physical differences, particularly in the context of the Americas, which “have converted into objects of ideological manipulation in the course of the colonial Occidental expansion” (Wade, 1997: 17). On the other hand, ethnic identifications are 19 related to cultural differences, and are often connected to a sense of belonging to a place. In all three communities both ethnic and racial grounds play a major part in collective identification. The identification process takes different forms, though, and there are differences in intensity and circumstance between the communities. The distinct strategies they use in accessing one or the other or both forms of identification and when and how are also central to the ethnographic work. It is a process that relates to what quilombola intellectual Antonio Bispo dos Santos (2015) describes as “confluences”, “transfluences” and “bio-interactions”. A lot of different people with distinct backgrounds came together in the communities. However, following a process of “confluence” it is not expected that every grouping had the same resulting characteristics, classifications that would make them “authentic”, or to an illusory, easily traceable, ethnicity. Nevertheless, Barth (2000 [1969]) points out that the ethnic identity of a group is the base for its organization, its relation to the other groups, and its political action. It is by a process of “transfluence” that traditions that have been historically weaved from different backgrounds are brought about as a support to their present struggles and to the construction of a collective identity connected with their territory. By a process of “bio-interaction”, different racial and ethnic identifications come together in “pleasurable communion” within the communities, following their shared practices, use of territory, customs, ancestry, and economic reproduction and the different levels of historical consciousnesses that arise from this “bio-interaction” process and their individual, family, and communitarian consciousnesses about it. Confluência [confluence] is the law, which governs the interaction among the elements of nature and teaches us that not everything that comes together, mixes, that is, nothing is equal. […] Transfluência [transfluence] is the law that governs the relations of transformation of the elements of nature, and teaches us that not everything that mixes, comes together. […] It is by these laws that the great debates between reality and appearance are generated, that is, between what is organic and what is synthetic. [Translated by the author from the originaliv] (Dos Santos, 2015: 81). In opposition to the dammed weariness to which Adam was condemned by the biblical God, here [in the quilombo], what is lived is the pleasurable communion of the biointeração [bio-20 interaction]. […] Therefore, we could conclude that the best way to store the fish is in the water, where they will keep on growing and reproducing. And the best way to store the products of all of our productive expressions is distributing among the neighbors, that is, as everything we do is a product of organic energy, the product has to be reintegrated to that same energy. [Translated by the author from the originalv] (Dos Santos, 2015: 76-77). All these specificities place the communities in a distinct situational position that I have come to relate as underdogs (Miller, 2003). There are no ethnic or racial traits defined a priori for the characterization of these communities, although a distinctive ethnic-racial identification form lies within the process for collective identification. The territorial base may be present or it may be part of the present struggle each community is engendering. It is often a small-scale process, which makes communities non–mainstream, and frequently invisible (or invisibilized) within national society, but it is not the size that defines their situation as underdogs. I use the underdog situation to highlight their situational position in time and place, as differentiated communities in which “conditions of possibility” are identified and in which processes of collective identification are being undertaken, activating their historical consciousness at different levels, and mobilizing to address their struggles. That grants them the possibility of shifting historically built colonial power relation in which they are inserted. It is the “power of place and the problem of time,” as historian Keith Carlson (2010) puts it. The identities of these communities are deeply rooted in their existing or claimed territories, but the conditions of the struggle to arise above what Douglas calls “dirt”, or “the rejected elements or ordered systems” (1966: 36), are circumstantial. If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. [...] It implies two sets of conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. [...] Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in-so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements (Douglas, 1966: 36) Carlson (2010: 24) argues that “the passage of time presents problems for collective affiliations and these problems cause shared identities to be periodically reconstituted upon new lines”. While agreeing with Carlson, and by recognizing their underdogs situation, I mean to highlight specific moments in which communities’ 21 periodical reconstitutions upon new lines are critical. I am fully aware of the effect of external categorizations and of the specific contexts in which communities’ particular collective identifications arise. The underdog situation is used in this work to highlight specific moments in communities’ trajectory and does not have the intention to establish categorizations that will set them apart from their own collective identifications or the categories of mobilization, such as quilombo, traditional or indigenous, that they already identify with. They are not simply subordinate or subaltern peoples as well. First, those categories carry their own baggage, as do other classifications, such as indigenous, traditional, Afro-descendent, or slow world. So did also, in other older vocabulary, primitive, tribal, pre-modern, non-civilized, and barbaric. Second, these communities I have worked with have encountered “conditions of possibility” within their territories and in relation to the “official societies” to force a shift in their social positioning. They may not succeed. But then again this is not a game of winners and losers for it is given that the rules of the game are corrupted from start. Third, they do recognize the situation that they are momentously. By addressing communities’ underdog situation I seek to approximate to the reader these communitarian perceptions about their own place in society. Forth, I state that I am addressing American contexts. I do believe that there are other communities throughout the world that fall under the underdog situation I have come about while doing this research, but I refrain from addressing their specific contexts for lack of data, which was not the objective of this study. This research is situated under the scope of the three communities mentioned, despite the fact that examples from other American contexts in which traditional or indigenous communities are inserted aid the discussion about their underdog situation and helped built portions of my argument here. Fifth, and last, I also stress that communities that I work with do not always call themselves literally underdogs. In the narratives in La Marina, community members often refer to themselves and their community as “sotoneros”, or a baseball team that has a lot of grit but that is not the leading team, because it does not have the necessary resources or 22 conditions are not at place. But if conditions were at place, there would be a great chance for the “sotoneros” to become champions. In Periperi, several mentions are made by community members in their narratives that relate to the underdog situation. They are not amalgamated in a word like in La Marina or among the Hwlitsum, who state that they are underdogs (Miller, personal communication, 2015). However, like in the other communities, the underdog situation is pronouncedly expressed in their everyday approaches to life and in their struggles. The underdog situtation simply approximates what I have found communities feel about their present condition being resisting homogenizing forces generated by a colonial culture that still impinges upon them polluted, untidy, experiences in society. They do so by activating historical consciousnesses, re-territorialized and condensed in “religious-mythic-political territories”, which are base for their different present struggles, directed by their collective identification. By a tradition of resistance they have become resilient. By willing to transgress the polluted expected places society has relegated them to they are momentously in the underdog situation. In order to address those issues, the objective of this thesis is to compare strategies of resistance and collective identification of the three communities mentioned in Brazil, Cuba and Canada, aiming at identifying the homogenizing forces that pressure communities from the outside as well as the triggers for collective identification and the forms of mobilization into a political struggle. In recognizing the mechanisms by which this unidirectional, coloniality-driven, homogenizing framework of understanding work I could better identify the struggles and strategies of resistance communities have engendered against local and regional structures of domination that characterize a colonial culture. By engaging in intensive and extensive fieldwork with the communities, I was able to be part of their own process of identifying the historical fluidity around the discourses based on the dominant version and share the load of re-writing new histories. Central to this process was realizing along with communities the power of narratives as “ways of thinking about how human communities continue to hold 23 together, and about how divisions that at one time seem deep recede and are reworked in the process of building alliances at another time” (Cruikshank, 1998: 2). Through the narratives we were able to revisit their histories with an eye to their present struggles. That allowed us also to share strategies and realities back and forth in between communities, so as to illuminate collective understanding of strategies of identification, and their situational positioning in relation to both internal and external pressures. Acevedo Marin (2010), in close dialogue with Bourdieu (2004) considers these strategies “the bulk of actions of agents, which cannot be seen as a product of an unconscious program or, on the extreme, as a product of a conscious and rational calculation” [Translated by the author from the originalvi] (Acevedo Marin, 2010: 51). Bourdieu goes on writing that those strategies are “a permanent invention, indispensable to adapt to the situations indefinitely variated, never perfectly identical” [Translated by the author from the originalvii] (Bourdieu, 2004: 81). These situations are a function of the internal and external pressures that impose on community lesser, lower, expected social positioning. But analysing, comparing and sharing different strategies with which communities have fought these pressures we were able to highlight not the pressures themselves but the distinct ways by which communities have sought to be different in the midst of “impinging forces”. The “impinging force” (Keesing, 1992) of these internal and external pressures has polluted (Douglas, 1966) these communities, inasmuch as they have resisted sometimes overwhelming forces. Systematically resisting these impinging forces that try to homogenize them have turned communities into polluted, untidy, dangerous places that need to be disinfected and cleansed to restrict contagion. I agree with Keesing that resistance is “image-based and metaphorical”, but it is also experience-rich, in the sense that it allows different individual, familiar, communitarian, private and public strategies communities and their members use in struggling for different forms of cultural autonomy, in the face of an “experience-thin, abstractly and generally conceived [impinging force]” (Keesing, 1992: 223). So highlighting resistance, one is able to better understand and give form to the impinging forces pressed upon them. It is an exercise of 24 inverting the homogenizing discourse of pollution, bringing form to communities and their struggles, otherwise considered formless, and bringing disorder to the power system, otherwise considered tidy. This resistance takes different forms that include latent, unconscious, accommodation, overt or “hidden transcripts” (Scott, 1990) that are possible to access at the appropriate moment. Instead of a “subculture of subalternity”, a “shared consciousness of class position”, or a “counterhegemonic subaltern ideology” (Keesing, 1992: 214) (although having elements of these), what best describes these multiple resistance strategies is resilience. Resilience is resistance transformed into tradition. If, following Keesing, subaltern resistance is in the gap between emulation and transgression, resilience is beyond transgression. My ethnographic research shows that it is what allows communities to mobilize; it is what allows people to sense new possibilities and the utility of being in the underdog situation. Recognizing their resilience in their local-regional societies and that of other communities in the globe has enriched their struggles, and to a large extent, broadened my own understanding of these communities. We both learned that although they do not share “indigeneity”, or “traditionality”, or “quilombolaness”, but, rather, they share “underdogness”, and that made the comparison between their cases meaningful. That is why I am using theoretical references from different traditions of scholarship as well as diverse case studies, and working with distinct communities in the American continent. It is their “underdogness” I am after in the midst of the search for a humanist and critical anthropology that represents a critique of social institutions that produce the mechanisms by which these communities are polluted. They are polluted by systematically being denied recognition by the State, by being assimilated and terminated, and by facing unidirectional and exclusive development policies that, although sometimes simulate respect and recognition of ethnic and racial differences, are based on “systems of exclusion” that make communities polluted and constitute impinging forces they resist. They also feel polluted themselves being continuously forced on lower categories that create expected places for their identification. The 25 expected place that members in Periperi recognize in their narratives is black, poor, rural, and ignorant. In La Marina it was black, conflictive, dirty, prostitution, drug and gambling bound. In the Hwlitsum case it was landless, acculturated, and dispossessed. These identities had to remain below, latent, dormant, and underground to survive such a stigmatization. By accessing their historical consciousness they seek to shift those identities from these expected polluted places. In re-writing their histories they have to face the pollution that was thrown at them and the pollution they have gathered inside the community. I apply these distinct theoretical approaches to develop portions of my argument, for I am not just trying to measure or explain, but, rather, I am trying to understand. I am aware that this approach represents, to some extent, boundary transgression, but then again that is exactly what these communities in an underdog situation are doing with their own mobilization. I also take this approach to my writing here. Feeling sort of polluted myself, coming from different backgrounds other than anthropology, I held on to the narratives as “an explanation competing for legitimacy, performed in a way that invokes ethnographic authority” (Cruikshank, 1998: 136). As the reader will encounter in the next pages, the thesis is built around a series of narratives about encounters that produced dialogues with several communitarian members. Reading Muehlmann (2014), I realized that some of those dialogues could be developed into full narratives. That is why I decided to foreground these dialogues with specific characters, community leaders, who have the power to encompass a wider range of subjects and people’s experiences. From the narratives, I could identify other experiences drawing from by own background and research with other communities, and the literature on indigenous and traditional peoples that could aid the understanding of the realities they spoke of. That is why these experiences arise in the text according to the pace and content the narratives impress. I use these experiences to develop portions of my argument, which the narratives helped to support. The results of this approach to writing and 26 comparative insights it produced are addressed in portions throughout the thesis and are reassessed in the discussions and conclusions I make in the last two chapters. The research design used for structuring the work around these objectives follows the model of the “most-different case scenario” comparative research design (Przerworski; Teune, 1970). There are some apparent similarities between Brazil and Canada (both countries are liberal democracies almost the size of continents, with multi-ethnic populations). Cuba appears quite different (as a one-party socialist island nation with a much smaller population). However, the differences are considerable. Brazil is a hyper-capitalist country with massive poverty, whereas Canada is a developed country with social inequality directed towards its indigenous population. Cuba is considered a dictatorship, following Robert Dahl’s (2001) ideal type democracy canons5, widely adopted by Western countries to criticize unaligned congeners. But if we took the same approach applied to Brazil or to Canada, Cuba does not appear to be a dictatorship. The three countries represent, nevertheless, different realities on the same continent, but, despite their differences, they have produced the conditions for the emergence of the underdog situation within these communities. The point I want to make is that the explanation for the emergence of the underdog situation is not in Cuba allegedly being a dictatorship and Canada and Brazil not, or if the levels of inequality in Brazil are higher than the other two countries. It is not how different these countries are that matter for the comparison, but how, because they are different, they have produced realities in which these communities fall into an underdog situation. The comparison effort on this thesis in directed to this level. The three communities are indeed in different American national contexts, marked by different regimes of government, different positions within the World-System (Wallerstein, 1997), and different geographic references. It is, however, through deep ethnographic work that was possible to arrive at conclusions about the external pressures and the triggers for collective identifications that mobilize their political 5 Cannons of an ideal democracy, according to Dahl, would be effective participation, equalitarian vote, thorough understanding, control over the planning program, and adult inclusion. (Dahl, 2001: 49). 27 struggles. By examining the differences between the groups I am able to analyze patterns of homogenization, such as the endurance of a colonial culture in the social relations communities exchange with their corresponding “official societies”, and the specificities of the different political struggles for certification, titling, fishing and hunting rights, and institutionalization. I also assess the different scenarios in which collective identification was triggered by activating historical consciousness, as a means to boost the communities’ political struggle. The ethnographic work that included “thick description” participant observation (Geertz, 1973), experience-near anthropology (Goulet and Miller, 2007), and comparative analysis (Przervoski; Teune, 1970) has allowed me full immersion into the communities realities and struggles, without being “quilombola”, “marinero”, or “Hwlitsum”. Using these ethnographic tools, more than 65 hours of dialogues, interviews and conversations, and additional recordings from conferences, seminars and communitarian meetings in the three countries, particularly in Periperi, La Marina and with the Hwlitsum people were produced, and are the heart of this thesis. We also produced maps using verbal testimony, photographs, and GPS points. In Periperi and La Marina collectively made drawings from community members about their perceptions of their communities were fundamental tools in revealing different uses of their territories and ideas of extended community logics. In both cases the drawings were more than illustrations of narratives and connected missing points in between the observation and the description experiences. That is an interpretation I owe to Azevedo (2013) and her idea, in close dialogue with Ingold (2011), of “narrative compositions”, by which images and texts can be read simultaneously filling in the hiatus produced at times by disconnected images of time and space. If there is a hiatus at the heart of ethnography, it is not then between participation and observation, for these are in truth aspects of one and the same movement. It is rather between observation and description. How might they be rejoined? One way to do so might be to think of description in the first place as a process of line-making rather than verbal composition. And this leads us back to drawing (Ingold, 2011: 9). 28 In the case of Brazil, community members attempted in their drawings at a quite accurate and detailed depiction of their community, but one the ended up revealing much more than a picture of the houses, communitarian places, public equipment, and natural scenery. Extended community logics, conflicts, different uses of the territory, distinct sentiments about the places within and outside the community, and communitarian organization were among those “hidden transcripts” (Scott, 1990). In Cuba, children of the neighbourhood drew different maps related to their own perception of La Marina. The drawings expressed images of places, moments, and things that could not be seen there. They were drawn in between those that were actually there for the participant to behold and describe. However, even these places, moments and things that could be identified with the community were tinted by the children’s own perception of the settings, as compared to my own visual experience. These spatial and visual connections all draw back to the several historical consciousnesses in the neighbourhood, how the neighbourhood came to be, how it has resisted over the years and how it identifies in the present. With their drawings kids expressed not only what they wished their neighbourhood were like, but also how they experiment it. For the Hwlitsum, I used maps that were built by Angelbeck (Wilson; Miller; Angelbeck; Grove, 2013) for the case the indigenous people made to the National Energy Board, following the opening of the consultation process for the construction of an oil pipeline with impacts on one of the Hwlitsum claimed territories, at Canoe Pass, near Ladner, British Columbia. According to Angelbeck (personal communication, 2015) the information for the maps came from field trips where the interviewees pointed out the areas that they clammed or fished, and GPS points and pictures were taken by the anthropologist on the spot. He also used verbal descriptions from the interviewees and had them point on a map where they would fish for dogfish, for example. He later followed-up with the community members in order to address any errors, corrections or additions. Pictures of places and people as well as festivities, cultural manifestations and gatherings in the communities, documents, notes and interviews the community 29 members made related to the research are also in the thesis where it was though they would aid description made. In the appendix, the reader will also find documents and references that support the description of events made in the thesis. The relationship carefully built are based in reciprocity with the quilombo, the neighbourhood, and the people, and that has been very clearly identified by the members on each community. In La Marina I was identified by the neighbourhood as a collaborator, and my role was to aid an on-going process with discussions about ethnic and racial identification, helping put together the information coming out of the interviews and documents researched by community, commenting on research and interview techniques, and aiding debate that led to the strengthening of their perception of their historical consciousness. That differed quite a lot from the role that was given to me in Periperi, where they identified me almost as a consultant; someone they hoped would lay down the objectives, and to fulfill their needs. And these two experiences were yet different then the one I had following up on the struggles of the Hwlitsum indigenous people, where I played a more of a scout role that would bring back and forth important, relevant information, and made meaningful their translation in-between three different worlds. My sentiments about this reciprocal relationship, its obvious advantages and its tricky difficulties, are encapsulated in Cruikshank (1998: 22-23). “Another way of understanding relationships is as reciprocity between providers and dependants. In the past, every group need to maintain a balance between people who were able to provide necessities of life and those who depended on them. […] An elderly woman might spend one winter with other family members. An able-bodied man or woman might join a group temporarily. Both lateral and generational relationships then were characterized by reciprocity”. In every setting both the communities’ expectations and mine took different paths. I also experienced much more than participatory observation through several moments of experience-near anthropology, that is, anthropology that takes indigenous and traditional knowledge serious, bringing their frameworks of understanding to explain issues of daily life and of my own experience (Goulet and Miller, 2007). I did not refraim from engaging in their traditions as a practioner, or from unveiling my own 30 sensorial and telluric experiences shared with them. By applying their framework of understanding to my research experience, I also became more readable, more interpretable to them. That was fundamental for the construction of the relationships with the communities, especially in Brazil and Cuba, where I had more time for fieldwork. In Periperi, my path with the community through their historical consciousness awakening also activated my own perceptions about my own history and culture, as it was rooted to the same tree of theirs. In accessing their historical consciousness I was activating my own, and that was a fundamental connection to the community’s struggle. It particularly made more complex to address racial and ethnic related issues that were otherwise latent under the familiarity of dominant histories. This experience-near form of anthropology has nevertheless contributed to Periperi and I alike for it created common understandings on facing these issues that related to shared histories and traditions. An example was when I went with Seu Antonio, recently deceased leader of the quilombo, to see Chica do Antero, a “benzedeira” that prayed over my head singing “pontos”, stories referenced in Catholic saints, “orishas”, deities of the Yoruban pantheon, and “caboclos”, ancestral spirits that aid the living, following Afro-Brazilian traditions embedded in “candomblé” and “umbanda” religious practices (Prandi, 2002; 2004). The “pontos” led me to a trance that took me to memories of lullabies that were sung to me when I was a child. When I opened my eyes, Seu Antonio was also signing the same lullaby. That created a link for our understanding of how community dealt with Afrodescendant traditions and the members who practiced them in the midst of a highly Catholic driven community. Circumambulating religion, or for that matter any social phenomenon, removing oneself from ritual settings as much as possible, is to preclude the possibility of discovering what one would sense and know from within that setting. This possibility is precisely what experiential anthropologists seek to gain. (Goulet; Miller, 2007:8) In La Marina, the experience-near was a question of proximity and distance. As we shall see ahead, access to economic goods in Cuban society is virtually equalized after more than fifty years of equality-driven policies that came out from the 1959 31 Revolution. More recent economic actualization has, nonetheless, intensified social stratification with the gradual (ever more rapidly) introduction of market-oriented practices. The fact that I was in the country working for the Brazilian diplomatic service put me often at crossroads in relating to the community in regard to their perception of the gap between mine and theirs possibilities of access to economic goods, a recurring theme in the narratives of people living a changing socialist economy. Then again it would be virtually impossible to stay for two years working intensively with the neighbourhood as I did, if I did not have the anchor of the diplomatic service. That status, along with the authorization from the Cuban government to research in the area, also assured me uninterrupted research. On the other hand, it was sometimes troublesome to overcome the confusion that arose now and then in between the roles of researcher and member of the diplomatic service. Membership in the managing group of the neighbourhood, sharing the load of addressing the official institutions, and the active participation in the community’s cultural manifestations and social organization around the African-based traditions allowed me reciprocal experience-near moments that were key to resort on carefully build affiliations that ended up devising most of the confusion generated by my status and economic differences. But it was not until they knew I was affiliated with a “candomblé”6viii house in Brazil that our field of significations started to come together. It made a common understanding of what could and could not be revealed in a community deeply rooted to their spirituality. It reminded me later of what Sonny McHalsie, cultural adviser of the Sto’lo indigenous people in British Columbia, told me about his own experience with anthropologists that researched about his people. Sonny said that if the anthropologist held no faith, even a Catholic one, he could not really 6 “The candomblé - Brazilian religion of the orixás and other African divinities, which developed in Bahia in the XIX century - and the other religious modalities known by the regional denominations of xangô, in Pernambuco, tambor de mina, in Maranhão, and batuque, in Rio Grande do Sul, were, until around the 20th century, a sort of institution of cultural resistance, first of Africans, and after of Afrodescendants, resistance to slavery and to the domination mechanisms of the white and Christian society that marginalized blacks and mixed even after the abolition of slavery” [Translated by the author from the original] (Prandi, 2004: 2). 32 understand his people and the work would not be fruitful for both the anthropologist and the people. With the Hwlitsum, my insertion into their world was facilitated by exchange with several professionals that have long been working with the band, namely Miller and Angelbeck. That allowed me to address right on spot commentary with the leaders of the community, concentrated on the present struggles community is facing. Nevertheless, it was not a fully developed ethnography like the two previous cases. I recognize the weakness of this approach that was to some extent counter-balanced by privileged information from the professionals mentioned, specially the access that was granted to me to the narratives they recorded and the products of their work with the community for over 30 years. The decision to include the Hwlitsum case within the scope of this thesis had to do with the great opportunity for comparison the case makes in relation to the other ethnographies mentioned, following the research design described. That is why the ethnographic background on the Hwlitsum falls short in comparison with the other two cases, but it gains momentum in the comparison itself, as it presents diverse possibilities for addressing the issue of collective identity and the homogenizing, impinging forces that press communities to resist them. The homogenizing forces that were identified in working with these communities in underdog situations are related to a colonial culture that is connected to global and globalizing arrangements of an unidirectional development that offers few combinations to the cultural autonomy envisioned by these communities other than the lower, polluted expected places “official society” relegate them to and the simulation of the respect and recognition of their ethnic and racial differences. This colonial framework of understanding pulses, notwithstanding, through distinct structures of power, in which communities are inserted. In La Marina the impinging force of the present economic actualization, matched against the spoils of the accomplishments of the Revolution, creates a heavy toll on collective identification processes, for it is caught up in the middle of the national struggle for unity. In Periperi, the rise of development projects, considered national and international necessities but which exclude the 33 community, has had significant impact on the community’s collective identification. With the Hwlitsum, transnational economic interests reinforce the common sense views on authenticity that have hurt the process of collective identification of the people and their claims for a territorial base. In all three cases, structures of internal colonialism (González Casanova, 2007) are identified with racism. So, while the three communities are ethnically bound they struggle with racial prejudice. Communities have resisted these impinging forces by means of accommodation, materialized in forms of “acolhimento” in Periperi, by which white families “take care” of dispossessed black families; the “Cubanity” in La Marina, supported by the idea that everyone is equal under the new Cuban ethos; or adopting the struggles of other, more visible, indigenous groups, in the Hwlitsum case. But they have also turned those forms of accommodation into more explicit resistance using “acolhimento” as a platform for their notion of “extended community” and the political use they could make of it, in Periperi; “emulating without deference” (Keesing, 1992) Cubanity’s framework of understanding to preserve their traditional organizations, aiming at a different form of insertion that journalist Tato Quiñones (2014) refers to as a “Cuban thing”, in La Marina; making explicit their historical differences among the larger indigenous group, so as to strengthen their case for collective identification, in the Hwlitsum case. Further, they have resorted to making their struggle visible to outsiders by joining organized protests and closing roads in Periperi; openly contesting the local government in La Marina; and a press-conference demanding title to Stanley Park (the most important public park in Vancouver), in the Hwlitsum case. Their resistance is also manifested in a claim for recognition under a formal juridical instrument, like the certification of the community as quilombola, in Periperi, the recognition of the Hwlitsum people as a band under the Indian Act, and the claim for institutionalization that La Marina has pressed on Cuban government. It is also part of their resistance strategies accessing outside networks as a means to support their struggle with universities, international, national and regional ethnically and racially oriented organizations, hired professionals, and advocacy groups. Communities’ discourses and 34 strategies of resistance have been counter-hegemonic and driven by a need to become unpolluted. Although not having most of the times the force to inflict real, revolutionary change on local and regional society, they are able to shift their social positioning through their struggles. These resistance strategies are based on their resilience in the face of multiple forms of homogenization. Their resilience is materialized in “religious-mythic-political territories” (Sodré, 2008) in which are condensed their traditions. The “abacuá secret society” and the “cabildos” are examples of these territories in La Marina, the historically sustained 220 hectares where Periperi lies today is another, and the claimed territories of Canoe Pass and Kuper Island represent that for the Hwlitsum. The relationship with the nature shapes the landscape around them and is a fundamental source for the resilience of these communities, where family ties of blood and “of saint,” as is said in La Marina, are connected, cultural manifestations are produced, and historical consciousness are awakened and transformed. From this resilient source, communities build their present struggles, related to collective identification, recognition by the state, depollution in society, accessing rights to hunt and fish, and becoming autonomous managers of public services. Within these different struggles to change history they are pushed to rewrite their histories. In rewriting their histories, they have invariably to face their own internal issues regarding authenticity and membership, as in the case with the Hwlitsum, racial differences and past disputes for community’s leadership, in Periperi, internal differences and disputes and frustrated communitarian previous experiences, in La Marina. It is a constant process of affirming and denying their identity against odds that are not often in their favour. Chapter one deals with the conditions for my arrival in Periperi, my encounter with Bispo, one of the leaders of the quilombola movement in the Brazilian state of Piauí, and my involvement with the quilombola issue. Periperi is one of the quilombola communities in the state, which is being impacted by the development projects that are exploding in Piauí, following the avenues opened by the Program for Growth 35 Acceleration (PAC), coordinated by the Brazilian Federal Government. Widely and historically known as the most backward state in the country, Piauí is experiencing nowadays an environment that has features of the developmentist drive that contaminated the country back in the 1950’s. Communities are most often in the way, if they get a chance to be seen before they are stepped at. Quilombos represent “new collective identities”, “new social movements”, in Almeida’s (2008: 18) terms, in Brazil. Connected historically, ancestrally, and economically, culturally to their territories, they are from where quilombos have drawn their political organization. Their struggle for the recognition and maintenance of their territories is also the main aim of their opposition. Resisting that opposition by everyday forms has aided their struggles to change their social positioning. The second chapter opens up a discussion about authenticity as it relates to the claims communities push forward while becoming aware of their collective identification. The example of the quilombo of Mimbó, which lies in the same municipality of Periperi, and holds a certification by the State as a quilombo, illustrates how authenticity claims can suffocate and override other self-identification processes. Those authenticity claims are built within oppositions in between civilized/primitive, organized/non-organized, and fit/non-fit, in relation to the parameters “official society” preconizes and reinforces. Other examples from the Hwlitsum and their struggle for recognition amid several economic and social interests from the Canadian government as well as those of other bands in the region; or from La Marina, where adherence to the parameters of authenticity established by “official society” is used to channel resources away from the community, are depicted to show that there are other factors working along with these authenticity constructs than the alleged novelty of the communities’ self-identification. Communities are trying to get rid of the stereotypes, which are constructed by these authenticity claims, though sometimes they are forced to assimilate them in between the spaces that are allowed by “official society” for their economic, social, and cultural reproduction. The State also encapsulates communities under legal definitions 36 of what a people are that make it difficult for them to be a people. Images of the “dead Indian”, the “dead quilombola” and the “dead marinero”, referring to these historically atomized and prejudice driven stereotypes, are still part of the authenticity discourse. Chapter three unravels the connections between a foreseen power complex development project to be implemented in the Parnaíba River, which boards the quilombola community of Periperi, and the history of implementation of the previous development projects in the region, such as the Boa Esperança dam. The logics of the national developmentist drive begging in the 1950’s, to which the construction of the Boa Esperança dam was part of, still reverberates in the newer plans for the implementation of the power complex. Ideas of “economic redemption” through development projects, implemented at all costs, are impressed in the activities of the joint venture that is hoping to approve construction of five dams in the course of the river, two of them, Estreito and Castelhano, with impacts to Periperi. The contacts between the joint venture and the population to be impacted by the dams were informal and brought more disinformation than clarity to both communities and the entrepreneurs alike. Communities were forced into immobility by the fear generated by the speculation around these crumbles of information. The added impact of these two dams composed with the installed effects of the Boa Esperança power plant, were not stated. The resulting assessment was overall in a bad shape, creating an environment of distrust and fear inside the communities to be impacted. The quick acquiescence of local politicians, government employees, and elected officials to the discourse about the alleged benefits of the dams concreted a perception that the development project was going to be a non-participatory, top-down imposition. The process that in some cases could virtually extinguish communities alongside the Parnaíba River, has turned out in some cases to be a booster for the self-identification quilombola process. This was the case with Riacho dos Negros, another black community in the region that faces the possibility of being flooded by the dams, and most recently with Periperi. Communities could see for the first time that “the quilombola thing” was for real. And being “for real” meant that being quilombola 37 generated distinct rights. And being quilombola could press the joint venture and official authorities to address communities identified as such, thus generating a distinct exchange currency in the midst of the struggle. The “transition period” (Peluso; Watts, 2001) to which Periperi was forced to by this disinformation game and the fear it created has pushed the community into a “transition moment”, in which “conditions of possibility” were reorganized, turning Periperi into a “unit of mobilization” (Almeida, 2008; 2011) around their collective identification as quilombola. It remains uncertain if these “conditions of possibility”, created within this “transition period”, will grow to have a life of their own or if there is a dependence between them, which might lead to a gradual drifting away from the self-identification process along with the subsiding of the conditions that provoked the “transition period” itself, in spite of the formal-juridical instrument achieved, as Periperi was granted the quilombola certification by the State this year. The question is how the community will embrace those conditions and move into organized or “everyday forms of resistance”, and the strategies used to engineer this action. In chapter four, a common field of significations is revealed between Bispo’s reading of the agrarian struggle in the state and the individual, family and communitarian belongings members of Periperi hold to their participation on the movement and institutions related to the rural workers in the region. That allowed for shared identities and a common framework of understanding around the class struggle that were the base for addressing the quilombola issue. This base was fundamental for laying out the objectives of the research from the community’s standpoint. But it was also something that community had to face in order to encounter new signifiers for their present struggle around the quilombola identification. From our shared understandings of the identities spun from this common ground, I was able to construct my insertion in their realities. We were able to discuss the place of Periperi within the local and regional arrangements of power; their multiple histories in relation to the dominant version available; the community’s relation to the state operating logics; the everyday forms of resistance weaved from their traditions; 38 the relation between individual assumed identities and the present quilombola struggle; and the role of women’s narratives in addressing unsettled disputes, and “hidden transcripts” in the community. Features of these exchanges were the state’s “vaqueiro” myth, and how it relates to images of tradition and modernity that inform identity building in the community; how slavery was tainted with in the state, relativizing Piauí in the midst of the Brazilian colonial slavery society, as a land of “freer” enslaved which allowed for looser social mobility, and the its effect in the racial representations in the present; the logic of “acolhimento”, and its role in subduing blacks in the region and usurping their territories; how Periperi was able to maintain their territory amid such conditions and framing relations with other surrounding communities and the “official society” – the “extended community” logic. Chapter five explores the trajectory of black and quilombola communities in relation to the quilombola movement in the state of Piauí as well as the national quilombola movement and representation. Incompatibilities between the rural class struggle framework and the specificities of the quilombola agenda had to be faced by communities and the quilombola movement alike in addressing the multiple identities spun from colonial-driven contexts. Other issues arisen in the midst of the constitution of the quilombola movement are important for the collective identification in process in Periperi, such as the representative role of both national and state’s movements in relation to the quilombola communities and the issue about recognizing collective cultural territorialities and titling collective territories. Those are issues that intimately connected to how Periperi relates to their communitarian organization and how families in the community have organized around the territory. Through Periperi’s Association of Community Development, community was able to catalyze a number of local development initiatives that boosted Periperi to a singular position in the region. That role within these projects produced “conditions of possibility” for mobilization around the Communitarian Association. However, due to the biased nature of the project’s elaboration and implementation, along with the inability within the community to manage them, community organization suffered a 39 blow that it has been struggling to recover. Forced by a “transition period” in which community entered following the potential implementation of two dams in the course of the river that boards their territory, they are reorganizing their “conditions of possibility” towards becoming once more a “unit of mobilization”. In this process, they are inevitably facing different histories about themselves and their relation to the outside, assessing the role of community leadership; the collective use of their territory; the present and past identities within the community, in relation to their immediate neighbors, to their extended community, and to the “official society”. Features of this process are reencountering old grudges in relation to the participation of community members in the aforementioned local development projects; facing the internal prejudice they hold to each other and their relation to outsiders and within the extended community; reordering leadership within the community; coming to terms with the issues of identification and forms of occupation of their territory the recent quilombola certification has stirred up; reassessing their extended community logics to aggregate new territory, reshape relationship with their white identified neighbors, and make a new pact with the other black communities within the extended community. In addressing those issues and mobilizing around them, community has placed itself in an underdog situation in relation to the “official society”, but also within their extended community. The recent certification of Periperi as a quilombo, though they are still coping with the issues arisen by this process, forces a rearrangement of the local and regional status quo, as, differently from Mimbó, Periperi has always been active in participating and building the extend community around them. Conditions that coax communities into underdog situations, as different as they are, can be, nevertheless, identified in different contexts throughout the continent. Throughout colonial, republican and Revolution periods, racialized relations of power have endured in Cuba, which produced distinct identities and forms of connection with the territory. Focused on the connections made within the narratives of members of a black Cuban neighbourhood, La Marina, in Matanzas, chapter six explores the 40 representations within the national society that inform the field of significations from which community constructs their idea of neighbourhood, their history, their culture, their collective identification, and the several historical consciousnesses that are being activated within the present struggle for institutionalization. The narratives in La Marina were so impregnated with connections to the epitomizing moments the country has gone through that it would be even reckless to address the present community’s struggles without understanding the exquisite national setting in which it is inserted. However, I do stress that a thorough assessment of the Cuban context and its differentiated position in the continent was not the objective of this chapter, let alone this thesis – it would maybe require several thesis to grasp a small part of it. Nevertheless, the aim of the chapter is to highlight and give references to enrich the perception about the uniqueness and similitude of the single self-proclaimed socialist country with other contexts within the continent and in relation to the struggles of a community in an underdog situation. Building on these grounds, I thought the racial representations conveyed in television, the most widespread means of communication in the Island, which has conferred lower social positioning images and roles to blacks and mixed, were a good start to approximate to the racialized context that was addressed by members of the neighbour in their narratives. It also made sense to compare these representations to those of another country in the Americas in which racialized relations are part of the everyday life and are inevitably exposed on television –Brazil – considering that there is a wealth of Brazilian shows in the Cuban media. Blacks and mixed are depicted in Cuban and Brazilian television in lower and undesirable roles. Mass media industries in both countries have been criticized on account of these stereotyped representations by individuals and anti-racist collectives, to which they have responded with the assignment of differentiated yet still falling into the same trap, roles for blacks and mixed. They fall into the same trap because the roles that depict black and mixed (especially the mixed), the “mulatos”, as relatively successful characters in the plots, reinforce their disconnection to their communities of origin, and their 41 assimilation into the white man’s world. They play a servile role, often desiring to move up in life at any cost, hiding their impure origin, and serving the necessities of black control in society. In Brazil, where data has been collected over two decades about racial inequalities in the country (Osório, 2015), it could be verified that these representations find resonance in society. And it is when black people fight for a higher unexpected social position that racism operates more intensively. Such is the case with communities that are in underdog situations. Racial issues are a key component to understanding social dynamics in La Marina, not only because of the predominant phenotype in the neighbourhood, but also because of how black Cubans are seen in society, tinted by embedded images produced towards the neighbourhood drawing from the history connected to the sugarcane slavery plantation and the marginalization of the port activities. The issue of racism and racial discrimination represents a “system of exclusion” (Foucault, 2006 [1971]) that has allowed for racism to persevere in a country that has implemented more than 50 years of continuous equality-oriented policies. The ethnography in La Marina allowed for an understanding of how this “system of exclusion” operates in the neighbourhood. It is not by chance that much of the social positioning of those living in La Marina coincides with the stereotypes identified in Brazilian and Cuban television. The neighbourhood’s attempt to occupy unexpected social positioning leads to the intensification of prejudice, which targets the ones who are prejudiced with claims that they are disrupting the national unit. In the name of unit, a process of indistinct, rapid and thorough exposure to the world’s literature and thought, which characterized the early years of the Revolution (De la Fuente, 2014), was vertically substituted by dogmatism caused by the necessary alignment with the socialist field and the defense of a national identity that could not find contestants, in a scenario of full fledged opposition to the United States. It imposed a culture of control that materialized in the repression of both the racial agenda and the emergence of self-identification process. The years of economic degradation have 42 corrupted solidarity ties amalgamated in the national ethos, and intensified claims for self-identification as well as racial discrimination in the Island. Under the process of “economic actualization” that the country is going through, social stratification is increasing, following the State’s acquiescence to the reestablishment of “business as usual” relations, augmenting tension within society, which carry an specific racial impact. Those are elements that explode in the narratives of members of La Marina, connected to their relation with tourism, the economic opportunities in the community, their access to public policies and resources, all related to their possibilities to access the “institutionalidad”, or the established political bodies and their delegates. On the other hand, narratives also relate to the changes the country is going through and the spaces not opened for blacks in the scope of the social-economical relationships that remain uncheck by the government, such as the “pela isquierda”, the parallel market; and the “divisa” economy, where CUC currency equivalent to the American dollar flows, in contrast with the CUP currency used in government pall rolls and official regulated markets for Cubans (1USD = 1 CUC = 24 CUP). These are issues addressed by what Souza (2015) denominated “anti-racist collectives” in the Island. The aim of chapter seven is to depict the relationship between the agenda of these several collectives with the struggles that are being undertaken on territories, such as La Marina’s. They have a role of what I called “mediating mobilizations” to communities, exchanging their anti-racist agenda with them and feeding on their struggles to support the claims they forward in Cuban society. Souza (2015) classifies three universes in which these collective make their way through Cuban society. The “official civil society”, characterized by organizations that were fundamental for the Revolution in forming and diffusing its creed; the “recognized social anti-racist collectives”, which deal specifically with the situation of exclusion and racial inequality, and are composed of activists who identify with the Revolution, but also acknowledge barriers for the discussion of racial issues; and the “anti-racist dissident civil society”, which have a much broader critique of the State, in opposition to the 43 socialist regime. The first and the second categories of “anti-racist collectives” operate within the universe of La Marina and constitute a living presence in the neighbourhood organizing the way public policies are delivered, advertising and reinforcing the agenda of the State, in the first case, and interacting with the neighbourhood in the discussion of racial issues, in the latter. Therefore both racial issues and ethnic identification play a role in the organization of the struggle La Marina is undertaking. Wade (1997) states that, particularly in the context of the Americas, racial identifications lie within the physical differences that “have converted into object of ideological manipulation in the course of the colonial occidental expansion” (Wade, 1997: 17). On the other hand, ethnic identifications are related to cultural differences, often connected to the sense of belonging to a place. This form of ethnic belonging has allowed for other forms of organization of black societies in Cuba, forged under historic traditions of resistance to the colonial rule and the systematically subduing of blacks in the country that has reached the present day. They are connected with the racial debate, but operate in ways that go beneath the State's radar. Differently from the categories described by Souza (2015), their identity is multi-situated in racial identification, related to the physical marks of the black predominance of its members, and in ethnic identification, related to their connection to their base territory. They do not seek to occupy the role of the latter “mediating mobilizations”, because they are deeply rooted within their own locality as platforms for communitarian organization. Their organization reaches the universe of the “mediating mobilizations”, regardless, as they are connected to a growing racial consciousness through the experiences brought to the community by these “mediators”, but also being themselves whom the collective “mediators” seek to support their own agenda. Among the several black mutual aid and help societies that have been organized since the colonial period in Cuba, the “sociedad secreta abacuá” [abacuá secret society] and the “cabildos”, as we shall see ahead, stand as long lasting organizations rooted deeply in the history and traditions of the African enslaved brought to the country and 44 their descendants. Along with the cultural manifestations, arisen from the communitarian organizational loci, they are also the foundational organization for the current struggle in La Marina. A singular feature is that these organizations are still present both in the imagery and as loci for collective mobilization, either for mutual aid and help or around the discussion of racial and ethnic related issues. They are also “religious-mythic-political” territories from which communities have organized their struggles, resisting or accommodating impinging forces, making it possible for them to activate historical consciousnesses that have allowed them to construct their counter-hegemonic narratives. Their tradition of resistance, supported on the networks weaved in these territories, has made them resilient (Miller, 2003) and not trasculturated (Ortiz, 1963) among the Cuban ethos, reduced to a cultural trait, robbed of their ethnic consciousness and identity. The narratives in La Marina dispute the concept of transculturation widely accepted in the Cuban society, connecting their “religious-mythic-political” territories with the representations they make of territories of origin in Africa. If they were transculturated they would not have anywhere to draw from to construct their strategies of resistance and their social-political organization other than Cuban ethos itself. Chapter eight explores the way La Marina has organized their struggles more recently in communitarian projects to address their immediate claims, but also their lower social positioning, and the racial and ethnic content it is embedded with. I discuss the role of two of these communitarian projects that are present in the narratives of the neighbourhood. The previous Socio Cultural Project was aimed at addressing the neighbourhood’s problems regarding the valorization of culture, sport and leisure activities, alternatives for economic income, and the amelioration of the condition of the houses and other communitarian sites, through communitarian participatory work along with local institutions, mostly governmental. Some of the expectations the inhabitants had towards the project could not be delivered and it created a general disbelief in communitarian projects, building up on specific complaints about the role 45 government institutions played in the project, namely the Municipal and Provincial Directions of Culture, as well as the role of their own leaders in negotiating the intervention with the outsiders. By addressing issues arisen by the community related to how the city perceived the neighbourhood, its culture and traditions, as well as its black majoritarian composition, the project inevitably came about the realities that both these local institutions that were involved as well as the community were not prepared to address, in between resisting and accommodating to what the establishment was being offering to the neighbourhood, materialized in the project’s activities. The Socio Cultural Project catalyzed a huge amount of demands that were repressed after years of neglect by authorities and local society and did not have the structure, the resources, or the means to address them. These demands had to do with changing prejudice images about the neighbourhood, revealing difficulties both government and community encountered in dialoguing under the sign of institutionalization and in promoting communitarian involvement and mobilization. Even though being coordinators of the project, none of the community members seemed to be qualified to address the “institucionalidad”, which preferred to continue talking to the neighbourhood through outside delegates. These are challenges that linger in the present project “Identity and Neighbourhood Marina”, which aims at contributing to strengthening identity in the neighbourhood by addressing its historical, social, cultural and economic traditions and practices. Through participation as a collaborator in this project I constructed my insertion within the struggles of the neighbourhood, dealing with the oral histories and traditions Vansina (1985) that dispute the dominant version available, and the prejudiced images local “official society” presses on the community. The development of the project revealed community’s desire to dwell around historical consciousness issues and re-write their history, asserting it in and against the dominant version available, connecting it to the present struggles community is facing and to the strategies of resistance it has been undertaking so as to change their social positioning as a group in Matanzas. 46 Building on the results of the research conduced within the scope of the project, we are able to visualize different extended community logics at work centered in La Marina, through unveiling the neighbourhood’s relationship with other black neighbourhoods in the city, amid the different histories that both challenge and accommodate to the constructs propelled by “official society”. Chapter nine deals with cultural manifestations in the city which stage these different histories, revealing a network of class, blood and “of saint” ties among the black neighbourhoods of Matanzas - La Marina, Simpson, and Pueblo Nuevo - that connect to the La Marina’s present perception of their extended community. The interaction of this perception of extended community with other city’s spaces, people, and identities restage historically built separations of class and latter ethnicity and more recently, following the “economic actualization”, renewed race discrimination, as it could not be fully addressed during the years of the Revolution. But these interactions are also a testimony of how their resilience operates making it difficult to construct the neighbourhood’s narratives under accommodating roles. The historical consciousness within La Marina is activated building on narratives of resistance. The narratives irradiate their tradition of resistance in the organization of the community and cultural manifestations, which become the material and immaterial products of this resilience, slowly, intensively, and insistently impregnated into their culture. The way that they are accessing this historical consciousness now and materializing in their struggle for institutionalization has on these cultural manifestations forms of visualizing their struggles and bringing cohesion and awareness about their traditions to the neighbourhood, to their extended community, and to the “official society”. Historical consciousness is also present and manifested in different forms within the relations members of the community have in between them, in their family nucleus, and also in the signifiers they endow their territory with. I begin chapter ten addressing those different historical consciousnesses from the “narrative compositions” (Azevedo, 2013) drawings the neighbourhood’s children made of their community. These spatial 47 and visual connections that they made through their drawings link back to the several historical consciousnesses of the neighbourhood, how the neighbourhood came to be, how it has resisted over the years, and how it identifies in the present. The kids expressed with their drawings not only features of the neighbourhood, but also what they wish their neighbourhood was like, and how they experience it. That made ground for the connection of their experience with the spatial image of the neighbourhood, produced by the identification of their inhabitants with their territory – the “papa fría” [cold potato]; the “papa tíbia” [warm potato]; the “papa floja” [loose potato]; and the “papa caliente” [hot potato]. The “papa fría” is where identification with being “marinero” is feeble, and people are trying to disconnect themselves with the neighbourhood and the stereotypes it carries; the ”papa tíbia”, referring to the part of the neighbourhood where people identify with participating only mainly in the occasions when cultural manifestations are being performed in the streets; the “papa floja”, inside the neighbourhood, where people could shift their identification according to their best case scenario of allegiance; and the “papa caliente”, where there was nowhere to run from their identity as “marineros”. These spatial images also relate to their present struggle as the “papa fría” easily draws their non-belongings to the stigmatization that has relegated members of the neighbourhood to lower social positioning. In the “papa tibia” remain the shortcomings in their resistance strategies in creating community’s cohesion amid such strong impinging forces that have drawn members away from identifying fully as “marineros”. In the “papa floja” lie the present expectations around the history that is being re-written, as well as the accomplishments and challenges in facing “official society” and their own histories. Within the “papa caliente”, their traditions are sedimented in their historical consciousness in order to build their collective identity, aimed at shifting their social positioning. The “papa fría”, the “papa tíbia”, the “papa” floja” and the “papa caliente” should not be though as stationary but rather fluctuating spatial signifiers in the neighbourhood. They are interesting as representations of the different historical 48 consciousness present in the neighbourhood, and how and when they are activated or not. They are fluctuating because of new fields of significations that have been opened up by epitomizing events, such as the “economic actualization”, presently, or the Revolution in the recent past, or the frameworks of understanding propelled by dictators in the republican period, or the ancient colonial rulings. These fluctuating signifiers have also been pushed by the situation community has assumed for itself. They draw this situation from a tradition of resistance, condensed, re-territorialised in “religious-mythic-political” territories. In these territories several levels of historical consciousness are activated. They are the triggers for collective mobilization in La Marina, but this is also true for Periperi or the Hwlitsum, as we have seen. 49 Chapter 1 - The Quilombola Bishop I met Bispo at the meeting room of the Palmares Cultural Foundation (FCP), second floor of the high-tech Park Cidade Building, where the foundation headquarters was situated in 2012. Unlike what was going on at the offices of the other tenants, though wrapped ever sumptuously, the installations of the Palmares were staged to manifest discussions and themes related to the Afro-Brazilian culture, the foundation’s mission in the governmental sphere. That afternoon, the theme was the 169th International Labour Organization Convention (ILO)7, and the reality that quilombos all over the country face threats to their territories. My friend Givania, herself quilombola from the state of Pernambuco, and leader of the national quilombola movement, had spoken about Bispo months before when I had sought her to exchange ideas about this PhD thesis and inform her of my intention to follow ahead with the research about themes related to the traditional populations and national developments, now from a compared perspective. I came in late to the event, running, as I tried to recap my thoughts on the theme on which I would speak momentarily. “The caravels arrived 500 years late in Piauí, and they came in boats labeled PAC8”. Even though I only overheard this through the babbling of the usual suspects, its impact on me was of a thousand tons. I had never realized before that I was hit by a type of man no more than a meter and a half tall, with 7 The 169th International Labour Organization Convention is a legally binding international instrument open to ratification, which deals specifically with the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples. Today, it has been ratified by 20 countries, which include Brazil, but not Canada nor Cuba. http://www.ilo.org/indigenous/Conventions/no169/lang--en/index.htm, 03.09.15 8 “Created in 2007, in the second mandate of President Lula (2007-2010), the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) promoted the resumption of the planning and execution of large social, urban, logistic and power infrastructure in the country, contributing to its accelerated and sustainable growth. […] In 2011, the PAC entered its second stage, lingering to the same strategic thought, updated by the years of experience from the anterior stage, with more resources, more partnerships with states and municipalities, for the execution of structuring development projects, which could enhance the quality of life in the Brazilian cities”. http://www.pac.gov.br/sobre-o-pac, accessed in 12.03.15. 50 a face as round as the moon, barely needing a shave, with hard working hands and soft talk, nonetheless, firm. At the end of the seminar, I found out that man was Bispo, and I tried the full course with him. I presented myself, talked about my idea for the research, about my previous experience with the quilombo of Santana (Brasil, 2014), made our shared connections with Piauí visible as my family is from the state, and made a positive allusion to his commentary about the PAC and its impact in several municipalities in Piauí. But for what reason really? He was Bispo, the “Bishop”, and, at the moment, he was preaching outside his parish. His public was not the already converted. He came there to collect souls, not to touch base on refried beans recipes. I received a sonorous “tamo junto! [we are together!]”, and “the day you want to show up there [in Piauí]...just come!” but it wasn’t until March of the following year that we would talk again. My ideas had not yet become solidified when I ran into a copy of a book that Palmares Cultural Foundation was about to publish, by an author uknown to me named Antonio Bispo dos Santos. I devoured the 80 some pages of “Colonização, Quilombolas: modos e significações” (Dos Santos, 2015). Amid the “confluências” [confluences], “transfluências” [transfluences], and other “bio-interações” [bio-interactions] provoked by the book, I ran to the telephone to try to consult with Bispo, once again. I later discovered that the concepts of confluences, transfluences and bio-interactions that Bispo worked into his book, would be key to understanding the construction of identity in the state, and could serve as very interesting parameters for the self-identification process of communities in an underdog condition throughout the continent. We will come back to that in a bit. Confluência [confluence] is the law, which governs the interaction among the elements of nature and teaches us that not everything that comes together, mixes, that is, nothing is equal. […] Transfluência [transfluence] is the law that governs the relations of transformation of the elements of nature, and teaches us that not everything that mixes, comes together. […] It is by these laws that the great debates between reality and appearance are generated, that is, between what is organic and what is synthetic. [Translated by the author from the original] (Dos Santos, 2015: 81).ix 51 In opposition to the dammed weariness to which Adam was condemned by the biblical God, here [in the quilombo], what is lived is the pleasurable communion of the biointeração [bio-interaction]. […] Therefore, we could conclude that the best way to store the fish is in the water, where they will keep on growing and reproducing. And the best way to store the products of all o four productive expressions is distributing among the neighbors, that is, as everything we do is a product of organic energy, the product has to be reintegrated to that same energy. [Translated by the author from the originalx] (Dos Santos, 2015: 76-77). It wasn’t in the first, neither in the second, nor in third day that I could get hold of him. After some two weeks of insisting and frequent tries, I could hear a distant voice from the other side of the line that said to me: “Salve!” [Hail!]. I went down the same path as when we had met before, with the usual presentations. Bispo listened carefully, expressing a restrained interjection here and there. Towards the end of the conversation, and to my astonishment, he summoned me to come to Piauí. The propitious moment presented itself in the Integrated Seminar of the Brasil Quilombola Program (PBQ)9, in May 28th, 2013. “PAC is the biggest destroyer of quilombola organizations in Piauí”, declared Nego Bispo, opening the discussion between a circle of quilombolas from the states of Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, Paraíba e Ceará, as well as government officials, university professors, specialists from civil society, and other interested people who were present that sweltering afternoon. Everyone was squeezed against one another inside that meeting room in the Luxor Executive Hotel in Teresina, the state’s capital. Everyone knew Nego Bispo, some fondly, others respectfully, others cautiously, yet they all called him Nego Bispo. Soon impressions from the other people from Piauí stirred up discussions ranging from the conflicts of the quilombola self-identification process and the interests of the agribusiness in the community of Arthur Passos, municipality of Floriano; to the 9 The Brasil Quilombola Program was launched in March 12th, 2004, aiming at consolidating public policies for quilombola areas. With its development the Social Quilombola Agenda was instituted by Decree 6.261/2007, which groups actions related to these communities in four axis, access to land, infrastructure and quality of life, productive inclusion and local development, and rights and citizenship. http://www.seppir.gov.br/comunidades-tradicionais/programa-brasil-quilombola, 3.9.15. 52 implementation of a wind power plant, in quilombola community of Sumidouro, municipality of Queimada Nova; to the stripping of the quilombola community of Contente, municipality of Paulistana, by the transnordestina railroad; and to the five power plants Castelhano, Estreito, Cachoeira, Uruçuí, Ribeiro Gonçalves, foreseen to be constructed on the Parnaíba river, which would impact communities in the municipalities of Ribeiro Gonçalves, Floriano, Uruçuí, Palmerais e Amarante. The last two were communities I would get to know in a few months, Riacho dos Negros and Periperi. All of the development projects discussed were in one way or the other connected with the PAC. In that same year, Nego Bispo had published a book where he addressed the consequences of this scenario on the quilombola communities of the state. The Project of construction of five dams of multiple use (electricity generation and water reserve) in the River Parnaíba will serve as base for the integration of megaprojects of mineral exploitation and of expansion of the monoculture irrigated agriculture frontier. According to the state government, the construction of these dams could transform more than half of the Parnaíba River into one sole lake, flooding the territories of innumerous traditional riverside communities, such as: quilombolas, quebradeiras de coco [babassu nut brakers], traditional fishermen, vazanteiros [small farmers that plant of the riverside], etc. Construction of the Transnordestina Railroad, which, articulated with the dams, will add to the base of integration, which will change the geography of the Caatinga, that is, the Semiarid of Piauí. As in this region traditional population lives off the extractives, off the sheep-raising culture, off the goat-raising culture, and off the raising of other animals in the extensive system, that is, free in the pasture (for in this region the pasture and forests are for collective use, precisely because the traditional populations, wisely, have no difficulty to recognize that the natural resources belong to all), and considering that the Transnordestina will be no more than a railroad at the exclusive service of the agribusiness, which will function as a type of fence, which will divide the Semiarid in half, making it impossible in many places to continue the extensive care of the animals, because of the risk associated with accident generated by eventual collisions of animals and railroad coaches, one could have a small idea of how much the expropriation way will wreck the ways of life and collective practices of one of the most beautiful peoples and one of the most beautiful cultures of humanity. From then on, we can imagine what could happen with all the megaprojects of expropriation that the colonizer wants to impose, without any sort of debate or deeper thought about the severe and irreversible consequences. [Translated by the author from the originalxi] (Dos Santos, 2015: 66-67) On the last day of the Seminar, in the midst of the discussion of these themes, three people were presented to me by Bispo in a very distinct way. When we went to lunch, Bispo pointed out on the other side of the dining room, a man in a white Brazilian North-eastern cowboy hat worn over a ragged pair of jeans and a white button shirt, 53 opened half way down the black elder's chest. Thin and slim, he spoke in a most reserved manner with other quilombolas from different states. His overlooking eye would follow me from then on. On the way out of the dining room, full of a surprisingly delicious “panelada”10 made with white beans, but still thrilled by the stimulating conversation, we ran into Nilda, a young leader of the community of Periperi, situated within the municipality of Amarante. She was pacing around the hall of the hotel in search of a cellphone she could borrow in order to communicate with the community. Seu Antônio, whom I would not meet there, had sent a message for her to call him at their community. At that point, over the empty plates once filled with that delicious “panelada” previously mentioned, Bispo and I spoke about the plans for the research we envisioned for Piauí. It was clear to me that for Bispo it was imperative that the research would support the on-going self-identification process in the state, which he thought to be backward in comparison to the national average. The issues with the implementation of several development projects in the state, and their significant impact on the communities were also on his mind. The quilombola communities auto-define through their relations with land, territory, kinship, ancestry, traditions embedded in the notions of belonging, and the quilombos very own cultural practices, also with a presumption of black ancestry, according to a singular temporal process, that does not bind them to the slave period. The present struggle for recognition involves more than 3,000 communities which are located in almost every corner of the national territory, as depicted in Figure 2. 10 According to Luís da Câmara Cascudo (1983) panelada is “a dish prepared with the intestines, the feet, and certain insides of the cow, along with bacon, sausage or blood quenched sausage, and conveniently seasoned. It is a dish adequate for lunch, and served with ‘pirão escaldado’, made from the respective boiling broth, with manioc flour”. 54 Figure 2 – Quilombola communities certified by municipality in Brazil Source: Secretariat for the Promotion of Policies of Racial Equality (SEPPIR/PR) Date: March, 2013 55 Being on the fringe of social, ideological, and economic rupture with the status quo, the quilombolas have never had their territorial rights fully recognized, which is the basis for the fruition of all their social, economic and cultural rights. As it can be seen in Figure 2, the struggle of the quilombolas does not end in the colonial and imperial period. It recurs in the imagination of Brazilian society, who are frightened by new data about the black rural contingent in their country who have been historically excluded, even from the statistics. The approval by the National Congress of the inclusion of Article 68, in the Act of Transitory Constitutional Dispositions of the Constitution, recognizing the right to land reminiscent of the quilombola communities, who are "occupying their lands, obliging the State to issue them their respective titles" (BRASIL, Federal Constitution, 1988, Art. 68), was certainly fruit of the struggle of the black movement, rural and urban. However, the overwhelming majority of the constituents probably did not have a clue about the dimension of the debt to the quilombola communities, and of the challenge for Brazilian society, imprisoned by the imagined stereotype associated with the Quilombo of Palmares11 and its specificity, frozen and atomized in time and space (Almeida, 2002). Since then, a lot has been discussed about quilombos and their concept, their fundamental characteristics, their territoriality and temporality. If on the one hand, some investigations, perceptions, and positions aimed towards the characterization and qualification of the quilombo (Rinaldi, 1979; Almeida, 1989; Leite, 1990; Bandeira, 1988; Arruti, 2006; and Costa, 1999), others moved into reinforcing stereotypes, restriction, and tutelage (Maggie, 2006; Barretto, 2007; Magnólio, 2009). The roots of the conservative line go deep into the perpetuation of the Freyreian thesis of racial democracy (Freyre, 1933), which gains speed right along with the incipient assumption 11 The Quilombo dos Palmares, free community originally formed by African enslaved that escaped from the plantations, and incorporated dispossessed indigenous peoples and other populations, was located in the region of the Serra da Barriga, which is presently part of the municipality of União dos Palmares, in the state of Alagoas. 56 of rights, promoted by the Constitution with Article 68, and is very much alive and kicking today. Land, Thomas King (2012: 218) stated, “if you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land”. And it has not been different down South for quilombola communities. The communities reminiscent of quilombos enter the public agenda in a new perspective of guaranteed rights with Article 68, which grants them the right to land. It is not a surprise then that land is also the heart of the contrary claims to the effectuation of the quilombola rights. Almeida (2005) emphasizes that, from this moment, the State establishes a new juridical relation with these populations, assimilated before as minorities in the core of the nation, based on the recognition of their cultural and ethnic diversity. Article 68, for the anthropologist, inserts “a new modality of formal appropriation of land to social groups as the quilombolas, based on a right to definitive property, not anymore disciplined by guardianship, as it happens with the Indigenous peoples [in Brazil]”. [Translated by the author from the originalxii] (Almeida, 2005: 15). After Article 68, other legislations came to establish the concept of quilombo and set ground for public policies for these communities. These include the Portaria of National Colonization and Agrarian Reform Institute (INCRA) 307, of November 1995, pushing through the Decrees 3912, of September 10th, 2001, and 4887, of November 20th, 2003, until the Instrução Normativa of the INCRA 57, of 2009. One of the most encompassing definitions of what would be the concept of quilombo, later approved by the Brazilian Association of Anthropology (ABA), was articulated by O’Dwyer (1995): Quilombo does not refer to residues of archaeological reminiscences of temporal occupation or of biological proof. It also does not relate to isolated groups of population strictly homogeneous. They were not always constituted from insurrectional or rebellious movements. They are above all groups who develop their daily resistance practices related to the maintenance and reproduction of specific life ways and to the consolidation of their own territory. The identity of these groups is not defined by size or number of members, but for its lived experiences and shared versions of its common trajectory and continuity as a group. They are constituted by ethnic groups conceptualized by anthropology as an 57 organizational type, which grants them a sense of belonging through norms and means of affiliation or exclusion. [Translated by the author from the originalxiii] (O’Dwyer, 1995: 1). It is interesting to observe that the elements in O’Dwyer, which characterize the concept of quilombo by denying it, can be related to some of the potential motivations for the construction of the legal frame around the quilombola issue. The Portaria 307 did not specify proceedings for the characterization of the communities or for its titling. It does not shed light on who is entitled to the titling or who the “special quilombola projects” that the Portaria foresees would be aimed at. The instrument is clearly connected with the stereotype of the quilombo of Palmares. The Portaria is a null regulation since, according to the Brazilian legislature, a Portaria cannot regulate a constitutional disposition. The Decree 3912 determined that only the “land, which were occupied by quilombos in the year 1888 [year of the abolition of slavery in Brazil]” and “occupied by reminiscent of quilombo communities in October 5th, 1988” would be contemplated under Article 68. It was necessary to overcome the archaeology of Portaria 307, and the temporal restrictions of Decree 3912, to arrive on the process of definition of who are the quilombola communities and on the elements that constitute their territory, with the implementation of Decree 4887, of November 20th, 2003. Communities reminiscent of quilombos are considered as ethnic-racial groups, according to self-identification criteria, with historical trajectory of their own, endowed with specific territorial relations, with a presumption of a black ancestry related to resistance to a historical suffered oppression.xiv [Translated by the author from the original]. Decree 4887/2003. This definition contemplates the elements that positively characterize the quilombos, in O’Dwyer: of identity, “singular historic trajectory”, of resistance, “related to the resistance to the historic suffered oppression”, and of territory, “embedded in specific territorial relations”. This last element in the text of the mentioned Decree takes the form of ”occupied lands by reminiscent quilombola communities, used for the guarantee of their physical, social, economic and cultural reproduction”, articulating all the other elements brought about by O’Dwyer, being them positive or negative. 58 Quilombola communities are social groups whose ethnic identity distinguishes them from the general society. Souza (2008) also emphasizes that the ethnic identity corresponds to a very dynamic self-identification process, which is not reduced to material elements or biological distinctive traits, such as the color of the skin, for example. The identities established in this sphere are many times mutable, as explains Barth (2000 [1969]), for they are in constant process of generation. In this sense there are both “confluences” and “transfluences” (Dos Santos, 2015) that can be observed in the construction of the quilombola identity. The identity construction is related to the colonial slavery mode of production and societal relations associated to it, but is not encapsulated in this period, having constantly adapted to the new circumstances imposed and negotiated by the general society. The emphasis on a presumption of black ancestry, present in the legal and academic texts of today, is indeed associated with the imagined grouping of African enslaved escapees. It is necessary that this narrative has to be enriched by the several other forms of access to land and resistance strategies that informed the existence of quilombos, such as the peculiar case in Piauí, Maranhão and Pará of the failure of the “fazendas nacionais [national farms]”, state-owned farms in the colonial period. As we will discuss further in this chapter, land was abandoned and later occupied by the abandoned human property of these same “national farms”. Other forms of access to land were direct donation from the Catholic Church, payment for services during periods of war in exchange for land, as well as direct purchase of land after the abolition of slavery in the country. Before the abolition, the occupations happened by means of escape and the constitution of quilombos, by payment for services in times of war, disaggregation or closing down of farms religiously administrated, without any payment of foro (what occurred both before and after the abolition). In the post-abolition period, the establishment of the communities in their territories may have occurred by means of purchase; by donation or expropriation conducted by land official bodies” [Translated by the author from the originalxv] (Souza, 2008: 35). In addition, as a subversive or alternative form of collectivity, as Carvalho (1995) calls it, numerous quilombos were also home to dispossessed whites of all sorts, and 59 destitute Indigenous peoples. Also Souza (2008) reminds us that the quilombo was not in complete isolation, having several types of documented exchanges, such as ad hoc commerce of goods and mutual services with occasional individuals and groups in the colonial sphere and later in the republican period, reaching even the outskirts of the present day, like in the case of the quilombo of Kalunga, in the state of Goiás, which was “discovered” by anthropologist Mari Baiocchi, in 1982. To the dwellers of the mountains, the danger, which represented slavery has not faded away. When we arrived there in 1982, we were taken for undercover military, and the customary hospitality of the Kalunga was not established at first. [...] They believed that ‘slavery’ had come and that they would be ‘imprisoned and taken away from there’xvi [Translated by the author from the original] (Baiocchi, 1995/96: 111). So, a lot of different people with distinct backgrounds came together in the quilombo. However, following a process of “confluence” it is not expected that every grouping had the same resulting characteristics throughout the country and within the quilombos themselves. Nevertheless, Barth (2000 [1969]) points out that the ethnic identity of a group is the base for its organization, its relation to the other groups, and its political action. This concept relates to what Almeida (2008: 18-19) identified in Brazil as the emergence of “new collective identities” and “new social movements”, “deep locally rooted, with environmental conscience, gender criteria, and grouping around the same claims, by means of a political-organizational criteria”[Translated by the author from the originalxvii]. This political-organizational criteria and the presumption of a black ancestry, not at all characterized by the phenotype of its members, becomes the motivation for their struggle for recognition, and at the same time is the basis for the construction of their identity in relation to the general society. It is by a process of “transfluence” that traditions that have been historically weaved from different backgrounds are brought about as a support to the present struggle for recognition as a quilombo, and to the construction of a collective identity connected with their territory. This “new collective identity” refers both to the traditional process that was weaved within the community, and its historical relations to 60 the general society, and to the present political struggle for recognition. These four dimensions, tradition, struggle for recognition, collective identity, and territory, are therefore intertwined in what Almeida denominates “territorialidade” [territoriality]. Territoriality functions as an identification, defense and strength factor, even when it’s the case of temporary natural resource appropriation, by social groups classified many times as ‘nomads’ and ‘wanderers’. Solidarity bonds and of mutual aid inform a body of rules sustained by a physical base considered common, essential, and inalienable, despite existing succession dispositions. [...] It was exactly this identity factor and all the other factors adjacent to it, which lead people to group under the same collective expression, to declare their belonging to a people or a group, to affirm a specific territoriality, and to demand before the State in an organized way, claiming a reckoning of their intrinsically constructed forms of access to land [Translated by the author from the originalxviii] (Almeida, 2008: 29-30). That is why Article 68 is important, because it establishes a platform for the recognition of this complexity and of the forms of insertion of the quilombos into Brazilian society. It is only with the effectuation of Article 68 that the invisibility of these communities begins to be ruptured and their fundamental social-cultural rights, rights of second generation, be recognized. Throughout the states of the Federation there are also Articles in their Constitutions that address the issue, as it is in the case of Maranhão, Bahia, Goiás, Pará e Mato Grosso. Along with these Articles in the State’s Constitutions, there are specific legislations that follow from them. These legislations are present in the states of Espírito Santo, Mato Grosso do Sul, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul e São Paulo. There are 11 states that possess specific legislation (Constitutional or not) dealing with quilombo land normalization procedures. The other components of Brazilian legislation that relate to the quilombola communities are Articles 215 and 216 of the Federal Constitution, the National Policy for Sustainable Development of the Traditional Peoples and Communities, instituted by the Decreto 6040, of February 7th, 2007, and the 169th Convention of the International Labor Organization (ILO), incorporated into the national legislation by Presidential Decree number 5051, of April 19th, 2004. The Articles relate to the preservation of the 61 culture. The Policy in its third Article 312xix, addresses the definition of territoriality, and the Convention13xx brings about the dimension of self-determination, also incorporated in Decreto 4887/2003. The Brazilian State, therefore, incorporates ethnic expectations inside the nation, combining these new territorialities with economic determinants. “The territorial configurations are a set of natural systems, inherited by a given society, and of engineering systems, and technical and cultural objects historically established” (Santos 2010: 248). For a long time the natural systems of the quilombos were forgotten, and their engineering systems overshadowed, underused and cast aside to marginalization. This is why there is such difficulty of incorporating systems based on the territoriality of the quilombos into the logic of economic determinants managed by the State. Almeida (2005) signals that every process of rupture or achievement which supports the engineering systems of the quilombos today have not still resulted in “the adoption by the State of an ethnic policy or in systematic governmental actions capable of recognize the factors that have an influence on an ethnic consciousness” (p.15-16). Almost two decades after Article 68 was approved, little more than a hundred communities have had their territories titled. There are more than three thousand quilombola communities present in the five regions of the country that do not have their rights recognized. This is a situation shared by black rural communities all throughout the Americas. Some eight years from now, I encountered the realities of quilombola communities, working at the Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Policies of Racial Equality at the Presidency of the Republic (SEPPIR/PR). What fascinated me during my early education as an internationalist, and still fascinates me now, was the potential connection between 12 The traditional territories are spaces necessary for the cultural, social, and economic reproduction of peoples and traditional communities, being them used in a permanent of temporary form, observed, in respect to the Indigenous and quilombola peoples, respectively, articles 231 of the Constitution, and 68 of the Transitory Constitutional Dispositions Act and related regulations. Decree 6.040, of February 7th, 2007. [Translated by the author from the original] 13 “Article 1: consciousness about their identity as Indigenous or tribal shall be considered as a fundamental criteria to determine the groups to which the dispositions of the present Convention apply”. Decreto nº 5.051, of April 19th, 2004. [Translated by the author from the original] 62 black rural communities of the Americas due to their similar histories of resistance to slavery and the domination systems that came after, as well as the presumption of a black ancestry. For more than four centuries, the communities formed by such escaped slaves dotted the fringes of plantation in the Americas, from Brazil to the southeastern United States, from Peru to the American Southwest. Known variously as palenques, quilombos, mocambos, cumbes, mambises or ladeiras, these new societies ranged from tiny bands that survived less than a year to powerful states encompassing thousands of members that survived for generations and even centuries. Today their descendants still form semi-independent enclaves in several parts of the hemisphere - for example, in Suriname, French Guiana, Jamaica, Colombia and Belize- fiercely proud of their maroon origins and, in some cases at least, faithful to unique cultural traditions that were forged during the earliest days of African-American history. (Price, 1992) Where the African enslaved were in the Americas, there was resistance. And this resistance, when materialized in a territory, was given different, often derogatory denominations. They were quilombos, mocambos, and terras de preto no Brasil (Almeida, 2005); hide-outs and Seminole maroons, in the United States (N'Diaye; Bilby, 1992); maroons, in the English Caribbean (Suriname, Guiana, and Jamaica); afro-Guyanese communities in French Guiana; afro-Ecuadorian territories, in Ecuador, afro-Panamas, in Panama, palenques, in Colombia, Cuba (also Cimarróns) and Mexico; and cumbes in Venezuela. No colony in the Western Hemisphere, no slaveholding area, was immune to the growth of such alternative maroon societies. Wherever large expanses of inaccessible and uninhabited terrain permitted, as in the vast Guianese rainforest or the mountainous Jamaican interior, these communities proliferated. […] Present-day Maroon peoples include the Saramaka, Ndjuka, Paramaka, Matawai and Kwinti of Suriname; the Aluku of French Guiana; the Palenqueros of Colombia; the Windward and Leeward Maroons of Jamaica; the Garífuna of the Atlantic coast of Central America; the Maroons of the Costa Chica region in Mexico; and the Seminole Maroons of Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico and the Bahamas (N'Diaye; Bilby, 1992). It can be said in the model Scott (1986) develops, that there were “everyday forms of resistance”, rebellions and even revolutions among the actions that generated these social groups. Differently from Scott’s findings, though, the trigger for the actions of these distinct forms of resistance were not necessarily identified with a class concept, but rather with ethnic and racial components. It is also identified with the broader 63 context of the dominated and dominator, being derived from the colonial slave system or from the various forms of domination that came out from the post-colonial arrangements, and is informed by internal relations within the community, much in the way Ortner (1995) describes the relations of different South-Asian post-colonial contexts. It is in the internal relations that the ethnic and racial components stand out and that the everyday forms of resistance are more acutely perceived. The Haitian Revolution, for instance, was fought through by several rebellions and insurrections of African enslaved, characterized as both organized and guerilla action, which alternated in-between moments of temporary alliance and defiance to not only the French colonizer, but also the opportunist British, and the ever greedy Spanish from across the border (Grau, 2009). Therefore, everyday forms of resistance were as important as organized resistance in order to finally take power from the French colonizer and cause worry to the dominators all through the continent. The Haitian history of independency is intrinsically connected with the history of its quilombola movements. […] Even though there are ideological divergences in the interpretations that different authors make out of the concrete historical role of the maroon rebellions in the fights for the Haitian independence, the fact is that Haiti was the only nation in the New World, in which the black liberation project, with the constitution of quilombos, can be seen as a national project. [Translated by the author from the originalxxi] (Carvalho, 1995: 23-25) Another example is in the Quilombo of Palmares in Brazil, which is said to be the largest long-term rebellion of enslaved African peoples in the Americas. For almost 100 years, people from Palmares resisted domination, utilizing guerilla fighting, trade, mutual services with the colonizer, recruiting enslaved people from plantations as a way of tilting the power from the owners, and receiving fleeing indigenous peoples and white deserters as a way of strengthening the alliances inside the quilombo. The resistance, as described by Carneiro (2011 [1958]) was “vacillating, occasional, and heterogeneous”, but was able to allow for the continuity of the quilombo for almost a century. The effects of that resistance still reverberate in the imagination of Brazilian society today, and are embedded in the legislation around the thematic. 64 The quilombos arranged, from the beginning, a certain modality of commerce – the simple exchange – with neighbouring dwellers. They exchanged production of land, ceramics, fish, and animals by manufactured products, firearms, clothes, and industrial and farming tools. Now and then, however, the exchange ended up in armed conflict – and the ‘frontier’ of Palmares lit up with the burning of the sugar-cane fields, cattle ranches, and white-men plantations or bled with the fight between the palmarinos and the landlords. From there the entradas, the successive expeditions aimed at the destruction of the quilombo. For there also the resistance of the blacks, who, though vacillating, occasional, and heterogeneous, achieved to remain alive, through more than 50 years of struggle, the dream of liberty in Palmares [Translated by the author from the originalxxii] (Carneiro, 2011 [1958]: 4) Form another perspective, there are many examples similar to the history of Periperi, where the resistance strategy was in the very denial of connection with a quilombo and everything that related to it; the presumption of black ancestry, and its history connected to slavery and conflict. In the example of the Hwlitsum indigenous peoples in Canada the denial of their existence as a people was based on the denial of their very own forms of resistance. The criteria for recognition under the Indian Act require that they bear proof of occupation of a determined territory. Since the British Navy bombed their territory in the 1800’s, they have wandered without the possibility of being home. Their claim for recognition is based on their presence on their territory, which is no longer, what has led to Canadian government to disregard them as a people. In both cases, communities’ rights to present themselves as collectivities are conditioned by a territorial base. That is why it is all the more interesting to analyze the motivations of these “everyday forms of resistance” that may not have led to a full rebellious process or revolution, but have achieved a change in the position Periperi people occupy in the social relations of the region, along with the movement in the direction of the recognition of their collective identity as quilombolas. We will see more of this ahead. This is what I was thinking about while watching the presentations about the 169th ILO Convention at the Seminar, and Bispo had pulled me out of the conference room to introduce me to Nilda. Upon getting off the phone with Seu Antonio, Nilda spoke with concern about the choirs, which had been conferred by her interlocutor, whom seemed to have sort of an upper hand over her. According to her, there were 65 attempts, related to the reckoning of the community as quilombola, that Bispo had been throwing at her for some time. I understood that I was one of those attempts as well. Nilda thought that being there in those moments, such as the Seminar, was interesting to get to know people, sustain relations with other quilombolas from nearby cities and elsewhere, solve one or thing or another “ na rua [in the street]”, that is, outside Periperi. As she no doubt identified as quilombola, repeating everything she had learned in that Seminar and in the other two or three local and regional meetings she had participated. Bispo bet on Nilda’s youth for the renovation of the identity process in the community. Nilda spoke about the community, Bispo spoke about the identity process, and I spoke about the research. During all this I began to think of Amarante and to the histories that my great uncle told me about the way his parents had left from the municipality of Regeneração to arrive there. They were histories related to a “gipsy” kind of life around cattle commerce. What were valued were the skills in being a “vaqueiro [herdsman]”, the outmost idea of manhood and freedom, though “vaqueiros” were and still are entitled to a lower social positioning. In between those grounds other forms of classification were latent, but would be called upon their role when differentiation was needed. That is why Enoch, my great grandfather’s son from his previous marriage, “lived by himself”, away from the family nucleus. And that is why if Nego Tó, great black “vaqueiro” that accompanied him on almost every venture of his cattle business, would complain about his life or precarious working conditions, he would be taught of his place, making him remember his condition related to his slave “origin”. Those are histories, nonetheless, that today find no place in the present narratives my family make about themselves, connected to a life post-Piauí. Even the ones who remain in the state try to disconnect themselves from the state reality, by rejoicing in celebrating foreign accomplishments and deeds, and their eventful presence in these ex-situ realities. Those histories remain latent, nonetheless, but will be called upon their role when differentiation is needed. 66 Facing and encountering those histories has helped to place myself into the region’s history through the life histories of my family. But it also made it complicated at times because of this intersection and the mixed feelings that were impossible to shed away. It is nonetheless how I arrived at a common field of significations that allowed me to understand the racial process in the region, because my relative described it to me. I was born in Água Branca. It was not a city yet, it was a district. So, as daddy was a little bit of a gipsy, he moved from one place to the other, […] From Água Branca, he came to Regeneração. Daddy always dealt with cattle, and with small scale farming; it was not commercial. […] When it was needed, or according to the amount of cattle he gathered, he relied on a ‘pião’ [hersman] here and there. So, one that always strode along with him was Enoch, who had an independent life, but was very much ‘vaqueiro’. Enoch was very much ‘vaqueiro’ and when we went to buy cattle, daddy always called him because, in addition to being his son, he was very much ‘vaqueiro’. The black who strode along with us was Nego Tó, who daddy said that was his relative, on my grandmother’s side, my daddy’s mother. This one was black, very black indeed, a tall black, and very ‘vaqueiro’. […] No, we didn’t even talk about it, there was no tension what so ever. It was a normal life, we didn’t talk about no distinction, nothing of that. Daddy, for example, employed a worker in Amarante. He was a black who was called Otaviano; he was a butcher. And he as a black of our house, he went to the house, did things for my mommy, but there was nothing, there was no prejudice what so ever. […] Referring to blacks, daddy would say, do you know xique-xique [type of cactus]? There is the mandacaru, which is big, and there is the round one, with a lot of thorns, xique-xique. Anyhow, imburana, do you know imburana? Imburana is a tree that is hole; they even make pipes off it. So daddy would say that xique-xique is a stick of torns; imburana is a stick of bees, because it is hole and bees like to make their hives in it; a cattle’s tie is ‘canga’ [leather reins]; and the suit for black is ‘peia’ [a letter thread that is wrapped around the legs, used to tame cattle]. So when the black sometimes complained. You are in heaven, my boy, you should be tied to the post, in chains; now you are here in the middle of the people, what are you complaining about? [Translated by the author from the originalxxiii dialogue with my great uncle Francisco de Carvalho. April 2015]. The researcher imposes on himself the discipline of impartiality. It is however too difficult (if not unnecessary) to suffocate the heart and the curiosity, when facing such “confluences” and “transfluences”. The history of my family, as that of the state of Piauí itself, was always placed in the second surreptitious plane of the frugal interactions. What has always been valid to my relatives is what has been built after leaving the state, aside from one or other nostalgic reference of the “nearly-good” things, autochthone of their beloved ancestry state. The “umbu-fruit” tree; the orange eaten under the tree; the sugar-apple picked by the hand, but always in the angry neighbor’s farm or in any other house but their own. The “sarapatel” [a Brazilian Northeastern dish made with 67 pork or lamb blood], offal, tripe and spices], the “bode murcho” [quenched goat meat], the “picanha” of lamb, but bought in the municipal market, filthy and without adequate installations. The “baladeira” [slingshot], the phishing line, the improvised reel, the hook, the bamboo rod, the cords, the “cuzcuzeiras” [couscous-making pan], oh! Those are the best! But as rudimentary as they come. Or they are jocose memories, always told in a diminutive tone, about the hardships of the place: the heat, the poverty, the backwardness. Reading the passage below, of Matias Olimpo in the preface of the work, which is regarded as the first systematization of the history of Piauí, I dearly remembered of those family histories of quasi-schizophrenic love for the state. I would also remember of this nostalgic moment, a month and a half after, listening to the histories of Periperi and its relation with Amarante. Piauí has always been a forgotten region, inclusively, especially by people from Piauí who emigrate from here and forget about it, when they do not deny it. [...] Poor land and, as for that, forgotten, everything that is presented is fruit of the obstinate efforts of the dispossessed man that woks the land. And poverty of one added to that of the other generated the incomprehensible love, which identifies the piauiense with his home. [Translated by the author from the originalxxiv] (Porto, 1955, prefácio) I awoke from these memories grateful of Nilda's acceptance to initiate discussions about the research in Periperi. I got out of there with her cellphone number and the promise that we would see each other in Periperi a month's time from then. Once in Periperi I would meet Seu Antônio, who would provide everything needed for the work. Bispo agreed to come with me to the community as well, and just like that (as it seems to happen) I felt I was already packed and prepared to embark on that boat through the Parnaíba River to Periperi. We said our good-byes, Bispo and I, there at that moment. He had other business to attend to in the state capital. I joined the “Lezeira” that the quilombolas from Piauí were offering to the participants of the Seminar. Led by Naldinho (Arnaldo de Lima), from the quilombola community of Custumeira, along with other quilombolas from the state, the Lezeira started with rhythmic strikes on three or four “tamborzinhos”, drums, 68 made out of wood, covered with cattle leather. As it was improvisation, the “Lezeira” lacked the melodic tunes of the “sanfona” [accordion], sibilant whispers of the “maracas” [shaker], and the acute rhythms of the “triângulo” [triangle], which the “pandeiro” [tambourine] struggled to compensate for, and that the voices of the quilombola achieved anyway in all its sentimental presence. The “Lezeira”, according to Naldinho is where “everyone dances with each other and no one is excluded”14. Always paired in equal numbers of men and women, the dancers embrace and spin over the centre made by two, losing their pair only to find another in a continuous circular movement until the end of each “cantiga” [song]. These songs refer to several elements of daily life, work choirs and ailments, and tradition connected to Catholicism and “Umbanda”, a element fusion between afro traditions and Catholic popular religiosity that had always been very close to my own understanding of the state’s religiosity, growing up in a family from Piauí. Processes of “confluence” had produced different forms of fusion like the “Lezeira”, which often aggregated Indigenous traditions, and that were reproduced in almost every quilombola community I had visited. Such was the case of Pagode in Periperi. It mixes dance and music resembling a Baião, the faithful expression of Northeastern music from “sertão” [hinterland], marked by the combined sound of guitars, accordions, zabumbas [two-sided base-drums], and pífanos [flutes]. Luiz Gonzaga, the King of Baião, in 1946, popularized the rhythm introducing a style based on “his performance [which] added the instrumental combination - accordion, triangle and zabumba – transforming baião in an accessible rhythm for urban crowds”. [Translated by the author from the originalxxv] (Santos, 2004: 45). Such set of drums, triangle and guitar is also the base of Pagode, tradition that today Periperi is trying to revitalize. It has always animated the festivities in the 14 In the documentary “Lezeira”, made by the Instituto do Patrimônio Cultural e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN), Superintendência do Piauí. DVD. 20 min. 69 community with kids dressed up accordingly, youth beating on their drums, elders improvising by the cadency of the sound. It pervades religious festivities, political gatherings, and birthday celebrations. Even though electronic forró is dominating the spaces of the present festivities, the Pagode still survives in the early memory of the elders, the affirmation of the leaders, and in the desires of the youth, constituting a banner for cultural resistance in the community. For as long as I can remember in Piauí, Catholicism was reckoned as a virtue, while African-based traditions were reckoned as a necessary means to an end. One in the open, the other in the shadows. One validated by society, the other denied and ostracized until there comes a time of need. And everyone needed, every once and a while when medicine and prayers will not do. But this is something never to talk about. At least not in Church, not in front of society, not even to your acquaintances, but surely they will awkwardly but vigorously talk about it within the family nucleus and among members of its immediate extension, the community. We follow the [Catholic] Church and the cultures, we follow the Lezeiras. Here in the quilombos, we have to mess with everything”. Maria do Espírito Santo, interviewed in the documentary “Lezeira”, made by the Instituto do Patrimônio Cultural e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN), Superintendência do Piauí. The moon is coming, is coming very slow. Jesus sent the moon to illuminate our conga [Translated by the author from the original15 lullaby sang to me by my uncle, Fernando Siqueira Rodrigues]. One of the exquisite moments that experience-near anthropology (Goulet; Miller, 2007) facilitated while I was working with the communities that are part of this present study, was when I met Chica do Antero, on the outskirts of Periperi. I had been working with Periperi for almost two years by then, and returned to the community in November 2014 so we could get together and assess the strategies being implemented 15 The word “congá” is originated from the bantú language and is used in the ritual of Umbanda to denominate the sacred altar. This altar is composed of images of Catholic saints, caboclos, pretos-velhos [illuminated spirits of the enchanted]. http://tate-umbandaeseusmisterios.blogspot.com/2010/06/importancia-do-conga.html, accessed 12.03.15. 70 to forward their struggles for the preservation of the community and recognition of their status as a quilombo. Following from my own experience with the state and its traditions embedded within my family history, I had been intrigued by how the community’s connection with the Catholic cult was a source for collective cohesion and political organization. But it was indisputable, in a black, self-identified community such as Periperi, there was no talk of “caboclos”, “crendices” [beliefs], or other traditions that, although remaining in the shadows, have always had to be purified by the Catholic presence. These were part of the world of the taken-for-granted practices I experienced within my family and in interacting with the state’s environment. Seu Antonio’s daughter had caused him to worry about her marring one of his own relatives. He cursed their marriage and said he was tired of trying to convince her otherwise. He had prayed and wished for a different outcome, but so far things were not working the way he hoped for. In the midst of these exchanges, he invited me to climb on his motorcycle and drive towards the outskirts of the community, where we would meet Chica do Antero, a local “benzedera”, someone who deals with spirits and the unknown, as he said. “Benzederas” can provide remedy to ailments of all sorts with their praying over the head of the person who seeks their aid. The praying mixed Catholic hymns, with singing alluding to the cult of orixás of the Yoruban pantheon, referenced in “candomblé” or “umbanda”, regarded in Brazil as Afro-Brazilian religions (Prandi, 2002; 2004). As our Lord Jesus Christ baptized Saint John Baptist in the Jordan River. In Noah’s arch I place you, and with the key to lock you. Oh Jesus Nazarene! I bless you Jesus in which he was born, answer The, may your enemies never close on you. [...] As you are a Virgo, may the orixá, your lines, your ‘pontos’, all your Ogum, and so here we go. Ogum, you look over this man, do not let the evil come. It is time, it is time, my father, it is time to work. Hail, Queen, mother of mercy, life, sweetness, and hope for us, hail! […] May it be taken from you all evil, all danger, all disasters, all accidents, with the powers of the Father, Oxalá, with the strength of Our Lady of Exile, with the strength of Ogum, with the strength of Xangô, with the strength of Saint Michael, with the strength of all saints, powerful, and miraculous. [Translated by the author from the originalxxvi experience-near moment with the “benzedera” Chica do Antero, Periperi, Amarante, November 2014] 71 And that is what Seu Antonio was seeking when he approached Chica do Antero that day. It was the first time we had ever shared that since the time we had met under the gigantic cashew trees that shade his house. It was not a subject present in any of the numerous narratives I had shared with community members by then. Nevertheless, Chica was very much acquainted with Seu Antonio and was completely at ease receiving us at her home. She ended up praying over my head and prescribing a ritual I should follow coming home. The praying also connected all of us, Seu Antonio, Chica, her husband, Antero, and me, part of that magical-religious practice. Chica’s voice that rhymed in our heads, with our eyes-shut, would linger individually in our spirits. It would also create mutual understandings of the setting we are in, making us accomplices in accessing the “hidden transcripts” (Scott, 1990) that these traditions represent to the community. I was in the middle of the forest, when I heard the drums play, but I am Mineiro, but I am Mineiro, Saint Barbara call upon me. Hail Heaven! Hail Earth! Hail the mediuns! Hail all the paths! Hail all the planets! […] Now sit here that I will bless you. You place him here in the right position. I am a guide. I am a man of table, I am a man of cure, a man of strength, light of powers. My name is Mineiro. Everybody knows me as Mineiro, but I am the Prince of Golden Hands e happy with whom came here. And very welcome I receive your blessings your strength and your light. Now I will begin to pray [Translated by the author from the originalxxvii experience-near moment with the “benzedera” Chica do Antero, Periperi, Amarante, November 2014]. I was the talk of the town the next day from my meeting with the “benzedera”. Early in the day people were already giggling and smiling at me both in front and behind my back. Somehow everyone got to know quickly I had been in Chica’s house and that went on until the last bar conversation we had that night. Suddenly everyone had a narrative to share, based on the oral histories and traditions their elders had told them about spirits, such as that of the “vaqueiro encaborjado”, the ghostly figure of a herdsman who rode off the Chapadões of the community; or beliefs, like the orange peel thrown over the house's roof rafters when you want that someone think of you, or the bottle of water above fruit trees, such as cashew or mango, so that their flowers would not fall with the coming of the eclipse. Histories relating to the efficacy or 72 disbelief in the powers of the “bezaderas” multiplied in everyone’s stories. There was also an interesting comparison between different “benzaderas” powers, and how you could measure them by their strength in connecting to the spirits. Participating in that magic-religious moment allowed me to enter into the other domain's “hidden transcripts” in the community which were at work, related to the roles women play in the community social dynamics, occupying some places such as the leaders of those magical-religious practices and being silenced by men in others, such as the political organization of the community, as we shall see ahead. It also unveiled the role of Catholic religion in subduing the more maternal role community women played through those magic-religious practices. Furthermore, those shared realities made us accomplices which established ties beyond the almost institutionalized ritualistic moments the Catholic cult represented to the community. It was like going to Church on Sundays and playing in the ballpark every afternoon. These “hidden transcripts” are deeply connected with to the maintenance of the status quo in the state. These interactions in between different traditions in Piauí gain even stronger tonalities with the assumption of a distinct colonization; made of hand-in-hand efforts of all races. It culminates in the figure of the “vaqueiro”, the amalgam of the intrepid white, black and indigenous cattle herdsman that is imprinted in the state’s identity as the utmost ideal of freedom. “Vaqueiro” is imprinted in the names and they idea it conveys in the lives of members of Periperi, as we shall see ahead. In between rhythmic strokes of the “tamborzinho” I felt over my shoulders the overlooking eye of the elder man with the white hat who I had previously mentioned. His eyes would not leave my memory after I saw them for the first time in Periperi. 73 Chapter 2 - In Bispo’s Caravel I had some difficulty fitting everything in the 90 litre backpack, which did not seem to want to join me on another academic adventure in that cold, cloudy night of June 7th, 2013 as I prepared to leave for Teresina and Periperi. As I tried once again to pack everything into the generous yet insufficient compartments of my trusty travel companion, I reflected upon the experience of Malinowski (1922) in the Trobriand Islands, and of Leach (1954) in Burma, and the compelling passion that allowed these anthropologists to venture to distant destinations and make temporary homes in these intriguing places for months or years. Looking back at my three children, and at my busy life and work partner, the sensation that came upon me was of ambiguity when I thought about the following weeks away. I would leave behind our hectic life inevitably connected with cannons of modernity, but one which we had been able to adjust to our needs, to our particular views of our surrounding world, in which we had made our place and placed our faith and dreams. It was still interesting to think about the way that many of the strategies we engineer in order to fit in the multitude (Hardt e Negri, 2004) are embedded within the trajectories of the communities with whom we share our academic adventures. The more I think about this particular interaction, the greater the feeling that these trajectories of the communities do have a primordial role in the composition of the world in which we live in. Accelerated by these thoughts, I felt stimulated to throw the bag over my shoulders and keep on moving with the 23 kilograms of clothes, sheets, towel, rope, lantern, pocket-knife, hammock, flip-flops, computer, recorder, camera, GPS, a Boazinha “cachaça”, to give as a gift to Bispo (and possibly share some of it), notebook, pencil, and dreams, that I was carrying. Bárbara threw me a sceptical look, worried by the sight of the bag, half my own size, protruding from my back. 74 Every seat was taken in the flight TAM JJ 3882 that covered the 1,681 kilometers that separated Brasília from Teresina, having no major routes between them. What saved me from starvation after the two and a half hours of non-stop flight was Luciano, a body-builder cousin of mine who picked me up from the airport when I arrived late in Teresina. I can always trust in a “beiju”16 with eggs to fill up my stomach at his house. One egg in mine, four in his, we exchanged news, including my plans for being in Piauí that time. I went to sleep pleasantly surprised by news that Luciano was working at the Instituto Nacional do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico (IPHAN), in the state, and with the information that IPHAN had a wealth of material on the cultural manifestations of the quilombola communities in Piauí. We agreed to stop by the Institute the following morning to talk with Ricardo, another IPHAN employee who was in charge of quilombola communities. Luciano’s Schwarzenegger style at a first glance does not reveal the readiness and attention with which he takes care of his own. We were not able to meet Ricardo that morning, for he had gone on a trip to the quilombola community of Contente in the Northern part of the state, but the next time I would be in Teresina, two months after, Luciano would hand me all the material that IPHAN had produced about the communities of Piauí, in dvd, audio, and text. The next morning at five o’clock, I carried my backpack to the second floor of the Petrônio Portela bus station, ticket in my pocket, waiting for the TransPiauí bus that would take me to Floriano, the “Southern princess” of the state. Teresina’s bus station was built in the 1950’s, following a population boom that changed the demography of Piauí, and fixed the limits of its capital, erected in between the Poti and the Parnaíba River. Until the 1950’s, according to Porto (1955), the state had a diminutive population for its area, in relation to the national scenario. The quality of the roads that connected the state’s cities was not much different than they had been more than a century after 16 A manioc flour wrap, typical of the Northeast of Brazil. 75 than from the period of the autonomy of Piauí, when they were used by physicians from the National Malaria Service. An English traveler, who was in Piauí in the middle of the past century [XIX], describes the difficulties he came by to reach Oeiras and from there to the municipalities of the extreme South. The advantages of using the automobile considered, for the ones who would risk breaking down on primitive roads, the traveler does not find much substantial modifications in the grueling itinerary described by Gardner [Translated by the author from the originalxxviii] (Porto, 1955, apresentação) In the morning of July 9th, 2013, the TransPiauí bus slid along highway BR 343, though. The itinerary of 243 kilometres could have been covered in less than three hours were it not for the constant stops in the municipalities situated along the road, Demerval Lobão, Lagoa do Piauí, Monsenhor Gil, Água Branca, Regeneração and Amarante. After nearly six hours, I arrived at the bus terminal Dirceu Arco Verde, in Floriano, where I had agreed to meet Bispo. The choice of Floriano was not at random, having passed Amarante, the municipality where Periperi is situated, on the way from Teresina. Bispo was coming from São João do Piauí, 248 kilometers South of Floriano, and had insisted that we arrived together at Amarante. I was welcomed by him with a firm hug and a smile which showed the joy of our reunion after the long years we had not seen each other. He stood out from a distance, not from his exaggerated height, but from his Portuguese Caucasian looks, tanned by the ever-searing sun of Piauí, his head of blondish hair, and “de fora” clothes, of a confection ex-situ. This other cousin of mine had come to collect me after my arrival. He found me drinking a coffee and cream in between bits of a “puba” cake at the snack bar of the small, rudimental bus terminal, where I was exchanging impressions of the city with the attendant on duty, who by that time suspected she knew my family. Her assumptions were confirmed when Sebastião approached the counter. She turned to him right away and said something like this, carried over in her characteristic Piauí accent: “Oh my, Doctor Sebastião, you're here!” 76 Sebastião was a cardiologist in town. He had made a return trajectory to Floriano after graduating and working in Rio de Janeiro, to the relative displeasure of the imaginary elaborated by his family, which was at the same time very happy with the coming back of their good son. Another example of the local contradictions of love and hate for the land. The familiar lunch that followed was crowned with all the distinctions. Goat barbecue, stewed manioc, ripe beans, and of course, a lot of beer, which in Piauí it is said to be the coldest in the world. The intriguing trip I would make to Amarante to research about the “negos de lá [blacks from there]” was a recurring subject at the lunch, which went into the late hours of the night. Although very interested in aiding and abetting whatever work that could bring me closer to them and their state, it was quite difficult for them to picture why I had picked that particular subject. These impressions are very closely connected with the constitution of the traditional family, who like many others in the state, sustained an embedded and veiled “cordial racism” (Hasenbalg, 1979) towards the “sem eira nem beira”, the dispossessed of the state. Amarante has this history, conserves this history, these sayings: someone does not have ‘eira nem beira’, so in Amarante this is very easy for you to comprehend, because the constructions, a house of someone who has, of someone who has ‘eira’, a house that has ‘beira’, and a house that does not have ‘eira’ nor ‘beira’. There in the Velho Monje hotel, there in Amarante, it is an enormous structure, with an area in the inside, built in a format of ‘U’, so this here is a house of someone that is noble. That house over there is built with the balconies also towards the inside, but in a ‘L’ shape, it is the house of a rich person. That house over there, that the balcony is built to the outside, it is the house of someone of the middle class. And the house that has no balcony, that is the house of the one that does not have ‘eira nem beira’ [Translated by the author from the originalxxix dialogue with Antonio Bispo, no trajeto de Floriano a Amarante, June 2013]. It was no coincidence that few of the “sem eira nem beira” in the state of Piauí who I had heard of were not black. These groups of dispossessed are either without a history or dragged down by it. The charter of the Governor of the Province of Piauí to the Portuguese Overseas Minister, from the time of autonomy in 1761, acknowledges, though ambiguously, the so-called reciprocal equality amid whites, blacks, and mixed “mulatos”, sustained on the edge of a knife. In the preface of the same book, on a subject that Porto prefers not to comment on, Olímpio renews the same meaning with 77 deeper melliferous tones about the imagined homogeneity of blood amid the races, allegedly “pure” in its mixtures. Bispo would demystify these relations that were historically weaved in the state with the details of his quilombola livelihood before we even got to Amarante. I felt as though everything that came out of my mouth in that lunch-dinner-supper sounded as though it was straight out of the fantastic realism of Garcia Marques’ stories. By that time Bispo had already left São João do Piauí on the highway BR 230 to meet me in Floriano. Of the free people, which belonged to the black class, they are so few that, that it is certainly not possible to form a separate body. The ‘mulatos [mixed]’ here in a bigger number, having among them many of high reputation. The whites finally are less than the mentioned ‘mulatos’ in a such way that, no even in the company of the ‘dragões [imperial guard]’ could I conserve it without much mixture. Furthermore in this ‘Sertão [hinterland]’, by a very old costume, the same esteem of whites, ‘mulatos’ and blacks, and all among each other live in a reciprocal equity, being it quite rare for a person to separate from the ridiculous system, because, to the contrary, they would expose their livesxxx [Translated by the author from the original] (Porto, 1955: 75). About the racial behaviour in Piauí’s plateaus. Society that forms in democratic bases, unknown to the problems of agrarian concentration imposed by the mills of the ‘Recôncavo’ of the state of Bahia and of Pernambuco’s costal forest, has not allowed differentiation among White, black and ‘mulatos’. There was, since the beginning, a sort of homogeneity in the blood. This constant is what we should not betray, for it was that imprinted upon us the characteristic type of the Northeastern ‘vaqueiro [herdsmen]’xxxi [Translated by the author from the original] (Porto, 1955, prefácio). We had agreed to meet in the same bus station, which at six in the morning also changed into a public mini-market. Passengers or not, people crowded the little coffee-shops and snack spots scattered around the bus station as they waited for the next bus or passenger to arrive, killing time in between a cuscuz17 with sarapatel18, a chat here and there, and a “chá de burro”19. Another cousin, Petrônio, took me to the bus station, on the way revealing his knowledge about the social dynamics of Amarante, and about the Mimbó, who he considered to be “the only true quilombo of that region”. It would not be the last time I would hear such assertive statements about the authenticity of 17 Sort of a cake, made from corn flour, typical of the Northeast of Brazil. 18 Typical Northeastern dish, made form the insides of pork or lamb, added to the blood of the animal, chopped in small pieces. 19 Sweet stew, made with corn and milk. 78 this quilombola community compared to the other black rural communities of the municipality, whether they self-identified as quilombos or not. The quilombo of Mimbó is situated at 6º 14’ South 42º 50’ West, at the Mimbó Hills, 22 kilometres from Amarante and 170 from Teresina. It lies in the valley of the river Canindé, near the streams Burutizinho and Mimbó, which the quilombo took his name from. The quilombola community of Mimbó was certified by Palmares Cultural Foundation in 2006. Although Mimbó has a very similar historical trajectory, social relations, and ethnic composition to several other black rural communities of the region, it was singled out by municipal and state government officials and supported by a relative wealth of studies about the quilombo, as well as by the local imaginary that was built around the legends and myths surrounding the place. Tavares (2008) reminds us that the foundation myth of the community, which describes a marriage between three brothers (Francisco, Laurentino and Pedro, from the Rabelo da Paixão family) and three black sisters (Antônia, Benedita and Rita, from the Martinho José de Carvalho family), was elaborated as a way to shed away suspicions about their connection to enslaved Africans in the region. Myths like this became the referential for the singularization of the community in the local imaginary, to which contributed its relative isolation and the endogamy regime that likely caused apparent genetic decaying effects, such as congenital blindness and dwarfism, also marks of its stereotyping. The belief in the isolation of the Mimbó is an ongoing anecdote in Amarante, though, according to Tavares (2008: 49), “since the 1970’s, a lot of the ‘mimboenses’ married with people from other locations. Therefore, presently, there is a great mixing in Mimbó”xxxii [Translated from the original by the author]. So, myths were built by the community with the objective of hiding their heritage. Later, “official” society looks into these same myths, historically built around the community, to single it out amongst the others which had essentially the same characteristics, but lacking some stereotypical feature or another that had made Mimbó 79 known to the general public. Now myths are also a basis for the differentiation between Mimbó and the other communities on claims related to authenticity. Thus, the affirmation of the myths is an important part of the social dynamics which allow for the singularizing of Mimbó and support for their struggle for recognition. Do you see what the lack of information does too me? I am from Amarante and did not know that Periperi is a quilombola community, I didn’t know. I only knew about Mimbó. – Allow me to tell you why you did not know. Because the process of recognition of the self-identification of some quilombola communities, it happens at a slower pace. Like at the community there, Lagoa. Lagoa is a black community, isn’t it? Whether Lagoa some day is going to self-define as quilombola is another story. There is when they are going to make an assessment of their historical trajectory, all this. They can do it or not. This has become clearer after Lula created a Decree, which regulates the Article 68 of the Constitution of 88. So, some communities, for instance, Mimbó. Mimbó, because there you have all sorts of research made, history, and all. Periperi still does not have official certification, but it is in processxxxiii [Translated by the author from the original conversation with Socorro Leal Paixão and Antonio Bispo, Fazenda Araras, Amarante, June 2013]. This polarization has taken a toll on the self-identification processes and recognition of the other black rural communities in the municipality. It plays a curiously contrary role to what happened with the quilombola community of Conceição das Crioulas, in the ‘Sertão Central’, in the state of Pernambuco, where, the concentration of communitarian efforts around its recognition generated awareness amid official bodies, international organizations, and universities. Unlike in Mimbó, Conceição das Crioulas became diffusion centre, positively reverberating the wealth of quilombola self-identification process into the surrounding communities (Brasil, 2014). There is in Mimbó, besides the Chapel and the ‘terreiro [temple of afro traditions]’, a health clinic ‘Marinho José de Carvalho’, which functions precariously, a school, with grades one through four of the basic education and the fifth of the fundamental, a house for processing manioc (Casa de farinhada), a club for leisure and entertainment (clube da Beleza Negra) and a digital station (Zumbi dos Palmares) recently built through a convention with a bank. As well as electricity, channeled water, and a communitarian telephone (um orelhão)xxxiv [Translated by the author from the original] (Tavares, 2008: 55). In spite of the relatively precarious state of the public services and equipment available in Mimbó, which Tavares describes above, and especially in relation to the other black communities in the municipality, the quilombo at the banks of the Mimbó 80 stream concentrates practically all the very few municipal public policies aimed at the quilombola communities, notably related to the financing of cultural activities, but also connected with better implemented schooling and health services. The stereotype of Mimbó is related to a construct of the community as being the only place truly of black people. It is thought by the “official society” that they are the ones truly related to the slave period and to the history of the African enslaved escapees from the sugar-cane plantations of Bahia. They are also are seen as undeniably poor and lacking in “civilized” cultural heritage, to which “official society” relates in a most Christian way: public policy as charity. Charity they cannot extend to the other communities, since they do not hold these identifiable marks of stereotyping in a “verifiable” manner. That is why, in this context, we held here as a traditional community, not quilombola. Now, with the word quilombola, a ‘nego [black]’ to swallow that is a fight. Because it is not in the blood, it is not in the culture. We could say from 1800 to 2014, it is what? 130, 140 years, and that has never been endorsed, we heard about quilombola in the books, that is, very far from the reality, but inside the blood, of the ethnicity, that has never come associated with us really. So it is this difficulty that we have found in the aspect of us inside here really of adopting the word quilombola. Now, some have already begun to grow a consciousness because we know we have nowhere to run to, some already accept it well. Now, at first, when there was talk of quilombola, some jumped ten meters high. Because we thought being quilombola was to undo from the social developed environment and so on [Translation by the author from the originalxxxv dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, leader of the quilombola community of Periperi. June 2013. The stereotypes, whether exogenous or endogenous to the communities, arrive at an authoritarian argument of authenticity regarding Mimbó in contrast with other black rural communities, especially those within the same municipality of Amarante. This argument is embedded in the discourse of the governmental municipal representatives, reflecting the direction of the public policies regarding quilombos presently implemented by the municipality and simultaneously justifying their aim. Very well intentioned, it is clear that the argument is aimed at mutilating the distinct self-identification processes, out of fear of the reordering of rural relations in the municipality, spun from the potential organization of the communities under a collective identity motif. 81 The quilombolas of Mimbó have also incorporated authenticity as a means to distinguish their identity against that of the allegedly “mixed black”, as I have heard on many occasions from local governmental officials, inhabitants of Amarante, and members of other black communities alike, when referring to communities of the surroundings. In a sense Mimbó has chewed on the governmental bait and are now the scapegoat for the immobility that local government shows towards the other communities. On the other hand, one might argue that Mimbó is only “playing the cards as they are laid”, and that, by claiming authenticity, the only community certified in the municipality is strengthening its organization. The singularizing of Mimbó, supported by the stigmatization “official” society makes of its stereotyped symbols, is reinforced, on the other hand, in the communities’ strategy of recognition as a quilombo. Nevertheless it provokes a process of distancing in the other communities to the quilombola self-identification process. The triggers of this process, therefore, lie both in the affirmation and denial that the “official” society makes of the elements that would characterize a quilombo in relation to Mimbó and the other communities, respectively. They are also present in the affirmation and denial Mimbó makes within the community itself and to the “official” society, in embedding those marks in their struggle for recognition and singularizing them in relation to the other communities, respectively. Similar claims of authenticity have been observed in relation to Indigenous communities and other black rural communities throughout the world. Mario Blaser (Blaser, Feit, McRae, 2004: 31) emphasizes that, “in many cases Indigenous peoples find themselves in the situation of having to authorize their life projects in a very modern fashion as 'authentically Indigenous’”, referring to the struggle that the Paraguayan Chaco Indigenous communities have undergone to adjust to the social structure, since the nineteenth century. Scott (apud Blaser, Feit, McRae, 2004: 307) singles out, regarding the relations of the Northern American Indigenous peoples, “that Aboriginal title fosters a rentier mentality, inimical to authentic productivity and growth”, 82 separating, thus the “entitled” and the “dispossessed”, as “established” and “outsiders” (Elias, 2008 [1965]). This was the case in La Marina, with the Marineros' claim that they are the true bearers of Afro traditions connected with the whole country in the city of Matanzas, even though they were the “outsiders” in the particular moment I was there. The ones who led the project “Callerón de Tradiciones [Tradition Alley]”, in the neighborhood of Pueblo Nuevo, were at that time the “established” ones. Although the research partially acknowledged that La Marina was a source of Afro traditions in the city, it gave support to the project in Pueblo Nuevo, and further on, neglected La Marina, concentrating all its activities on the first neighborhood. Afro traditions in the city have since been framed in Pueblo Nuevo, to which support by numerous governmental and international organizations have been concentrated, leaving La Marina in the blank. From another perspective, the struggle of the Hwlitsum Indigenous People, in Canada, in claiming their identity as a band has different authenticity issues that can be considered in the light of the discussion above. The Hwlitsum attempted, at first, to enter the treaty process with the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group (HTG). “Although Hul’qumi’num elders acknowledged their people shared ancestry with the Hwlitsum people, the two parties could not reach final agreement on the terms of their union for treaty purposes”20. Due to a claim that there was a lack of clearly defined membership and historical existence as a governing body, it was not until 2008 that the Hwlitsum would be entitled as “Status Indians” under the Indian Act. The claim, therefore, stands upon the inability to show the Canadian government proof of authenticity. In response to the move the Hwlitsum promoted before the Canadian government, the Musqueam nation, a larger tribe that controls significant parts the mouth of the Frasier River, have positioned against the Hwlitsum, claiming that the case of the Hwlitsum is phony. The counter-claim of the Musqueam is based on the fishing rights in the mouth of the 20 Treaty commisioin update. The independent voice of treaty making in British Columbia. July, 2008. p. 3, 4, 5 and 8. 83 Frasier, which makes it all the more interesting from the perspective of the resistance strategies each party is putting forth in other to guarantee their share in the midst of asymmetric hegemonic relations, and among themselves, as active players of this system of social relations. The ghost of the “dead Indian” still haunts discussions on authenticity throughout the continent. Originally applied by King (2012: 54) in reference to the simulacrum intentionally constructed by North-American society, in order to create a representation of an indigenous person that never was, the term “dead Indian” could easily translate into “dead quilombola” or “dead marinero”. The idealized conception of a quilombo that never existed has long been present in the minds of members of the Brazilian society, particularly those who are conservative-oriented, recently finding nest in the reactionary claims of authenticity and how to determine it. Conservative parties have filed to the Supreme Court asking for the annulment of further regulations of the Article 68 of the Constitution. What they are really after is the restriction of the notion of quilombo to an atomized historical occurrence, that could not have developed and reached the present day. So, in order to prove their right to a quilombola identity, communities have to resort in finding any kind of document that can connect them to the slave period; they have to be black looking; they have to be poor, dirty, and miserable; they have to be the “dead quilombola”. Any deviation from the “dead quilombola”, and all sorts of claims of inauthenticity are thrown at them. Coming back to the case of the Mimbó, which exemplifies the simulacrum working at large. Mimbó people exalted their connections with the “dead quilombola”, because for the first time, they found a way to establish a more equitable relationship with Amarante’s society. In Periperi, they are chasing the “dead quilombola” as well, because they want their share in these changing relations. Marineros are desperately trying to get rid of the “dead marineros”, but Matanzas society will not let them get out of it. Although the neighborhood has long been free from prostitution, gambling, and 84 drugs, the stereotype is still imposed on them as a means of exclusion. The all feathered and angry looking “dead Indian”; the revolted, chain-breaking black ex-enslaved “dead quilombola”; and the conflictive, pimp-oriented, diseased black “dead marinero” are all simulacrums used to exclude, ghettoize, and make destitute communities throughout the continent. Therefore we are beyond the “naive belief in cultural purity, in untouched cultures whose histories are uncontaminated by those of their neighbors or of the west” (Ortner, 1995: 176). Authenticity is playing a most decisive role in current relations of communities and the dominant society, generating different strategies of resistance amongst the micro power relations within the communities and in relation to the dominant society. In the midst of this candlewick, I stand with Ortner when she identifies authenticity as “pieces of reality, however much borrowed from or imposed by others, [that] are woven together through the logic of a group’s own locally and historically evolved bricolage” (1995: 176). Furthermore I agreed with Seymour (2006: 305) that all these interactions are intentional and counter-hegemonic. To me they constitute strategies of resistance in the context of asymmetric power relations, which imply a domination-dominated relationship, but also a relationship in between the so-called dominated and, in their turn, a relationship between these micro relations and the asymmetric context. In a context of differential power relationships, resistance refers to intentional, and hence conscious, acts of defiance or opposition by a subordinate individual or group of individuals against a superior individual or set of individuals. Such acts are counter-hegemonic but may not succeed in effecting change. They can range from relatively small and covert acts […] to an organized [demonstration]. [They] may never be openly recognized as an act of resistance (Seymour, 2006: 305). Resistance. What an interesting and troublesome concept. As troublesome as the authenticity claims it is intrinsically related to. Paraphrasing King (2012: 218), I could risk saying that it is all about resistance. If you need to understand nothing else about the history and present of the communities we speak of here, you need to understand 85 that the question that really matters is the question of resistance. When people from Mimbó construct their identity on an authenticity claim, based on a “dead quilombola”, is that resistance? Or is the resistance in the past when they hid down the valley of the Mimbó River in an inaccessible region? Is resistance in the everyday struggle of the Hwlitsum, being denied their identity as a band, or in the case they filed to the National Energy Board in order to be recognized and allowed to participate in the discussions around the implementation of a pipeline that will go through their territory? Or is resistance in bearing the prejudice to be called marinero, or being conscious of that prejudice and calling themselves marineros in spite of that? Is resistance in actions that defy the self-imposed capitalist system in its peripheral form, or the socialist regime? Is resistance necessarily against the State, government, and the Revolution? Or otherwise, does resistance need to be revolutionary? These questions were present all throughout this study in different places, such as a socialist island, the hinterland of a continental developing country, or the disputed urban area of a developed country. It was quite interesting to see how these power relations unfolded in the three contexts in which I was lucky to live for a while, and the role research played in their strategies of resistance. Being it a monograph in La Marina, or data for the process of certification of the community as quilombola, in Periperi, research required more than the usual informants from the communities and much more than the usual listener and observer from the researcher. Community involvement was very much in the elaboration of these outcomes that were demanded by the community from the research. And a good deal of experimental anthropology (Goulet; Miller, 2007) was required from the researcher in order to live the every day forms of resistance (Scott, 1986) that were required for what community was asking from the research. Some models, such as cultural schemas (Seymour, 2006) or revitalization movements (Wallace, 1956), which are dear to psychological anthropology, were also very helpful in understanding the motivations for the proposition of these new 86 strategies of resistance that could spin off from the research itself. We will have time to develop that later, for Bispo had just arrived and nothing else mattered more than finally getting to Periperi. Twenty minutes later, I saw Nego Bispo getting out of a black car, his tired but happy expression indicative of his long travels. He came accompanied by one of his faithful esquires who was just as smiley as him. I myself did not look so good after my lunch-dinner-supper of the day before, but we greeted each other with heartfelt joy. Bispo does not drive, although an old L200 pick-up truck had been trusted to him, with which he moved around the state. It would not be this time around, obviously, that I would climb into “chapa branca”, as the pick-up truck is known in the state’s hinterland, because it was awaiting maintenance at the time. Washinha had been chosen this time to escort Bispo until Floriano. Washinha was also from the quilombo of Saco do Curtume and loved the histories of Bispão, as the youth of the quilombo calls him. He was my peer in years and looked part indigenous, part white, part black, a type of man that in Piauí is identified as “caboclo”. The brief conversation with Petrônio had to be interrupted, as Bispo was eager to depart for Amarante. Seu Antonio awaited us for lunch. Though the trip only takes around one hour, Bispo had some surprises on the way that would demand some of our time. The route from Floriano to Amarante is marked by plateaus and reddish hills, carefully and insistently snipped by the force of nature, giving the impression of asymmetrically juxtaposed brick walls of different sizes. These mosaic pieces that emerge from the green of the confluence of the palm trees, with the pre-Amazon forest and the high “Cerrado”, generated a singular contrast under the sun, already searing in those early hours. The sharp outline would complete the cubist canvas that built up frame by frame on the window of the black, Teresina-PI-license-plated Volkswagen, if not for the imminent search for the river. In a brief glance over the road map of Piauí, one quickly notices the coincidence between the course of the highway BR 343 between Floriano and Amarante with the 87 course of the Parnaíba River. I had looked carefully upon that map in Brasilia in order to trace the paths we would cover along the trip, and that is why I hoped to stumble on the running waters of the river when we drove down the road. Today, writing these lines, thinking about those sensations, I remember the nostalgia and estrangement that boiled up from that setting, since the road was not unknown to me then, as I had covered it numerous times since I was a boy heading to Teresina. The initial frustration of not seeing the river turned to excitement with the new view I had of the trajectory, unveiling the unguarded minutiae of the green-reddish setting. The little leaves of the sharp bushes closer to the road gave way to the majestic trees and palms down of the river. The banks of the Parnaíba, the region of transition between the Northeast and the Amazon, is directly influenced by the vegetation of the neighbouring state Maranhão, and makes with the palms an odd mosaic. The “cajuís”, “jatobazinhos”, and “paus de colher”, of the “carrascos” on the side of the road mix with the “paus d’arco”, “angicos”, “candeias”, “catingueiras”, “oitis”, and “mutambas”, characteristic of the mixed “Caatinga”. Lots of times the mosaic is cut off by the agglomerate of “carnaúbas”, which open up a distinct setting, homogeneously dominated by palm trees. The “buritis”, “babaçus”, and “tucuns” are more promiscuous and easily mix in the Caatinga. The territory of Piauí is made of a vast table top or plateau, inclined to the valley of the Parnaíba, having the higher edges settled at mountain range or tableland, which receives different local denominations after the names of Tabatinga Tabatinga, Galhão, Mangabeira, Jalapão, Piauí, Dois Irmãos, Serra Grande e Ibiapaba. Ramification of the Central Brazilian Plateau, it spreads over a 10,000 kilometers, notably standing out in physiognomy of the Northeast. In the North meridional part of the state, the mountain abruptly ends up in sharp chiselled walls of very difficult access. [...] It is formed by sandstones predominantly red, alternating multi-colored beds and leaflets, at times calcareous [Translated by the author from the originalxxxvi] (Porto, 1955: 87). Listening to Bispão scrutinizing quality excerpts of the setting from his own bio-interactions with the place added to my nostalgic and estranged signifying of the scene that went by in front of me. It was this same signification I had previously discussed, however dulled by the years I had not been in the region and by my own lack of 88 previous interaction with the place, that allowed me to participate in that magical moment, moving blindly, up the river. I would arrive at Periperi aboard Bispo's Caravel, adding goods of all sorts to my backpack. The encounter with Bispo, tinted by the reunion with my family, created an unexpected field of significations for the work before us with Periperi. It made me face the latent racial issues that remained dormant, but arise when there is a need for differentiation driven by vivid economic, social, and cultural interests; it caused me to move beyond what I had thought about the social dynamics of recognition, adding the odd flavours of the authenticity issues in the region; and it opened up different forms of relations to the physical environment in which Periperi is situated. An environment that has been depicted as agrestic, sharp, vile, aggressive to humans, undeveloped, backwards, though one which communities have made into their homeland through careful bio-interactions with it, amidst the confluences and transfluences that were both imposed and produced by them. I felt as if Bispo’s Caravel had been coming and going for quite sometime, and I was glad that I was among its passengers this time around. 89 Chapter 3 - Dams through the “Mazeway” As I painted my mental picture and the screen impressed upon me, Bispo went on about the black rural communities in Amarante that would be impacted by the Estreito and Castelhano dams, which were planned for construction along the Parnaíba River, in areas in the municipality. All riverside communities in Amarante would be impacted by either one or both of the dams. Most of the communities to be impacted consist largely of black inhabitants. The only community in the municipality of Amarante that was certified as quilombola at the time was Mimbó, although different self-identification processes could be seen from every other community. Mobilization against the implementation of the project was also present, but poorly or eventfully articulated as it would be the case in Periperi. Why did I insist on coming by car? Because the idea is we cut through here before the city, and go through the diverse black communities that are going to be impacted by the dam, the Castelhano dam, which comes from the municipality of Palmerais to the city of Amarante, and after you go by Amarante, up the river, there you will have another dam, which is the Estreito, which impacts all of the other communities of the municipality. So, all the riverside communities of Amarante will be impacted by one dam or the other. So what is the idea? We will, soon after we get to the division between Floriano and Amarante, go down by the track of the river and will already see the communities that will be impacted by the Estreito dam, that does not add much to our travel time. […] We entered in the division between Floriano and Amarante and those are all black communities, all. Some already have a discussion on identity, others still not, but they are all black [Translated by the author from the original conversation with Antonio Bispo, on the road from Floriano to Periperi, June 12th, 2013]. The project of five hydro facilities envisioned presently by the power industry and the government for the Parnaíba River is intimately related to another controversial hydro project, which dated some 50 years back, at the turn to the dictatorial period, in 196321. The Boa Esperança dam, also known after the name of the military President, 21 The Companhia Hidrelétrica da Boa Esperança (Cohebe) was created in 1963 to bulit the Boa Esperança dam, also known as Presidente Castelo Branco. The dam is situated on the Parnaíba River and began operation in 1970, with two 54 MW engines each. Cohebe was incorporated to Companhia Hidro Elétrica do São Francisco (Chesf) in 1973. For references see: http://www.memoriadaeletricidade.com.br/default.asp?pag=12&codTit1=44367&pagina=destaques/linha/1948-1963&menu=381&iEmpresa=Menu#44367, in 3.3.15. 90 General Castelo Branco, was idealized in the midst of an industrial boom in Brazil, which by the time the dam began construction, had matured into a national policy of developmentism under the military regime. In a previous work (Brasil, 2014), I submerged myself into the roots of the developmentism, as it still remains as an important feature of the Brazilian social construction. The policy was characterized by a “tripod”: “industrialization, based on the substitution of imported goods, focused on the ‘base industry’; international investment, rapid expansion and accumulation of foreign capital, notably private, and the State, in the direction of development, by means of indicative plans and priority areas” (Brasil, 2014: 91). The power sector was one of the most important of these priority areas to impact national development. Nothing could stand in front of this gigantic drive, especially in a region, in which government and “official society” were in desperate need of development. [...] we had a great professional motivation, when, along with other technicians of DNOCS, visiting the Governor of the state of Piauí, if I am not mistaken it was in the year of 1961, in the Karnak Palace, at some point in the conversation, the Governor stood up and with his right arm pointing at the crucifix on the wall, looking at the visitors, said with emotion: ‘build this dam; it will be the salvation of Piauí’xxxvii [Translated from the original by the author] (Dantas, 2010, p. 65) There lies the urgency of salvation that revolved around the construction of the Boa Esperança dam, which was the materialization of hope for the long awaited development of the state. The construction began in 1963 in the city of Guadalupe, 80 km from the nearest commercial city of Floriano, distant only 62 km from Amarante. The initial operation was engaged in 1969, and the dam was finally inaugurated in 1970. The plan for the dam had always been the idea of a supply driven market orientated towards the Northeastern urban centers, such as Salvador, in the state of Bahia, Recife, in the state of Pernambuco, and also Fortaleza, in the state of Ceará. The four engines were built but never really fully operated, as the water accumulated by the dam never actually sufficed to turn all the turbines at once. Over 91 the years, 237 MW spun from the power plant at a controversial cost of a strong and progressive silting of the river and consequently diminishing of the water volume in the middle and low Parnaíba, as well as widening the distance between its banks, practically impeded navigation in its course, let alone the interruption of the passage of the fish, and the destruction of the old city of Guadalupe, with the complete removal of its population22. The hydro project would bring an “economic redemption” to a desolated region of the country. It also changed the face of the economy of the agrarian state, built around the commercialization of primary goods, and using the river as an escape route. The energy generated was quickly integrated into the national power system and flowed away from the state, carrying with it the hopes for a booming development, leaving a trail of modifications to the scenery of the river cities, and still felt to this day by communities such as Periperi. The connection between the impacts of the Boa Esperança dam and the potential results of the implementation of the newer expected hydro projects over the territory of the communities along the river are known well by the members of the quilombo of Periperi. Before the implementation of Boa Esperança, as Seu Raimundo still remembers, the river was pure life. It was a natural connection from Amarante and to other cities of the state directly with the community of Periperi. In its banks, members of the community could extract the best production; naturally fertilized and irrigated the lands were from the spoils of the river. It was also where, in times of severe droughts frequent to the region, the community members had a chance of producing what was called “agriculture of várzea” in the flood plains all through the year. The newer project, called the Power Complex of the Parnaíba, is composed by medium size power plants, which according to the entrepreneurs joint venture23, would 22 Public Civil Action to the State’s Court, in 2011, by the Fundação Águas do Piauí (FUNAGUAS). The Action was incorporated in the as MPF/PR/PI 1.27.000.000531/2010-83, in October 7th, 2011. 23 Presentation made by the joint venture, composed by the Companhia Hidrelétrica do São Francisco (CHESF), CNEC, and Energimp, at the Boa Esperança dam, in July 3rd, 2009. 92 produce 425 MW. The total would be divided into 113 MW (Ribeiro Gonçalves), 134 MW (Uruçui), 58 MW (Cachoeira), 56 MW (Estreito), and 64 MW (Castelhano). The Power Complex is included in the PAC for the Northeast region, and it carries along the same momentum and economic redemption that characterized the discussion on the previous Boa Esperança project. Federal, state, and municipal government representatives, as well as local politicians and entrepreneurs were advocating for the Power Complex hand in hand, as could be seen at the public hearing held in Teresina, in March, 2010. They were not shy when talking about the benefits that the construction of the dam would bring to the state, especially to the municipalities where they would be built, such as Amarante and Palmerais. Investment would come, jobs would be generated, the local economy would thrive, and goods would flow into to the cities and onto the tables of its inhabitants. According to governmental officials, joint venture representatives and politicians present at the mentioned hearing, negative impacts would be minimal. The format of the hearings is very curious. Under the environmental legislation in Brazil, entrepreneurs are required to facilitate public hearings to inform the general population, particularly the impacted ones of the proposed developments of the construction of a project. These are based on Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA), and Environmental Impact Reports (RIMA), the later being aimed at summarizing and making the information more palatable to the common citizen. The EIA/RIMA to be presented in the hearings are based on previous studies conducted by the joint venture in the region where development project is to be implemented, and in accordance with the terms issued by the National Environmental Agency, the Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente (IBAMA), and in consultation with several other governmental bodies on themes related to their institutional mission. The studies are generally presented right before the project obtains what it is called a Previous License, which allows the entrepreneur to initiate construction in the area of the project. That is also the moment when the hearings are held. 93 Before the hearings, none of the impacted need to be heard. Nevertheless, the presence of people related to the joint venture had been constant in the region for more than a decade, even before the issuing of the Previous License in 2011. The first thing that struck me from the reports of the inhabitants of the communities of the region is the unusual nature of these encounters, where neither party needed to be reckoned, yet both knew what the other represented. So they met, but didn’t, and information did not flow as it should, from one end to another, resulting in crippled projects of life and development from part to part. The imaginary around the construction of the dam was already being built on these crumbs of information, gathered without consent of the inhabitants, and exchanged with reserve by the joint venture representatives. The status of the interface has not changed much over the years. - Sure! Before this hearing, they came here a lot. They held a lot of meetings with us here. They made a recollection of everything here. Even of an orange building…they gathered all, all for the hearing. […] Since when this business of doing the dams heated […] It has been some 4 years, hasn’t it Maria? The people don’t even want to talk about it. – When there was first talk about it here, it has been some 11 years. 11 years. It could be 12. It is when they said they would actually make it, that my mother liked to curse, when she went to the other side of the field, she liked to curse. Then she started to curse those “big words’, that these miseries that come from hell to open business on earth, such a good land, these miseries come and end it…these miseries…dams to end the land. It has been 11 years since my mother died and no dam has arrived. It is when I look at my things, when the boys start talking, that I see. What do I do now?xxxviii [Translated by the author form the original dialogue with inhabitants of the Lagoa community, Manuel e Maria Domingas, Amarante, Piauí, June 2013] The impacts of these encounters were felt from the beginning, and reverberate until the present. Bispo, after recollection of perceptions of members of communities impacted by the dams along the Parnaíba River, identified the immobility to which communities are forced to by the fear generated by the speculation around these crumbles of information. The fear is related immediately to the conditions for their economic, social, and cultural reproduction, and they end up in the possibility of the loss of their territory. Those perspectives cannot be separated, although the possibility of flooding their territory presupposes at least in theory their relocation. That is a 94 possibility, however, that is not even considered by Periperi, as it is absent from the narratives, and something that it is “too painful to think about”. The impact is in place from the moment they were announced [the dams]. It is not even because they were already impacted really, because everyone has doubts, do I continue to plant or not? Will I plant perennial cultures or [other] cultures? And then on, people when they are going to build their house, build it or not? Do I renovate it or not? So the community is paralysed. There you already have an enormous damage. The tension is very big. […] The very own production, the issue with housing, the investment in real estate, about the way of life of the community, the planning; what is the situation of a family that is building now? How is it going to plan its life over so many doubts? And if it builds, where do I go? The very own municipality when time comes to build a school builds it or not? So, it is paralysed. The municipality is also in doubt. When you send a financing project to a bank you will have difficulty to invest in that project. How are you going to finance a project in an area which is going to be inundated? So, there are a lot of doubtsxxxix [Translated by the author from the original dialogue with Antonio Bispo, on the road from Floriano to Periperi, June 2013]. In the treatises between the joint venture for the Power Complex and the Environmental License Bureau [Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente – IBAMA]24, it became clear that the conditions for the implementation of the projects related to the power plants Castelhano and Estreito were far from sound, regarding both the environment and to the surrounding populations. The added impact of these projects as well as the Boa Esperança power plant were not stated. A full hydrological cycle was not contemplated in the studies. The maps were in bad shape and in an incompatible scale for the area under study. There was no study related to the environmental viability of the projects. There were no elaborated studies of the river and its inhabitants; there was no mention of fisherman, indigenous peoples or quilombola communities. There was no identification of the urban and rural population of the region. The study foresaw the relocation of eventual inhabitants in the influence area as the only possible alternative for the implementation of the project. There was no characterization of the workforce to be hired for the construction of the project. There was no characterization of the direct and indirect influence areas. The study did not say a word about the 24 Despacho 374/2009-DILIC/IBAMA, December 18th, 2009. Parecer Técnico 92/2007 – COHID/CGENE/DILIC/IBAMA, December 6th, 2007. Parecer Técnico 28/2007 – COHID/CGENE/DILIC/IBAMA, May 9th, 2007. 95 conservation of historical, archaeological, speleological, or natural patrimony around the region. Mitigation measures were presented without consideration of preventive or corrective content, disconnected with the region’s daily realities on the ground. Information was obtained without consent from either unnamed or unknown inhabitants of the region under the influence of the project. Methodologically there is a gross mistake in relation to the interviews conducted with the communities, for it is ethically biased gathering of recorded information without the authorization of the interviewees. Parecer Técnico 92/2007 – COHID/CGENE/DILIC/IBAMA, December 6th, 2007. Nevertheless, the Previous License would be granted by IBAMA to the joint venture for the whole Power Complex in December 3rd, 2011. Before that, the joint venture was allowed to conduct public hearings. One would assume that would be the time for the impacted to be heard. Public hearings were held in the state’s capital, and in Parnarama, a municipality located on the other side of the Parnaíba River in the state of Maranhão, and sister city with Palmerais. Here is when it gets even more curious. Teresina is some five hours away on the run-down E. Soares company bus, which is available for the cost of around 15 dollars each direction of the trip. If you understand that the earnings in Periperi range to no more than 100 reais, close to 30 dollars monthly, one can imagine how few were actually able to attend. The hearing was held on a week day, making it all the more difficult for people with jobs or working on their fields to be away from their chores. In consideration of the potential for bias, the official regulations stated that no transportation was to be provided. In Parnarama they were closer, but they still had to cope with the cost of the crossing of the river, adding another four dollars on top of four they would spend to travel from the community to the crossing point. Seu Raimundo and Seu Antonio nonetheless gathered resources among the community and went to the hearings, as it was a life or death deal for them and for their homeland. At the hearing they faced a very different reality than what they had expected. The objective of the hearing was, as stated, to inform the general population, 96 in particular the impacted communities. And so they took notice of it. They were informed by the joint venture representatives, aided and abetted by the government authorities in different levels and shapes, of the supposed marvels of the project and what they would gain from it. Among the diverse audience they were inserted in, they tried to follow the questions that were raised by local politicians, interested citizens of Teresina, syndicate leaders, teachers, retirees, and journalists, all almost anonymous in the report of the hearing that came after. The questions were simply read, but not answered. After all, the objective of the hearing is to inform, not chat; and if you sign the attendance list, to have some food for the road. [...] communities participated in the public hearings, but the public hearings, according to the communities themselves, were very complicated, because people could not be heard, in most times, they could not interject questions through speech, it had to be written, and the traditional communities command the oral language better, and those who could speak, had their time limited. In the process of the hearing, it was commented that they offered a snack to everyone, but the condition to have it was to sign a paper to confirm the attendance, but the people also had doubts, so the process is very troublesome and the studies are being remade. Every time the joint venture are questioned, they remake the studies, so there is not really confidencexl [Translated by the author from the original dialogue with Antonio Bispo, in the road from Floriano to Periperi, June 2013] The questions raised in the hearings had to do with concerns about the impacted sites and number of communities included in the influence area; clarifications on the connections between the Power Complex project and the Plan for Acceleration of Growth (PAC); possibility of a real consultation process through a plebiscite; indemnification of property and people eventually to be removed from the impacted areas; elucidation of the measures and proceedings for the relocation of communities under the influence area; screening of the archaeological and natural patrimony in the influence area; studies about the economic activities and alternatives to the implementation of the project; navigability of the river; habitat of the fish; and the impact on its runnels; revitalization of the river and the preservation of the vegetation around it. The participants also complained about the short time that was given for their 97 voices, as compared with the time that was occupied by the representatives of the joint venture to “inform” in the audience. Despite what was said in the report of the hearing given to IBAMA, the quilombolas, traditional farmers, and general public were dissatisfied with the level of complexity and density of the information delivered at the hearing. The hearing did not address the expectations of the inhabitants of Amarante and the influence area of the dams, nor how the development project would effectively change their lives, or what parameters the joint venture was using to assess that change. Instead of consulting the population, the hearing added to the already inflated sensation of abandonment, suspicion, and incredulity, concreting a perception that the development project was going to be a non-participatory, top-down imposition. We really don’t know anything. There is a lot of talk, a lot of speech, a lot thesis, but a lack of action. In truth, you are the first to come here and touch this subject. It is obvious that I think all communities have already said that at the public hearing. It is obvious that at this public hearing it was openly said to people, the professionals, and the technicians which were in charge of it. It was openly spoken about, the dissatisfaction, do you understand? Although, we also knew that only dissatisfaction will not mean anything to this country, because Belo Monte is there to show to the whole country and in this public hearing it was asked of these technicians who were there defending this cause, if they could show us any case in Brazil where there was an impact of dams, and anyone was satisfied? We notice that there are associations, there is the movement, and what we recently came to know is that it was already bid upon several times and there was no joint venture to claim it. Why? The cost is so big for a minimum production. Last week, I saw on television, politicians saying that there was no winners and there won’t be no winners because the investment is big, inclusively because this one here, because there 5 dams here in Parnaíba. This one here would be the one which would produce lowest of all the five. We even think that sooner or earlier, we don’t knowxli [Translated by the author from the original conversation with Socorro Leal Paixão, Fazenda Araras, Amarante, PI, June 2013]. All in all, the questions had to do with the expectations of the inhabitants, raised by a potential and significant change in their lives, which would have effects that could not be anticipated, based on what they had been informed about. What would actually be modified, for better or worse, was not being addressed, and as there was no real exchange going on, one could never be sure how much it was appreciated by either side. This was the case for Seu Raimundo and Seu Antonio, for example, present among 98 the 1,662 people that signed the attendance list that afternoon in the Municipal Stadium Rufino José Celestino, in Teresina. As it happens in systems where power relations are asymmetric, the less that people are informed, the better the results for the dominator group, who can perpetuate its dominion over a population of destitute no-bodies. These destitute no-bodies are left clueless within their powerless existence. However, as Scott (1986) points out, there are other everyday forms of resistance that might emerge in scenarios such as these, where there is no clear institutional way out, or where the conditions for rebellion that could lead to a revolutionary process are not on the immediate horizon. Furthermore, it was important to see, with the help of Ortner (1995), that there were other internal dynamics at work in Periperi. One the one hand, they would represent different forms of resistance outside the common dominator-dominated dilemma. On the other hand, they came to de-romanticize the existence of Periperi and its inhabitants as merely being played-out, submissive, non-participatory, accepting ponds. In order to further explore these resistance strategies, it is necessary to unfold a few more of the events that led to the drive towards the identification of the community as quilombola and the acquisition of a larger real state in the surrounding areas under the agrarian reform regime by certain elements of the community. We will have time for that in the next chapter, but for now I will address the first step of the materialization of the “quilombola drive”, which came from a place the joint venture never would have imagined when they singled out the community of Mimbó as the only quilombola community in the municipality and disregarded all the other riverside communities from their study. Some months later after the hearings, Fundação Cultural Palmares (FCP) was asked, under environmental regulation, to pronounce the findings of the joint venture for the influence area of the Castelhano and Estreito dams on quilombola communities. 99 Judging by what is in the official reports issued by the FCP25, they did not really get it. They have also not improved much over the years, according to what quilombolas from Periperi and Riacho dos Negros alike have presently stated. FCP’s reports highlighted the fact that the joint venture continued to acknowledge Mimbó as the only quilombola community identified in the influence area of both dams. Although Mimbó remained until this year as the only certified quilombola community in the municipality of Amarante, several other communities, including Periperi, had already been identified by FCP26, and thus, should have been considered in the impact studies implemented in the region. 25 Parecer 23/DPA/FCP/MinC/2010, December 9th, 2010. Parecer 001/DPA/FCP/MinC/2011, January 18th, 2011. 26 Besides Mimbó, among the quilombola communities situated in the influence area of the power plants Estreito and Catelhano, FCP identified, in the municipality of Amarante, the quilombola communties of Caldeirão, Conceição, Remanso, Malhadinha, Lages, Lagoa, and “Piripiri” (Periperi). It is also in the Report indentification reported by the Coordenação Estadual das Comunidades Quilombolas, which identified other communities in Amarante, besides the quilombola community of Manga, in the municipality of Floriano. They are: Morros, Malhada Vermelha, Belo Monte, Gameleira, Veredinha, Mel, Mandacaru, Raposa, and Conceição. Regarding the influence area of the Castelhano power palnt alone the Report included the quilombola communities of Riacho dos Negros, in Palmerais/PI, and Brejo de São Félix, in Parnarama/MA. Parecer 23/DPA/FCP/MinC/2010, December 9th, 2010. Parecer 001/DPA/FCP/MinC/2011, January 18th, 2011. 100 Figure 3 – Map of the “Direct and Indirect Influence Area” (AHE Castelhano) and “Indirect Influence Area” (AHE Estreito), Amarante and Palmerais, Piauí, Brazil. Source: Environmental Impact Assessment AHE Castelhano. Chesf/CNEC/Energimp/Queiroz Galvão. Date: November 2009 101 Apparently, most of the considerations FCP made in the report were disregarded by the joint venture. None of the quilombola communities listed by FCP are part of the direct and indirect influence area map above, taken from the power plants very own EIA/RIMA. In the official report by FCP, it is criticized that there was no real dialog with the communities, as it was only done in an informal and unilateral way, without consent or a specific format, like the public consultations, anticipated by the 169th ILO Convention and accepted in Brazil until the present. Aside from the fact that no sound information was provided by the joint venture, even about Mimbó, the community singled out in the EIA/RIMA, and from then on every report that a public office, NGO, or international organization made about the Power Complex, it did result in gaining the attention of the “left-out” communities, as well as that of a certain “blessed” eye. Bispo had been talking to black riverside communities in the municipalities of Amarante and Palmerais for quite some time now with relatively little success. That is why he considered the self-identification quilombola process in the state, and it was no different in this region, backwards in relation to the national average. From a Marxist perspective, conditions were not really in place for a revolution. There was not a noticeable class struggle, for the illusion of an impoverished state had led to the phony idea that the gap between the ones who own the means of production were not that far from the working mass. They continued to rule, holding every public office, owning and being able to register every piece of land. Workers were not really workers for the relations with the ruling class were permeated by a familiar touch, added to a lifetime of vassalage, and embedded in asymmetric racialized relations. A few of the black were allowed gradually into public offices, some of them were granted an invitation to the owner’s club. When they did not play their part seemingly, they were simply swept from their feet and back to their assigned seats. A striking example is the trajectory of Seu Raimundo who came to be the President of Amarante’s Rural Workers Syndicate, and Seu Antonio, who held a chair at the board of Directors of the same Syndicate. At the first sign of resistance to the establishment, they 102 were moved out. Today they play the sidelines gathering votes and momentum for the ruling white elite in exchange for some crumbs. The reality described is like that of the self-fulfilling Scottian prophecy that “all too frequently the peasantry finds itself in the ironic position of having helped to power a ruling group whose plans for industrialization, taxation and collectivization are very much at odds with the goals for which peasants had imagined they were fighting” (Scott, 1986: 6). The process that in some cases could virtually extinguish communities alongside the Parnaíba River has turned out in some cases to be a booster for the self-identification quilombola process. This was the case with Riacho dos Negros, and most recently with Periperi. Communities could see for the first time that “the quilombola thing” was for real. And being “for real” meant that being quilombola generated distinct rights. And being quilombola could press the joint venture and official authorities to address communities identified as such, like it happened with Mimbó. After all, Mimbó had made the headlines just for being black and rural, with a history connected to slavery. They also had a distinct historical trajectory based on their collective identity within the delicate context of scarce information and potential threats to the existence of their riverside communities. Such things had not been well regarded by anyone in the region before that. In the state, black had always been synonym of poor; if you are from the rural area, even poorer and more ignorant. Who would want to relate to that? Interestingly enough, despite the Article 68 being in place for over 20 years, and Decree 4887 for a little less than a decade by that time, some community leaders started at that moment to see identification as quilombola as a palpable way out of the issues they had been forced into by the potential implementation of the dams. They began gradually introducing the quilombola self-identification into their “ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups” (Scott, 1986: 6). […] foot-dragging, dissimulation, false-compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth. […] They require little or no co-ordination or planning, they often represent a form of individual self-help; and they typically avoid any direct symbolic confrontation with authority or with elite norms” 103 Results were at odds. When some leaders in the neighbouring community of Riacho dos Negros blockaded the main road to Teresina, Palmerais with burning tires, sticks, and stones, they made headlines in state TV and newspapers. I am talking about Riacho dos Negros because they are engendering resistance strategies that have been followed by Periperi leaders, who have come to relate to their narratives, and, to some extent, use their experiences in Riacho dos Negros as base for emulation in Periperi. They also joined the mobilization in Riacho dos Negros when they blockaded the road, and partnered up with them during the public hearings regarding the potential implementation of the dams, which affect both communities. Chuta, one of the leaders of the community, explains how the idea of the demonstration came from a child who had overheard the adults talk at the community’s square about the announcement that the construction of the dams would be initiated soon. The child had seen on the news a demonstration carried out by some “Indian” people somewhere he could not identify, who had burnt tires and gone crazy blockading the highway. After a fifteen-minute assessment of the pros and cons and of the available spare tires in the community, they decided to move whatever they had into the highway. They spent three days in the blockade, and state representative of IBAMA even deemed to come down from Teresina to talk to them. After fierce negotiation, they put down their “ordinary weapons”, and dispersed from the highway. Yes, they made some fuss, and they did get a commitment from the state representative of IBAMA that the joint venture would reassess the studies, and include Riacho dos Negros. A report later came out that showed Riacho dos Negros in the direct line of the dams. Everyone would have to be relocated. Although they could not change, at that time, their odds in relation to the impacts the dam would inflict on them, they sure did shift their position in the way that the developers, government, as well as local and regional society addressed the community. 104 In Periperi things were running at a slower pace. They were still afflicted with lingering sores from a poorly ending story of relative “wealth” generated by the creation of a collective project, materialized on the Periperi’s Association of Comunitarian Development. They had become the number one producers in the region, but had numerous loans taken out on the behalf of the community by some of their leaders who managed them recklessly in the end, following internal disputes. Contributing factors were the failed governmental development projects, bringing technologies ex-situ with international funding, internal disputes of resource allocation, and old grudges. All this created a sentiment in the community of suspicion, and even aversion to collective projects. In spite of the collective space of the community (mainly the river and the Chapadões from where the houses are settled over to the edge of the hills that limit the boarders of the community), everyone was keeping to themselves. Anything that resembled an attempt to join hands in a project was immediately connected with the failure of the Association and consequently discarded. Nonetheless, the news of the dam stirred up apparently resentfully settled issues. The disinformation and erasing game that the joint venture played revived in Periperi the role of some of its leaders and their alliances that had long been deteriorated and unauthorized. Without any correlation to the universal categorization Wallace (1956) tried to make, I found that his “mazeway” psychological schemes were quite useful to picture the social change in process in Periperi. For Wallace, the “mazeway”, which is a mental image of a society elaborated by themselves, is always trying to adapt to different levels of stress. Stress was definitely upon Periperi with the lingering potential impacts of the dams and the possibility of flooding in parts or all of the land of the community. The prolonged uncertainty and lack of information also augmented the stress levels on the community. And finally, the stagnation created by the situation contributed further to the increase of stress, as communal and individual life itself could not be planned ahead without careful consideration of the effects of the dams. 105 Everyday life examples of stress generated by this situation multiplied in numbers over the years of stagnation. A child is born in the community, the parents could never be certain if they invested in the construction of a new bedroom or not, for it could all be flooded next month. Farmers could never be certain to plant in the “terras filé” just up from the riverside, for they were positive they would be flooded by the dams, but did not know when. Seu Antonio’s porch, where we always sat down to chat, is waiting for the roof to be erected when all that fuss is washed away. For Wallace, change occurs within a society through individual perceptions of the surrounding reality, connected with evaluations of stress levels. Those are situations when the individual is forced to choose between putting up with a situation of stress and maintain the current “mazeway”, or create a different “mazeway” with the expectancy of achieving new bearable stress patterns. These are the situations which the author identifies with the occurrence of revitalization movements. “A revitalization movement is defined as a deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture” (Wallace, 1956: 265). Following Wallace’s characterization of revitalization movements, what happened in Periperi had traces of revivalistic and vitalistic movements. Revivalistic movements emphasize the institution of values, customs and aspects of nature, which are thought to have been part of the “mazeway” in previous generations but are not present now. Despite the grudges of the past, it is expected that Seu Raimundo and Seu Antonio dealt with this new stress provoked by the potential of change caused by the dams, for they are examples of past leadership, organization, wealth, and community based development. It is not a linear process, and ups and downs were observed all by the internal community negotiation process. What was interesting, though, was that their legitimacy was never questioned; their authority was challenged, but never really contested. Another aspect of the revivalistic movement in Periperi has to do with their own characterization of the community as quilombola. Back in the 1950s, Carneiro (2011 106 [1958]: XXXVI) in addressing the quilombo as a historically atomized dead fact, but still an imaginary reference to the present struggle of the black movement in Brazil, believed that the quilombo was a “reaffirmation of the culture and style of life of Africans. […] they were a counter-acculturation phenomena of rebellion against the patterns of life imposed by the official society, and of restoration of old values” [Translated by the author from the originalxlii]. If we add to the counter-acculturation phenomena the whole process of “confluence” that characterized the formation of distinct quilombola social groups, it is plausible to say, therefore, that they drew on their familiar and communitarian traditions and later constructed knowledge to organize their communities. Additionally, Carneiro states that the formation of quilombos was part of a larger process of stress within the society that he calls “official”. If we disregard his assumptions of a loosening of the control exercised by the landlords as a causality, which there is no sound record of in the historical texts, his investigation on the relation of the formation of the quilombos and the localized economic downfall of the colonial mode of production along with the increase in the number of enslaved brought to the country in different regions and distinct periods, we could say that the counter-acculturation the quilombos represented was a resistance strategy responding to the levels of stress inflicted in the whole local social system. The quilombo was, therefore a singular happening in the national life, whatever angle one looks at it. As a way of fighting slavery, as a human settling, as a social organization, as a reaffirmation of values of African cultures, under all these aspects the quilombo reveals itself as a new, unique, peculiar fact – a dialectic synthesis [Translated by the author from the originalxliii] (Carneiro, 2011 [1958]: XVL). This resistance was aided by the traces of what Wallace calls vitalistic movements, which are the same processes presumably at work in Periperi presently. Vitalistic movements are characterized by the importation of alien values, customs and material into the “mazeway”. Periperi could not find allies in the local elite, all pro Power Complex project, from the mayor, to the city councillors, to the President of the 107 Syndicate, to the larger companies installed in the region, such as Suzano Celulose, a big paper producer and land owner in the region. They could find some allies within the “traditional farmers”, small-scale, white, once relatively wealthy and important for the agrarian local economy, but today destitute of their waning importance. They remain landowners, though, but produce nothing or very little from the land. In addition to their weak position in the already asymmetric power relations of the region, Periperi had to get over a history of racial prejudice in order to concrete the alliance with the “traditional farmers”. So, although they do have common agendas in respect of the implementation of the dams, they have little power between them to face the contrary forces, and they still have to work out a backlog of unsettled business, which is not likely to happen in a short time. It is easy to see why someone like Bispo would find audiences there in Periperi and other surrounding communities. Bispo had been aware of this shift that news of the dams had generated in the communities in the influence area of the larger Power Complex, such as Amarante and Palmerais. It was an opportunity to articulate the everyday forms of resistance into an organized strategy. First, it was important that the communities advanced their self-identification process. In order to do that, they would have to get to know and register their history, long erased by prejudice and invisibility, disregarded by regional and national society and intentionally sunk into the oblivion by local elite. Understanding their heritage would be the platform for the claiming of their rights. Nevertheless, as it would be in the case of La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba, and, in Canada, with the Hwlitsum, understanding heritage and registering it would lead us a long way. In 2015, Cuban journalist Tato Quiñones spoke to me about “los pueblos sin historia”, referring to the book he had just published about the “abacuá”, a secret society of men, connected to a “carabalí”27xliv origin, who have consistently made 27 “[...] ‘carabalí’, came to be called the gathering of ethnicities that dwell in the actual Southeast province of the Nigerian Republic, in the territory known as the ‘Old Calabar’ [...] the ñañiguismo [the 108 headlines of the police reports in Cuba from the colonial 19th century, throughout the Machadian and Batistian dictatorship periods, and into the Revolution years. The “abacuá” society played a major role in organizing African enslaved in political strife against a societal system that institutionally excluded and subjugated them. As we will see later in this work, it was also present in La Marina and is to this day a source of the neighbourhoods’ identity, built around its resistance strategies. The problem lies in how to access a secret society that has been put in a position of marginalization since its creation. However, the things came to be known because the elders told them to the younger, as I tell you now. That is how things came to be known; but there is no History, or if there is a History, what happens is that it is not written. (Quniñones, 2014: 20). […] the religious organizations in Cuba were not only efficient instruments for the conservation and transmission of their cultures, if not, furthermore, they exercised political organization functions in order to fight slavery. Their clandestine character hid their true political role. [Translated by the author from the originalxlv] (Quiñones, 2014: 106). In the midst of their struggle for recognition, the Hwlitsum have had to face and encounter different stories about themselves. Being neglected recognition from the Canadian State as well as by other tribes in the Cost Salish world, the have had to make their case to different bodies both within government and within indigenous institutions. They have also had to gather attention from the Canadian “official society”, in order to present themselves as no only “legit” but “nice” Indians. Each one of these arenas is regulated by different parameters of satisfaction as to what an indigenous band under the Indian Act should be; as to how the Hwlitsum would not or would best overlap with the interest of other bands; as to whatever impact their recognition as a band would have to property arrangements in place by the “official society”. To each one of these arenas that often times run concurrently a distinct strategy had to be laid out. Those strategies are all counter-hegemonic and with intentionality, though intensions on both sides are not at times clearly stated. Nevertheless, in having to abacuá secret society] constitutes a very singular ethographic and anthroplogical phenomena that, outside Africa, can only be observed in Cuba”. Translated by the author of the original (Quiñones, 2014: 69). 109 please different intensions laid out on these multiple arenas, the Hwlitsum have had to access different portions of their history and culture, making some of them explicit in one arena and not in the other. Aware of this, Bispo put together a carefully assembled kaleidoscope of coalitions that fed upon each other’s work to reconstruct the intentionally neglected and erased heritage of the black rural population in the state. The way that it works with political leaders like Kimbo in La Marina, or Chief Rocky of the Hwlitsum people, or Bispo in Piauí, is that they seek scholarly assistance that can aid them in their political struggles. The pay off is that we, as anthropologists, are able to see these processes from the inside with much greater clarity, which would be virtually impossible from surveys or other aggregated data. In this kaleidoscope was the inventory of cultural references from black rural communities in the state that IPHAN carried out in 2006 (IPHAN, 2006). Also several researches from the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI) and the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) who were initiated to these communities to study the impacts of the Power Complex, such as Kalume (2013) on the quilombola community of Manga; Sousa (2013a, 2013b) and Periperi; Costa; Saraiva (2011), and the historical architecture of Amarante. Here is where the parallel between the revivalistic and vitalistic movements becomes clearer. As this work developed, Periperi started to connect with the dormant stories that referred to their heritage. The community had historically struggled to fit in with the “official” whitened society of Amarante, avoiding any connection with their blackened phenotype, rural backwardness, and conflicted past related to slavery that labeled them as ignorant and submissive. Shades of affirmation as black people, tales of the history of the community related to the slavery period, and a relative pride in the rediscovered heritage materialized in the traditionally engineered forms of production and social organization that came up in the Periperi’s Association of Community Development, began to appear in the context of the self-identification process at hand. 110 To fill in the blanks, outside comparative references in support of the community’s self-identification process were brought in with the aforementioned works. I came to dwell in Periperi after all this was already in progress. Aside from my role as a researcher based on both the UnB and the UBC, I was working at FCP as an international adviser. I did have concerns that this job engagement could befuddle my own involvement with the community. It was unclear at first, although Bispo had told me the community was quite experienced in different contexts of struggle. It became clearer once Periperi and I got to know each other better and I got to understand the reach of the previous work that had been developed. The community had already been discussing the quilombola identity, and had reached a decision in at least two recorded group meetings that it was the way to go. Sure, there were different levels of understanding of what being a quilombola meant, and there were still some who held grudges about the term itself “quilombola”, and those lingering stereotyped connections of black and poor, rural and ignorant. All in all, community members came together around their quilombola identity, whether enthusiastically or reluctantly. This is what gave them momentum for the negotiation of a research project about the community that could relate with and give support to the process of certification of the community as being reminiscent of quilombo. Quite an organized strategy of resistance, I must say. So now, the everyday forms of resistance, which did not “present any public or symbolic challenge to the legitimacy of the production and property arrangements being resisted […] neither required any formal organization […] had no authors who would publicly take responsibility for them” (Scott, 1986: 10), had conditions for entering a “transition period” (Peluso; Watts, 2001). This “transition period” is such in which the historically weaved power relations that kept communities apart from the land allocation and decision-making process, are in a process of forceful reorganization by the implementation (or the struggle for implementation) of legislation refereeing their rights. 111 I applied the same concept in 2010, when another quilombola community, Santana, in the state of Pernambuco was facing impacts of the construction of a canal which split the territory of the quilombo, and which would carry the waters of the transposition of the biggest river of the Northeast, the São Francisco, across the region (Brasil, 2014). The community had been certified by FCP four years back from the date, and in the wake of similar intentional disinformation and disregard by the authorities and entrepreneurs alike, the community applied to INCRA for land regularization under Decree 4887, as a collective owned quilombo. Their process ran relatively quick in comparison to the national average, as it took them some five years until President Dilma Rouseff signed the Decree28 granting them collective ownership of their territory in 2011. The challenge for the communities to get recognition takes many forms, but arrives at two distinct turning points, which can be complementary or independent. I have never come across a situation where the process of certification opposed or hurt the process of titling. In most cases they are intertwined turning points, and often “conditions of possibility” may produce one or the other, or both of them. Sometimes, as it is the case in Periperi, conditions for the drive towards certification are built within the self-identification process itself, in which land issues play a primary role, but have not yet become the focus. Other times, like in the case of the quilombola community of Jambuaçu, in the state of Pará (Pereira, 2008), the struggle is directly connected with land issues, and the question of the titling becomes urgent, although woven inside the self-identification process, as it has to be, since the negotiation is for a collective title. No evolutionary rule can be applied between one or other and, since they are turning points, they will inflict a change in the social relations surrounding them to different degrees of intensity, according to each individual case. There is no direct relation of intensity that can be drawn from either the certification or the titling. 28 http://www.in.gov.br/visualiza/index.jsp?data=31/01/2011&jornal=3&pagina=124&totalArquiv os=216, acesso em 10 de fevereiro de 2011. 112 The certification is based in the concept of self-identification as it is laid out by the 169th ILO Convention. Since its creation in the year of the Constitution, the process29 has suffered from the instability of the governmental body which is responsible for it, the Palmares Cultural Foundation (FCP). The FCP has held a marginal spot in every government since. Today it ranks as having the lowest budget of all federal bodies. Its policy has been built around relatively well intentioned particularisms and is carried on the shoulders of a passionate, distorted group of black intellectuals and artists, whitened administrators, and occasional free-lancers. I came to enhance my understanding of the particularisms of the construction of the process of certification in 2013 during a reunion of all the ex-presidents of the FCP, held by its last former president. José Rufino, who conducted Palmares when Fernando Henrique Cardoso was President of the nation, remembered that nobody knew what to do with Article 68, and it probably would be lost into oblivion. To promote the regularization of land for the quilombos would be like messing with a beehive in the nude. Opening a new window on land reform in Brazil that was just not going to happen. But as nobody really knew what the certification would grant rights to, Rufino decided to start granting certifications all around, even though he had scarce means to do it. Only 234 certifications were issued before 2002, but considering the conditions given to FCP, the inexperience dealing with such a precarious subject, and the doubts about the Foundation's mandate to implement land regularization, it was not a bad result overall. As we saw earlier on this chapter, numerous legislations marked the process of constructing the “official” definition of the quilombo, and at the same time, pinned down the attributions of each governmental body within the thematic. When it was clear that the attributions related to land regularization were not under the certification 29 In order to be certified a community has to present a report to FCP, which contains information on their historical organization process, a memoir with the signatures of a significant number of members of the community who relate to the self-identification process, and a communitarian petition to issue the certification as a quilombo. The reports currently aided by a technical visit by FCP. 113 and the FCP, the speed of certifications slowed, as the responsibility of the remaining demands on that subject had been shifted over to INCRA, who took it on without the structure or knowledge to do so30. In 2008, when FCP became part of the official institutions that were involved with the Environmental Licensing process, the numbers of certifications were on a rise-up again. In 2012, surrounding discussions over the necessity to reach a conclusion for PAC development projects, certified communities were suddenly ousted from consideration in the Environmental Licensing. Certification numbers diminished again during this period. Nowadays, with the slow pace of titling, certification gained speed again. This briefly described history sheds light on a cyclic process of indifference and reluctance by the central government, along with a complete disregard for the policy itself, more than it does a mutually exclusive relationship between the two regulations. Behind the scenes, it can be seen how each regulation creates a shift within the resistance strategies of these communities in order to adapt to the fluctuating rules of the game. The trajectory of the quilombo of Santana and their struggles for titling and resisting the implementation of the transposition of the São Francisco River make a good example of this reality for the communities. By the time the Decree granting them collective ownership of their territory was signed, the 64 family quilombo had paid a high price for the relatively organized resistance strategies it had engineered in order to preserve and continue its existence. Some 17 km long and 500 m wide of the community’s preserved Caatinga were wiped-out by the canal, which also made a significant part of their territory inaccessible. This had direct effects on the local community organization, as the water supply, originally from the stream which ran 30 Today, the process for titling is run by INCRA. It can be initiated by the Institute itself or by any quilombola or quilombola organization. Then, a Technical Report of Identification and Delimitation (RTID) is prepared, and later forwarded to several official bodies responsible for different intersecting interest for manifestation. If everything is accordingly, the Portaria of Recognition of the Quilombola Territory is issued by the president of INCRA, which is followed by the Decree of Dispossession for Social Interest, signed by the President of the Republic. More on www.incra.gov.br, access on 18.03.15. 114 through the community, was cut off by the canal, creating numerous challenges for agricultural development and goat farming, which were the main sources of communitarian income. Youth from the quilombo flocked to the fallacious job opportunities offered by the constructors, only to find them much more shot-term, low paying, precarious, and longer hours than the entrepreneurs and government officials had made them believe. The dispute over the indenisation of the land dispossessed for the construction of the canal broke out into an internal battle over whose land was whose within a community where everything was shared before. The collective identity process suffered a blow from which it almost could not recover. It was clear that the “incipient achievement of rights generated by the quilombola struggle carried within the impulse for a reorganization of the social relations in the region, which is a source of stress by itself” (Brasil, 2014: 164). Through the assessment of the community, its relations to the construction of the canal, and the numerous agencies involved, it could be verified that the quilombo of Santana was under a ‘transition period’ […] which was intensified when the community organized around its identity struggle. Nevertheless, it is also true that communitarian organization around its political struggle produces a greater capacity for better-qualified interfaces. In scenarios of natural resource extraction, there is an even greater asymmetry in power relations, which coax identity fragmentation. Sometimes it is the very own communitarian organization that serves as the last barrier for its dissolution (Brasil, 2014: 171). In November of last year, I was invited as an observer to the National Quilombola Articulation Table, run by INCRA with representatives of quilombola communities from all over the country. I sat right behind Maria Aparecida, one of the leaders of the quilombo of Santana. In a personal communication with her at the end of the meeting, I had the opportunity to give her several copies of the book, which gathered facts, impressions and conclusions about the quilombo and its struggle, under the context of the implementation of the canal (Brasil, 2014). It was also a chance to get an update on what the quilombo was up to. 115 The book itself presented a great start for the conclusions she would kindly offer me that afternoon. After the collective titling of the community in 2011, which coincided with the partial interruption of construction on the canal (which is presently unfinished), push came to shove, and communitarian leaders started reorganizing communitarian life around the identity issue. It is still unclear what kind of project of life the quilombo is engineering. The very participation of Maria Aparecida at a government organized articulation table on quilombo land regularization issues is a sign of the communitarian involvement. She also spoke timidly about the other initiatives, such as the renovation of the school and construction of new houses in partnership with governmental federal bodies, and the initial re-involvement of the community’s youth around communitarian issues. It has always struck me, the velocity of identity fragmentation and the complexity of its reorganization, let alone reconstruction. It is also yet to be seen what kind of local and regional reorganization of power relations the recent certification of Periperi as reminiscent of quilombo by FCP31 will engender. Especially because all the bids for the dams put together by the National Electricity Agency (ANEEL) resulted in no contesters until now. Little by little, fear of the arrival of the dams has loosened within the community and the issue has lost its momentum in the local communitarian discussions. Thus, news of the certification of the Periperi arrived at a time in which conditions for the “transition period” are in place, yet are somehow dormant. It might be the high time for what Almeida called “’momentos de transição’ [transition moments] or the particular historical situations in which social groups and peoples realize that there are ‘conditions of possibility’ to push their basic claims forward, to recognize their collective identities, and mobilize forces around them, transforming their practical knowledge into a vigorous formal-juridical instrument”xlvi (Almeida, 2008: 17). In that sense, each of the three cases described have gone through 31 Self-identification Certification, issued by FCP in the Portaria 19 of January 30th, 2015, published in the National Official Diary (DOU), in Februry 2nd, 2015. 116 “transition moments”, unequivocally different from each other, but with sound results in regard to “vigorous formal-juridical instruments”. One might argue that the titling warrants more concrete rights to land than the certification, which refers more to the cultural rights of the community. But the difference is in the modality of the instrument, not in the insensitivity or validity of the “transition moment” and its corresponding effects on the community. That is why, in all three cases described, the “transition moments” were so intimately connected with the construction of the collective identification process, along with its motivations, correlations, and development. Moreover, the “conditions of possibility” were in each case related to specific “transition periods”. The question after all this, in each context, is whether these “conditions of possibility”, created within “transition periods”, will grow to have a life of their own or if there is a dependence between them, which might lead to a gradual drifting away from the self-identification process along with the subsiding of the conditions that provoked the “transition period” itself, in spite of the formal-juridical instruments achieved. From my reading of Almeida (2008: 29), I believe that this relation made between “conditions of possibility” and “transition periods” is a given. “Transitions periods” produce “transition moments”, which allow for “conditions of possibility”. The question is how a community embraces those conditions and moves into organized or “everyday forms of resistance”, and the strategies used to engineer this action. [...] the access to natural resources for the use in productive activities is not engaged only through the traditional intermediate structures of the ethnic group, of the kinship groups, of the Family, of the village, but also by a relative degree of cohesion and solidarity obtained in face of antagonists and situations of extreme adversity and conflict, which politically reinforce the solidarity networks. [...] The political-organizational criterion outstands, combined with ‘politics of identity’, from which the objectivized social agents draw their movement to face their antagonists and the State apparatusxlvii [Translated from the original by the author] (Almeida, 2008: 29-30). Even before I arrived to Periperi in the first place, Bispo had another surprise up his sleeve. On our way out of the Araras farm, we took a dirt road and came out at one 117 of the auxiliary entrance roads of Amarante. Immersed in the conversations with Bispo, I barely noticed the directions he pointed periodically to Washinha, but I had the impression we would make one more stop before our destination, although I had no idea where. The auxiliary road we took narrowed as robust trees closed in, ending up at a gigantic just after a little wooden bridge over a creek of crystal clear running water. Past the gate, we stood at a sign which read “sítio Floresta [Floresta ranch]”, placed on top of an enormous replica of a bottle of “cachaça” which had a label that said “Lira”. I understood right away why we were there. The Lira family was one of the first to arrive in Amarante, and according to them, along with the Ayres and the Veloso, it is reputed to consist of the Village of São Gonçalo of Amarante, erected over the Indigenous allotment Akroá. The region where Amarante is currently situated was the territory of the Akroá Indigenous people, from the group of the Pimenteira, and the Caraíba linguistic family. The conflict between the Indigenous and the Portuguese colonizers in the region had already begun in the 18th century with the first attempts at the “unravelling” of Piauí (Lima Sobrinho, 1946). The literature on this “unravelling”, again, is tinted by the paradoxical dilemma of love and detachment, which impregnates the social relations in the state presently. Porto (1955) indicates that Piauí’s colonization was motivated by “the riches of its sesmarias”. However, further along his description, the author refers several times to the gruelling times that the colonizers had to go through and in the hands of the prickly nature of the inhabitants of the region. The reoccurrence of perceptions among colonizers past and present about the inadequacy of the original occupants in a place full of unexplored potential, is bewildering, as we will see also in the microcosms of Periperi. Another interesting point that provokes effects in the present time is the obscure origin of the lands of the state, marked by the fight between the “sesmeiros” and the “posseiros”. Presumably, it was another Portuguese by the name of Domingos, the Mafrense Sertão, and not the heir to the Garcia D’Avila Tower, Domingos Jorge Velho, 118 the Caramuru, the one who experimented through the plains of Piauí with the “inconvenient” Indigenous Akroá, Gueguês, Tremembés, Tapuios, and the rough confluences of the agrestic bioma. Mafrense did not leave descendants, and the lands occupied by and granted to him in sesmarias were trusted to the Jesuits in 1751. Pombal’s measures, during the period of 1755 to 1777, culminated with the expelling of the Jesuits, and the lands reverted to the Portuguese Crown. Part of the lands from the spoil of Mafrense were again leased in sesmarias to private entrepreneurs. The profile of these entrepreneurs was of absentees, but not uninterested. They were already landlords in the state of Bahia, who held several sesmarias, but their occupants held a much more diverse profile. For three years after the autonomy of the state, the Portuguese Crown declared free of debts whoever was willing to settle in Piauí (Porto, 1955). Portuguese and Brazilians “da terra”, white identified born in the country, and colonizers alike flocked to the newly created state in order to make a living on the banks of the Parnaíba river and its runnels. But they were not unaccompanied. Mafrense had tried to create a cattle industry in the state, bringing along with him a contingent of African enslaved workers. With the dissolution of his estate into the hands of the Jesuits, much of his human property established themselves on the unoccupied land. There was born the legend of the “vaqueiro [herdsman]”, the intrepid, and quasi-free-men that would promote the de facto settling of the estates in the region. All throughout the Jesuit control, Pombal’s reversion to the Crown, and the later period of “national farms” administrated by the State (cumulatively over two hundred years), run-away African enslaved from the coast plantations, freed blacks, and dispossessed whites, the “posseiros”, fled and moved to the territory, mixing with the indigenous and black peoples and establishing communities that came to participate in the cattle business. They would work as herdsmen, farmers, and housekeepers in the lands of the “sesmeiros”, the holders of sesmarias titles. Bit by bit they came to own several parts of 119 the open field, many by purchasing its ownership with the selling of the offspring they did not report to the sesmeiros. Periperi is presently located in a “sesmaria” which was divided by the Portuguese Crown into “datas”, one of which was granted to the Veloso family in 1813. Jozé da Costa Vellozo was himself a “posseiro” that established a commerce business selling products originated from cattle business and palm (carnaúba, babaçu, and tucum) extracts to Portugal, and importing from the metropolis general goods to supply the São Gonçalo of Amarante Village. Successful in his venture, Jozé pleaded the Crown to grant him a “data”, claiming he had right over three leagues length and one league wide, inherited part (although not stating from who) and part to be developed on Crown land. That is where he built his estate at the farm Boa Esperança, and where Seu Raimundo’s grandfather began to make his living in Amarante. Boy, this is a history, which I gathered it all, the only thing is that it is not in a book, I have it all in my head. It was like that: this great-great-grandfather of mine arrived from Portugal to here, and I caught the history of his coming. I don`t even know when it was, it was in 1700 and something, something like that. Then when he came to Brazil, that he boarded there, the boat boarded there, there in Parnaíba, there they said, there! we arrived in Brazil. He said: in which state? I want to go to the state of Piauí, because in these times the states were already divided, eh? And then he said: I want to go to the capital of the state of Piauí. Now you board your goods to the smaller boat, because in the Parnaíba only little steamboats and a motorboat that drags five or six boats, of the size of house like that. A monster boat. I still could see that boat. You rent a boat then you transfer your goods, then you catch a little steamboat with your family, and then up the river until you get to the port that is called São Gonçalo, that is here the Amarante. When get to the port of São Gonçalo you board and ask around to see how you can manage to send a message to Oeiras, which is the capital. There were no roads, no planes, no nothing, there wasn’t really not even a wheel barrel. The he came, when he got here he said: is the São Gonçalo port here? Somebody told him: yes. And how do I do to get to the capital, to Oeiras, that a merchandise of mine is coming. He said now you rent a ‘house’ like that, then you send a telegram to Oeiras asking for a troop of donkeys so they can carry your goods and your family. And form here to Oeiras it is not really that far. Today it is so, because of the roads, but back then it was a three-day trip mounted on a donkey. Then he sent the telegram to Oeiras and the telegram arrived, then he mounted the goods on the donkeys. He had to make two trips, transporting my great-grandfather, my grandfather, who was one of the oldest, already married, bringing two kids from Portugal, a man and a woman, and then they went to Oeiras [Translated by the author from the originalxlviii conversation with Dió Veloso, interviewed at his house, Amarante, November 2014]. 120 This sort of violent, absentee, and disordered occupation is intrinsically related to the many loopholes the possession and ownership of the land in the state has until today, and it could not be different in Amarante. The social relations of the present still try to emulate the accommodations of the past in a perverse game of shadows. This game is played by absentee sesmeiros, white colonizers, destitute indigenous peoples, and black occupants, all with precarious claims to the land, and its aftermath is the stage for the present situation, characterized as a “transition period”. The Sesmaria Charters are still the sole so-called “official” source of land rights, though the original sesmeiros are scarcely reputed land in the region. Several quasi-legal arrangements with Crown, and later with the Republic, allowed access to land for the colonizers, land which was far too large for them to develop for their own good. Some of the families like the Veloso are still in the scene, but much of their estate was either bought or taken from them by the occupants, the “posseiros”, who have been adapting precariously to the changing rules over the years. As the system functioned under the practice of transmission of possession, as ownership could not precisely be determined, new whitened colonizers, no more than “posseiros” themselves, have gradually forced the settling of their estates with the aid of public authorities, as they most often have more abundant means of persuasion (money and political influence) than the black and indigenous occupants. Occupants today remain under precarious arrangements that range from crippled possession documents to dispossession, generated by the expropriation of their lands through the gradual cheap buying or forceful expulsion promoted by developers. The indigenous were claimed to be extinct in the state and are presently trying to reclaim bits of their territory, under the rights granted by the Constitution of 1988. They play no major role, though, in the Amarante sub-system today. As colonizers of the region, the Lira family had a farm called Santa Rosa, 12 kilometres from the city center of Amarante. Through processes of occupation similar to those described, they abandoned the farm and their estate was moved to the ranch 121 Floresta, closer to Amarante. Bispo was eager to try their nationally renowned “cachaça”, which has been produced by the family since the glorious times of the Santa Rosa farm. Stopping there had the pretext of trying the product in order to prove its quality for the potential introduction of the liquor into the new venture Bispo was envisioning for his own quilombola community, located in the municipality of São João do Piauí: a traditional restaurant, with locally produced food and other regionally produced commodities. We each bought five or six litres straight from the still at a reasonable price of 20 reais a litre. With a well-deserved and generous degustation in our stomachs that lifted our spirits, we were ready to continue our journey to Periperi. I had no idea than how far those bottles would travel, and the quality of conversation they would create. But that is story for later. Periperi was at hand, and I could not wait another minute. 122 Chapter 4 - The “negos” of Periperi We parked the black Volkswagen gol under the gigantic cashew trees that shaded the porch of Seu Antonio’s house, nearby the relatively new state-administered asphalt road PI-130, 17 kilometers distance from Amarante and 24 from Palmerais. It was lunchtime, and were it not for the enormous crown of trees smothering the searing heat from above, it would not have been possible to sit on those plastic-lace chairs that were brought out onto the porch. Seu Antonio was much like what I had imagined when I first heard of him in Teresina one month and a half prior to our meeting. His welcoming eyes cautiously swept over Washinha and I and our luggage. He met Bispo with a direct look, a firm handshake, and a warm embrace. Bispo was rather enthusiastic in the embrace and made a point about showing how happy he was to be there in Periperi. Bispo was among his flock, there is no doubt about that, but they were not worshipers. Nego Bispo had been coming through black rural communities in the state since the time he had been mandated in the state’s Syndicate and Federation of Rural Workers. It was within the agrarian reform process that his idea of belonging and the connection to a specific ethno-racial state context blossomed and converged into the quilombola struggle. Bispo arrived in the quilombola movement with a background in agrarian struggle, woven within the Syndicate of Rural Workers of his home municipality, Francinópolis, situated at the Berlengas River valley, in the old Papagaio [parrot] hamlet. He reached the board of directors of the state’s Federation of Rural Workers in the late 1980’s, when he was 30 years old. That is also when he understood the distinction between “the class struggle people” and the “traditional people”, who were both treated within the Syndicate by the same logic of access to property rights over land, which implied that the different uses communities make of their territories would not often fit the Syndicate’s agenda. That is when he also encountered new ways to discuss issues closer to his formation, under the state’s quilombola movement. 123 So, when I realized this difference, which was not present were I lived, it was when I arrived at the syndicate, already 30 years old. Then I decided to comprehend it differently, because I comprehended it like that when I was formed. So, I found a closer relation to my formation in the traditional communities, the black communities, and the indigenous communities, among them. And it was then that I saw the inside the syndical movement there was this distinction, there were the traditional people that I dialogued well and there was the class struggle people, whom are from the socioeconomic organization of the country. Then I opted for discussing that which was my formation, my tradition. That was in 89, 90, beginning of the 90’s till half, till 98 [Translated by the author from the originalxlix dialogue with Antonio Bispo, Quilombo of Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, Piuaí, June 2013]. Since the Syndicate years, he had already perceived the racial divide, which made it that the majority of the board was white. He could also see the contradictions between the way that he was raised, the values he accessed during his formation, and what the class struggle offered him. It made him think about the condition of black people amid the agrarian struggle in his region; the uses black communities, such as the one he was raised in, made of their land; and the opposition between different ideas of property. He realized that the agrarian reform did not discuss the uses of land, but the property of land. That is why he stated that these black communities are not characterized by familiar agriculture, which is rooted to the familiar cooperative property of the land, but rather by collectiveness, which embraces different uses of the territory, according to communitarianism. By this logic, there were fields everyone could use; individual use of the land was based on the capability of working on it; and that arrangement was not written on stone, as the capability of working the land might vary momentously by individual, family and the use the community decides of the land. So, land was not a commercial good, a property, land was nature’s element, an element of use and support for the community members economic, social and cultural reproduction. [...] Then it be good for you to listen to other people and you will hear other versions and all the versions are a reality, a situation. But, I my case, how do I press on the subject? In 1990, I go to the Rural Worker’s Syndicate and then when I arrive at the Syndicate, what do I find, I find a class structure, of one category, but where the directions, the people who form opinion, who are more in the front-line, most of them, are people of light skin. Although most of rural population in Piauí are black people, the people who are at the board of the Syndicate are of light skin. Yes. And then, I am one of the people of dark skin who entered. So, in the Syndicate, the first president of the municipality where I was born is of dark skin, but he was a person who had some entry, an involvement with municipal public power, and he was, he had a relation with the white folk, very different than mine. When I arrive at the Federation, there I see it differently, in the Federation I 124 see a lighter color. I enter in the Federation of the Workers in Agriculture and we where six at the board. Two people of dark skin and four of light skin. And among the people of dark skin, in true only one person of dark skin and five of lighter skin. When one of the lighter skin is ousted is that one of dark skin enters, but that one does not stay, since the context did not allow for him to stay. And then I am always dialoguing with these situations [Translated by the author from the originall dialogue with Antonio Bispo, Quilombo of Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, Piuaí, June 2013]. It was this whitened board that also gave tone to the Syndicate’s agenda: struggle for land ownership that also imposed social categories and uses for what individuals and collectivities did with the land. The multiple social identities that blacks have historically assumed in the state, such as the “posseiro” [who takes possession of the land either by force or by purchase]”, the “meeiros and arrendatários [temporary workers on sort of leased community and farm land]”, the “foreiro [those who pay for the temporary use of the land]”, the “morador [inhabitant]”, and the “cabloco [referring to social-ethnic divisions]”, which coincided most often with labor identities, were transformed and amalgamated, within these Marxist-capitalist-oriented, one-dimensional, whitened syndicate spaces (familiar agriculture), and forced into ex-situ impervious categories (rural workers and peasants) which allow for only one land use form (cooperative or individual property). These historically assumed social identities include the blacksmith, the midwife, the “benzedor [who prays on consultants a fusion of afro and Catholic rituals connected to Umbanda to alleviate their ailments]”, the “raizeiro [also connected to Umbanda, the one who knows and fabricates medicine from roots and herbs], the “oleiro [who make objects from clay]”, the carpenter, the joiner, the cobbler, the “fazedor de jacá [the one who makes the jacá, a sort of a wicker basket that is attached to a horse or donkey], and the donkey tamer. It is when I went to discuss the agrarian reform issue, then I see another delicate situation, which is black people are in determinate areas in which they are treated as historical ‘posseiros’, other people call them ‘moradores’, or ‘foreiros’, anyways, and other denominations, and the people of white skin, they are the ones who have more of the domain over land. So, you will find family agricultures of white skin, whom are ‘proprietários’ [landowners], and you will find black agricultures, whom are ‘moradores’ or are ‘posseiros’ or live in ‘terras devolutas’ of the state [unoccupied government lands], and are not, in general, ‘proprietários’. Or that are, in majority, people with, the ones we say are living in the estate inherited from their grandfathers, of their 125 fathers, but did not proceed with the ‘rolamento’32 or else, then you will begin to see the differences in this relation with documentation, which is the same thing that happens in my community, I was also raised this way. […]. So here, in Piauí, we had, in rural areas, we had several categories, we had the ‘posseiro’, the ‘meeiro’, the ‘foreiro’, the ‘vaqueiro’, the ‘morador’, the ‘arrendatário’, all in all, the ‘caboclo’, we had several denominations, we did not have family agriculture, we did not have rural worker, because when you use rural worker, you are going toward a capitalist category or a Marxist category, well you are going to a class struggle category, you say ‘worker’. That is it. When you classify the rural workers, who live in rural zones, by a logic of labour, you begin to establish, rural worker, worker that, you begin to segment groups, the categories in a logic of labour, but it was not like that, the identities were in its relation with space. It is the ‘morador’, the ‘foreiro’, the ‘posseiro’, the ‘arrendatário’, the ‘caboclo’, and so on, the ‘mestre de ofício’, and then another thing, sometimes there was not even, by this token one could say, the ‘vaqueiro’, the ‘pescador’, the ‘artesão’, the ‘ferreiro’, it was more in the logic, the ‘ferreiro’, the ‘parteira’, the ‘benzedor’, the ‘raizeiro’, the ‘oleiro’, the ‘carpinteiro’, the ‘marceneiro’, so in truth in the space organization was different, it was space and relation with space. So, you had the comrade, who was ‘sapateiro’, the ‘fazedor de jacá’, the ‘fazedor de silla’, and the ‘amansador de burro’. So, categories were distributed by their craft. So, in regard to your craft you were denominated, it did not matter if you were from the city of countryside. You could live in the city and be a ‘sapateiro’, and you could live in the country and be a ‘sapateiro’. You could live in the field and be a ‘marcineiro’, they were all ‘marcineiro’. It was not a rural ‘marcineiro’ and a city ‘marcineiro’. So, this denomination of rural and urban came with the economy, with labour division, with humanity segmentation in categories of work, so market could rule. [Translated by the author from the originalli dialogue with Antonio Bispo, Quilombo of Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, Piuaí, June 2013] We had came to talk about the subject as we sat on an immense jacarandá log laid beautifully on Bispo’s porch, in the quilombo of Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, under a tremendous hangover caused by the 2013 São João Festivity. It was said to have rivaled most famous festivities of Pernambuco in terms of animation, invitees, artists, and, of course in bonfire size, and in quantity of available cachaça. If one or the other festivity was more or less animated, I cannot really tell, but that São João in São João do Piauí would be memorable. The next day’s rich conversation carried on with the excitement of the previous day, as it connected Bispo’s reading of the agrarian struggle and the quilombola movement in the state with the results of our first visit to Periperi. All these elements were present in Periperi: communal use of the land, multiple social identities that community members have historically assumed in the region, and the lack of space to address those issues, caught they were in between the rural class struggle and the “official society”’s strategies of domination. 32 Necessary Notary process in Brazil in order to measure, divide, and delimitate boarder lands and confer property titles. 126 As I sat on Seu Antonio’s porch under that gigantic cashew tree, I could hardly imagine the background that connected Bispo’s trajectory with the political participation of the leaders of the community. Seu Antonio himself had been on the board of directors of Amarante’s Sindicate of Rural Workers, as was Seu Raimundo, the owner of the white Northeastern “vaqueiro” hat I mentioned previously, who I would finally meet at this point. They shared the same “codes” related to the regional agrarian struggle, which made the conversation seem to be facilitated by previously established common ground. What was not as clear, though, related to the subject at hand, which had brought us there to the community from different perspectives, the quilombola self-identification process. Soon after introductions, my anxiety coaxed me into addressing the objectives of my being there, which revealed some unease in the previously welcoming countenance of Seu Antonio. That momentary awkwardness went on through lunch and the after lunch cigarette, back on the porch. We had not taken our bags out of the black Volkswagen yet, as we did not know where we would be staying, but things soon slipped back into ordinary conversation, as I grew accustomed to a rhythm alien to my own unsettled spirit. This was broken by the distant sound of a motorcycle that could be heard clearly through the sibilant sound of the leaves of the cashew trees. Indifferent to our presence, the motorcycle gained speed, as it was approaching the yard up front when Seu Antonio’s shouting stopped it in its tracks. An elder black man with a white hat on his head dismounted the vehicle in ragged working clothes, and a machete on his hips. I was finally going to meet Seu Raimundo. He greeted us with great warmth, and in two-minutes time all the initial unease was dissipated from Seu Antonio’s face as we discussed ideas for the work with the community. Seu Raimundo had a clear picture of how he thought the research could aid the community’s struggle, which provoked further insights from Seu Antonio as well. Later, I would come to know the details about the previous work regarding the self-identification process in Periperi, mainly in the context of the implementation of the 127 dams. This made them quite savvy on what was needed for their envisioned project, although there were many additional steps they were not yet certain about. First of all, the leaders concurred that the history of the community was not fully documented and written yet. They were aware that it was a fundamental piece for the struggle they considered key to their quilombola self-identification process: the certification by Palmares Cultural Foundation. They told me about the somewhat dormant discussions that had taken place a year before, around the issue of the quilombola self-identification, which had generated community-signed memoirs, also seen as important material for the certification. I came to know that the struggle of the community was shared to some extent by other presumably black riverside communities of the immediate surroundings. Leaders of Periperi had arranged meetings there with communities such as Riachão and São João, due to the fact that they saw themselves as, and were seen by these communities as the “source”, both in relation to a presumable “blackness” with a past connected to slavery, and as natural leaders of the communities, drawing upon a past related to Periperi’s Association of Community Development, and the present problems they faced with the dams. The quilombola self-identification process was, thus, directly connected with the fear of the uncertain impacts of implementation of the dams. Coming to think of it now, the recent certification of Periperi as a quilombo not only crowns the achievement of most of these quickly drawn up objectives, but also sheds light on the questions, past and present, about the meaning of the struggle for a collective identification. Those questions are deeply embedded in the community’s historical trajectory, and take into account their organization, their sense of the communitarian, and their territoriality; their identity connected to being black and a history of slavery, as well as their relations with the “official society”, Amarante in particular. The certification drove the community into a “transition moment” on the wake of a “transition period”, coaxed by the potential implementation of the dams and its impacts. Present “conditions of possibility” are deeply rooted in the questions of 128 collective identification. Certification, in a sense, highlights those questions that remain to be addressed. The quilombola community of Periperi is situated within the jurisdiction of the municipality of Amarante, in the state of Piauí. As a whole, 37 families live in an area of around 220 acres, divided into nine "tiras", stripes, of 23 ha each. It is estimated the communities' total population is around 388 inhabitants. Figure 4 - Localization of the community of Periperi between the municipalities of Amarante and Palmeirais, Piauí, Brazil. Source: Screen snap in the author’s possession Date: October 4th, 2013 I exchanged life stories with Periperi on three separate occasions in the year 2013, in May, June, and August. We reunited in November of the following year for a further assessment of the process of our collective work. The members of the quilombola community of Periperi allowed me a joyride in their particular world setting. I think we both came out fine, bruises and all, with that good post-mischief feeling, and the inevitable desire for more. This had all transpired through conversations with the main leadership of the community; collective communitarian meetings; interviews of 129 local politicians; syndicate leaders; inhabitants of Amarante, Palmerais, Floriano, São João do Piauí, and Teresina; research on public and private city archives; literature on the state’s and municipality’s history and present situation; assessment of existing academic, journalistic, legal, public policy and notary work; interviews with governmental officials, conversation with members of other surrounding black communities, as well as other white identifying dwellers (traditional farmers and community members alike); and group and individual talks about the communities' relationship with the Castelhano and Estreito dams. The histories Periperi elders tell about the formation of the community describe the coming of black who had lived enslaved in Bahia working in sugar-cane monoculture farms. In the process of seeking for better life conditions, away from slavery, they established a migration route to Piauí, where they came to play an important part in the cattle farming, as “vaqueiros”. Tapety (2007) was able to capture the social importance of the “vaqueiro” in the construction process of the State’s identity. She places this identity in between the axiom of tradition-modernity, highlighting the aspects that confront the maintenance of traditional practices in today’s world, such as the image of a “vaqueiro” herding cattle on a motorcycle. Although in Periperi the use of a motorcycle for such tasks was considered a luxury, I can understand how Tapety could find questions of authenticity in the state. Disruptions generated by the transformation that the identity has suffered over the years, and the social roles these identities are expected to occupy, informed by modernity’s Western cannons. [...] identify the image of the ‘vaqueiro’ – that man who herds and conducts the ‘reses’ [cattle] out in the field, mounted on horses, dressing a leather suit, ‘perneiras’ [leg cushions], ‘peitoral’ [chest protection], leather flip-flops and hat, whip always at hand, and followed by the friendly and indispensable dog. Today, we observe that these images contradict the contemporaneous representations, to which is evidence the ‘vaqueiro’ mounted on motorcycles ‘herding’ cattle. [Translated by the author from the original]lii (Tapety, 2007: 10-11). It is a pitfall Cruikshank (1998) also identified regarding the native people from the Canadian Yukon and the expected places identities are allowed to occupy in the context of environmental claims. In the case of these native peoples, permissible 130 identities are either that of the romanticized savage who lives in harmony with nature or that of the caretaker who lives by norms of human engagement with nature established by these same modernity’s cannons, separated from their very own indigenous views of the environment. “Each so easily becomes a weapon when indigenous people fail to pass arbitrary tests of authenticity” (Cruikshank, 1998: 60). Tradition becomes then not something informed by the interactions that real people engender with the real world, but rather a stationary image of something that has never been. Cruikshank (1998: 61) says that tradition then becomes a “semantic telescope”, in which “what is distant is good, what is contemporary is bad, because it has been tainted by modernity”. Nevertheless, Tapety recognizes what she calls “intra-psychic elements” that connect the “vaqueiro” of the past with those of today, such as healing and care-taking practices, as well as beliefs deeply rooted in the afro and Catholic traditions which “assure him a specific mode of being in the world”. That “specific mode of being” is associated with the image of a strong, fierce, and courageous man; the “encaborjado” up on his horse to conquer the world around him. The healing on the tracks of the cattle practices, with embira de mororó33, rituals to make calves become angry and speedy, beliefs in enchanted bulls, arises an identity of the ‘vaqueiro’ from Piauí, guaranteeing a specific mode of being in the world. [Translated from the original]liii (Tapety, 2007:8) She moves on to say that although they are intertwined with the “new”, intensive cattle raising, motorcycles as substitutes for horses, and parabolic antennas for communication, the young “vaqueiros” are indeed rooted in the “old” “vaqueiro”, embedded in their subjectivities, stories, and modes of being. They want to be “encaborjado”. That was what Zé Filho, son of Marcelina, sister of Seu Raimundo, and aunt of Seu Antonio, told me when he explained to me why he remained in Periperi and did not went to try his luck in São Paulo like his brother João. He felt he had his place there in the community and was recognized by his people as a good “vaqueiro”. He also 33 A bush used by the “vaqueiro” to make a thread that is used for praying over the animal. 131 looked up to Seu Raimundo as the very image of the “vaqueiro” and the closest denomination of freedom; machete strapped to his hip, white hat on his head, riding his motorcycle. Seu Raimundo would as easily mount on his horse and go after the next raging bull, for what Zé filho was concerned. The image of the “vaqueiro” is also juxtaposed to that of the “doutor” [doctor], someone who makes his way out from the backwardness of the state and makes his living under imagined better life, modernity driven conditions from which he is expected never to come back, if not on vacations. That was the trajectory of João, Zé Filho’s brother, who went to São Paulo to try his luck as an electrician, a bricklayer, or anything that he could manage. Like my cousin Sebastião, João made his way back to the state, and his community of origin, nevetheless. Likewise, there were contradictory feelings about João’s journey back. His wife, Osmarina, rejoiced the presence of her two-year gone husband, but was clearly preoccupied about their condition to make ends meet without the insufficient but necessary money João sent her every month. Seu Antonio, uncle of João, was somewhat disgusted by what he saw as a reckless move on the part of his nephew, who could have tried harder to make his living in the opportunity land that São Paulo represents to him. Both Sebastião and João are seen by their respective communities as “doutor”, and both faced the mixed feelings following their return. It creates a “double consciousness” and a permanent felling of wander, in between tradition and modernity, developed and backward, civilized and primitive stereotypes that are impressed upon them and that they themselves have to deal with them. That “double consciousness” and this permanent feeling of wander I would also find in relation to the Cuban context impressed on the members of the neighbourhood of La Marina, in the midst of a new field of significations the present “economic actualization” that has increased introduction of market values and practices in the country has produced. Identities and allegiances shift in between an idealized foreign world and the changing realities in the country. We will see more of that ahead. 132 Beyond intra-psychic elements Tapety identified, the imaginary around the “vaqueiro” was historically built in Piauí, a state that according to Luiz Mott (1985: 71), was “considered during the colonial period the corral and butcher of Brazil” [translated by the author from the original]. The connections with freedom is present in the narratives of Zé Filho today and it draws on the possibility the activity allowed for social change among slaves, freed blacks, and dispossessed whites. Nonetheless, according to Falci (1995) colonial society was very stratified, and actual social mobility depended on hierarchy carefully weaved by the landlords. Again the myth of a racially democratic, free society is an intentional representation of something that has never been, as only a very small portion of the population in that system was actually free. On the other hand, it did represent a much more mobile society than that of the plantations of the coast. This mobility was built on both an idealized free, strong, courageous “vaqueiro”, conveniently reinforced by the landlords, and in the actual possibilities they had to take hold of cattle offspring or other lesser-valued animals, and thus constitute property. Only the vaqueiro-chefe [head-herdsman] received the forth part of the calves. Besides the freed ‘vaqueiro-chefe’ other auxiliary, slave herdsmen received small values, as a pork, a lamb, what explains, by its turn, the greater possibility that this ‘auxiliary-slave-herdsman” could gather resources and, who knows, acquire his freedom. [Translated by the author from the original]liv (Falci, 1995: 161). Solimar Lima (2005: 117) argues that the system created an illusion which made the “vaqueiro” believe that he could appropriate a part of his work and become more dignified. For the author, it was no more than a system of discipline and control. Conversely, following the history of the Costa Lima family that founded the quilombola community of Periperi under the name of Vaqueiro, that idea is further complicated. Yes, discipline and control were a part of the picture, but in a grey zone between what was agreed and what was not seen, the system also allowed Manoel Costa Lima, patriarch of the quilombo, to raise resources to buy the first 50 acres of the community. To be allowed to buy that piece of land also builds on the respect he gathered in such a stratified society as been a good “vaqueiro”. 133 Those are strategies that may fall into Scott’s (1986) categorization of “everyday forms of resistance”, though simultaneously absorbed in the dilemma of contributing to the maintenance of the system. Nonetheless, they were the most frequently available paths to promote social change. They were fundamental for the constitution of the community and still inform its contemporary struggle as a basis for the collective identity. Thus, tradition is not stationary, but is transformed by contemporary necessities, while referring to the historically built customs, beliefs and specific modes of being. These strategies are embedded in the history of the community's formation, as is intrinsically connected to the history of the Costa Lima family, part of a black enslaved escapee group, already in Piauí, who trod this path, passing through the municipalities of Picos and Valença, until they reached the region where today is situated the municipality of Angical during the 1880’s. There they took different paths. One of the brothers followed along with his family towards the municipality of São Raimundo Nonato. He was known by the name of Zarió, and founded a community in that region, which today is identified with quilombola, named after its founder. Another group of the family moved along to the region known as “Tabuleiro do Couro”, in the Northeastern part of the state. Manoel da Costa Lima, whom the founding of the community of Periperi would fall upon, was sent by his father to Amarante to administer another farm owned by the same landlord he kept working for in Angical. By then, his father was known to be a good “vaqueiro”, and was able to appoint his son for the task. If we were to approximate, they must have arrived here in this village in 1880, approximately in 1880, 1890, 1870, then sort of. Because his family began after 1880. Granny was how old? She was from 1890 and some. She was the first. Then, when they came from there to here, she was already born here. That girl was born here [Translated by the author from the originallv dialogue with Antonio Soares, June 2013]. My grandmother, Maria Vaqueira, because her husband was Manoel Vaqueiro, because Manoel Vaqueiro was a ‘vaqueiro [heardsman]’of the farm, than he stayed and it as titled as Manoel Vaqueiro and it was given his nickname after his profession. Today this is beginning to change because this question of the names is almost over. This third generation, which is us, from my grandfather and grandmother, he here [Seu Antonio], he is, I think, already the fifth [generation]. […] It is a community that has a strong quilombola origin, from my 134 grandfather and my grandmother, but especially from my grandfather. […] We are from two ethnicities, this from here and another from Angical. […] My grandfather’s father came here in the hold of the ships from Africa, and from there they boarded in Bahia, from there they were sold, and transmitted to the farms. From there, they generated families, and I think they started to see the sickness of this slavery regime and began to escape in different groups. And this group came straight from there, going through Picos and Valença and ending up in Angical. There part of the group stayed, who is a legit cousin, of my uncle, who was my grandfather’s brother, and he had a nickname which I can seem to recall now, there they baptized him, they said him Zarió. The family there is still Zarió, because of this business. Then my grandfather came with his father, to the Tabuleiro do Couro, near Angical, to take care of a farm there [Translated from the originallvidialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013. Manoel's father, Antonio da Costa Lima, established himself in cattle farms of the municipality of Angical working as a “vaqueiro”. Manoel learned his trade from his father and soon after he was sent to take care of cattle farms owned by the same landlord in the municipality of Amarante, in Piauí. He would “tirava a sorte”, receiving the forthcoming part of the offspring as Falci described. He did not receive any payment for his work, but some of the offspring would be granted to him by the landlord, if there were enough to share. He accumulated cattle and other animals until a point when he could get his first piece of land. He came to be known as Manoel Vaqueiro for his work as herdsman, a name that his descendants carry with pride to this day. Falci (1995: 90) identified that the common names of enslaved in the state were Antonio and Francisco. Among the freed enslaved the name Raimundo was predominant. Normally, the enslaved did not have surnames, but they often took them up later when they were freed, either from those of their former owners, from religious saints and references, or after their profession, as was case with the Vaqueiro family. My grandfather married and he married his wife and she died and he remained with their son. He worked in this farm [in Angical] and the woman who was the owner of this farm was also the owner of another in Amarante. Here in Amarante in the direction of São José. He [his grandfather] worked as a cowboy at this farm. He escaped from being a slave from there, from Valença to this region here. When he got here [Amarante] he was already a young man. He married here in Angical. Only that his wife died a childbirth, something like that. But he already worked as a cowboy, he had learnt from his father. He stay working there [at the farm]. […] I seems as if he ‘tirava a sorte’. With cattle he worked and ‘tirava a sorte’. Nobody is as dumb as it seems, you know, and him, being smart, accumulated things and his state. From there, he was told to go and take care of the farms in the municipality of Amarante, there, near São José. And then he came here, and worked at this farm, and then, my grandma, this Maria Vaqueira, beautiful young black woman, really beautiful. Then the young black man [his grandfather] like her and they ended up getting married. And her, 135 being very committed to her work, they gathered their state, and then they got here and bought [land]. She bought this area here. From here to there, more or less some 50 hectares wide it was their property. […] Then my grandfather bought this other here along with his brother-in-law until the limits of Riachão. From Riachão until the limits of Riacho Fundo, they bought another, along with her other brother, brother of my grandma. All in all, these three citizens got this area here, which encompasses more than a league wide. All this here was our family’s. [Translated from the originallvii dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro and Antônio Soares, June 12th, 2013]. The condition of being “free” is very relative and has direct connection with the “vaqueiro” myth discussed previously, as well as with the occupation of the state. Manoel’s father had “come down from Bahia”, probably not as an escapee or a freed slave, but as part of the live property of a landlord in that original state, presumably a “sesmeiro” [someone, normally of Portuguese descent, that would be granted by the Crown a “sesmaria”, a portion of land to be developed]. Absenteeism, difficulties in the care of the farms and its livestock, including the black enslaved, together with different resistance strategies, including “everyday forms of resistance” such as “tirar a sorte” promoted by the enslaved, allowed for a change in social relations that gradually incorporated distinct forms of possession of the land, fabricating a sometimes-oppositional and at other-times-mutual social category, the “posseiros” [the de facto occupants of the land in the absence of the “sesmeiros”, the ones who the land had been granted to by the Crown]. It was not a smooth process, since, as Porto (1995) describes, a dispute broke out between the two groups of “owners” who were occupants of land in the state. Although the Portuguese Crown most often officially supported the “sesmeiros”, the de facto state occupation was done by the “posseiros”, a process that not even the Crown could stop or leave unrecognized, as the emphasis on the necessity of development was in root of the very idea of the autonomy of Piauí. The “posseiros” were not only the resisting black enslaved, but also white folk who had the means to invest in the territory the “sesmeiros” poorly developed. The Crown, and later, the Republic tried to take action and to fill the vacuum left by the “sesmeiros”. But as we have seen, the “fazendas nacionais” hardly did the job, which allowed for the creation of new “posseiros”, from the spoils of these government administered farms, both among the enslaved, and 136 among the administrators of these farms, generally white investors, who took advantage of the new absentee scenario. In a festivity in the municipality of Angical, Manoel met Dona Maria Vaqueira, and joining together they settled in the area that presently constitutes the community of Periperi, under conditions very similar to those described above. As a good “vaqueiro”, having gathered enough resources from the “tirava sorte” practice he accomplished in his job at the farm, and under the absentee land reality of the region, Manoel and Maria were able to buy other adjacent real estate through purchase of the possession only. They could not hold on to all this combined real estate for long, though, as we shall see. These possessions were acquired inside the old "data” of the Veloso family, already a partition of a “sesmaria” in the state. “Data” would refer to every land that was “re-granted” by the Crown or by the “sesmeiros” alike. Drawing from processes of occupation similar to those described above, marked by unsustainability, lack of productivity, and scarce occupation, the Data Veloso was gradually and unofficially divided into bits and pieces that were occupied by poor black and white people, and “melhorados” [ameliorated, in the sense of social-economic access] who took possession of these lands or bought its possession indistinctly. These bits and pieces of land inside the “data” were also called “data”, which increases a notch in understanding the complexity of the occupation in the region, as every land deed I could find referred to a “data”. Periperi’s estate Notary certificates (Appendix 3), for instance, situate community’s 220 acres inside the “data Veloso”, but never mentions it, since the community’s territory is, as stated, part of the “data Muquila”. Nevertheless, “data Muquila”, from Seu Raimundo’s narrative, later confirmed by the local Notary, is a piece of “data Veloso”. I do stress that none of these arrangements finds a “source” in either republican or colonial land deeds, instructions, regulations or even “sesmarias”, as the local imaginary often refers to in order to “explain” and “settle” disputes. This sort of clarifying and solving of real estate disputes, based on this imaginary, has often pended toward white landowners, “posseiros” themselves, but very much connected with the local racial divide. Whitened people are 137 often connected with a Portuguese heritage, which normally grants them status, but in this case allows for a direct link with a nebulous past; the source of landownership in the city, and thereby granting them land in the present. This area was João Paulino’s. This area had a business he sold a part to whites, also these whites who bought this land here, they came from a inheritance of a citizen from Portugal, whom passed on this Data, a entire Data for this family, but there he was the owner, in that time the authorities here, he entered as an authority. Also the church of our town, who donated the land was their grandfather, their great-grandfather here, who bought these lands. But he could not maintain sustainability inside sustaining the Data, and then was loosening the people, and he people started to enter and to enter, and they finished when they reached the extreme, and there was when they were landless. But then they went to the Notary, the boy showed me the other day, they went to the Notary and took the deed of their grandfather. As our great-grandfather came from Africa, their grandfather came from Portugal. Do you understand me? It is a contradiction. This guy from Portugal that took Data Muquila has the other half of Amarante. There, in the city, everything belonged to them, to this group, whose grandfather bought here a share. The Veloso took and donated where the matrix is ours and it was them who donated the area which belonged to this group. But Amarante was divided in some factions of the peoples from Portugal, and each one got a Data such and such, that time it was called Data. They would say: I will develop that Data there. The main Datas were Lyra, Aryres, and Veloso, from the authors, which took the city of Amarante as owners. After that, I think they are the pilot of the foundation of Amarante. They are fading. There is still a reminiscence, but it is week, but it exists. They still want to predominate, but they do not have the strength to do it [Translated by the author from the originallviii dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013] That is why, as Seu Raimundo described above, the part of João Paulino’s estate that was sold to white folk, situated in the same old “data Muquila”, has today a proper deed. The part which was sold to Manoel Vaqueiro back then still awaits the conclusion of an endless and expensive process that would approve the domain chain of property to the present owners, treated today as occupants, and upgrade the existing certification to a deed status. Again João Paulino was just as much a “posseiro” as Manoel Vaqueiro, and took advantage of the same void, generated by the particular type of occupation in Amarante’s territory. It was within the same vacuum that the Vaqueiro couple acquired their first 50 acres. They come from the same root, but were fed distinctively, resulting in different offspring, Paulino and Vaqueiro. Plain and simple, one has the deed of his land, the other does not. Acevedo Marin (2009: 1) writes that “frequently, despite having accomplished the legal requirements, social and ethnically differenciated groups are denied and robbed of their rights to land acquired by 138 inheritance, donation, purchase, and possession” [Translated by the author from the originallix]. It is quite an uneven result for the Vaqueiro family that acquired further estate in the region. Manoel, along with his brother-in-law, Timóteo, soon bought another area of around 230 acres, reaching the limits of Riachão, another black community near Periperi. In the direction of Palmerais From Riachão to the Riacho Fundo, João Firmiano, another brother of Dona Maria Vaqueiro, bought another 400 acres. The elders of the community remember that the lands of the Vaqueiro family stretched more than a league34 across. The resulting temporary occupation has a great deal to do with the idea of an “extended community”, beyond the existing 220 acres that make up present day Periperi, as we shall see in a bit. This one here she bought separately, this one from here to Riachão they bought in partnership, both of them, only they fought after, both brothers-in-law, and then split, from our land to there, which is the same context of Periperi, called, what was left to Manoel Vaqueiro, from there to Riachão it was left to Timóteo, another brother-in-law of my grandfather. Then they left and sold there and divided in two properties, and they sold to these people, that nobody knows today whether they are the main buyers, if they are the authors still today inheritors or if they are other people that after sold to others. That nobody is knowing. Only that, in the beginning this area of today was sold there and belonged to these people of the same quilombola family that came from the outside. When he sold this area there, he sold it to people who were not from the family. He sold to whites. That of the Riacho till the Riacho Fundo, which is more less four kilometers length, we know to whom he sold. It was Veloso, who still has an ‘inquistozinho’ [kinship], Teodoro Veloso, who bought directly from João Firmino’s widow. He died and she took and passed along, she was the titular, the owner. João Firmino was my grandmother’s bother [the bother who got Riacho Fundo]. This one here, 50 acres, the other 200. [Translated by the author from the originallx dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] There was a conflict between the brothers-in-law, and the 230 ha bought together by Manoel and Timóteo, were divided. In around 1890, with his portion of that acreage and the 50 acres that were already his, Manoel established the 220 acres which today corresponds to the community of Periperi. The other properties of Timóteo and João Firmiano were sold to white people, whom the community today call “terceiros”, in a clear reference to community outsiders. These include the descendants of the Veloso, 34 A league in the Northeast of Brazil is equivalent to 6,6 km. 139 whom had been expropriated after the occupation promoted by whites and blacks in the “data” originally attributed to their family. It is important to notice the changing and movable status between the social categories of “sesmeiros”, “posseiros”, “occupants”, and later community members, “moradores [inhabitants]”, “meeiros and arrendatários” [temporary workers on sort of leased community and farm land], “foreiros” [those who pay for the temporary use of the land], and “terceiros”. A characteristic that does not imply a change in the status quo for the “posseiros” and such, who up to this point never became “sesmeiros” or owned the land in other “official” ways. The Veloso themselves were never “sesmeiros”; they were just better placed and had better means (money and position in a society that valued white folk at the expense of black) to address their conjectural needs. These arrangements inform the way land is presently divided, and constitute the heart of the internal and external land disputes Periperi faces in its process of recognition. Or non-recognition, since the multiple social identities the blacks in the state have assumed over the years are not contemplated in local public policies, nor in political-organizations actions managed by Amarante’s Rural Workers Syndicate, which see them as “family agriculture” or “rural workers”. Amarante’s “official society” recognizes this multiple identities and actually sees them as the blacksmith, the midwife, the “benzedor”, the “raizeiro”, the “oleiro”, the carpenter, the joiner, the cobbler, the “fazedor de jacá”, or the donkey tamer. However, while Amarante’s “official society” recognizes these identities for their social function, they do not validate the present individual and communitarian recognition claims based on these identities. Also, these identities are not included in the local public policies or local syndicate actions; they carry the mark of lesser occupations, of a lesser people. This makes it all the more difficult for this local society to understand the claims that multiple individual black identities are struggling collectively for under the quilombola banner. As we have seen, the struggle draws on the communitarian identity because the identity is weaved and strengthened in the struggle. Both movements face the barriers imposed by “official society”, and the situation comes under scrutiny by 140 “well-intended” racist local folk, for it is drawn from invisible social categories which demand to occupy a space of power. Which means that someone will need to share some. And local “official society” has not been very good at sharing. The history of the relations between black and white has been marked by land usurpation and in the “offenses of the word”, as Chuta, a leader of the quilombola community of Riacho dos Negros, told me in a conversation we had in Brejinho, another black community of Palmerais, at Maria Raimunda’s house, who is the eldest in the community at around 100 years old. Both situations are characterized by a context of general violence, which is intentionally made inexplicit. Land usurpation, which still happens, was cloaked by land “purchased” by scraps of money, and if not by the advancement of fencing, promoted by white “posseiros” on black “posseiros” occupied land, as blacks did not have resources to fence their properties. “Offenses of the word” refer to occasional but corrective measures aimed at subjugating black people, who were often exercised once their “acolhimento” [reception in a sense of ‘taking care’] was already settled on white folk farms. This “acolhimento” followed land usurpation described, for blacks, having nowhere to go, found themselves forced to accept this distorted rescuing. The white folk were so good in “acolhimento” that they took more than half of the production blacks could generate, slept with their wives and daughters, and hit their children if they thought they were insolent. Chuta told me about a black young woman named Evinha, who had been “taken care” by Manoel Soares in his farm in the municipality of Palmerais in the 1950’s. Part of Evinha’s duty in order to help her family was to help her mother break babassu coconuts, after her chores for the Soares were complete. One day, Manoel’s wife said Evinha was not allowed go help her mother, and to the distaste of the white madam, she argued that she needed to go. Manoel got home that day and his wife presented to him her dissatisfaction. Without another word, he mounted his donkey, packed his rifle, and calmly rode into the fields of his property. He would later find Evinha with her mother and aunt on the field breaking babassu coconuts. The auntie told Evinha to run, 141 but her mother held onto her by the fabric of her dress. Jumping from his animal, Manoel kicked Evinha’s face into the ground and brought his whip down upon her body as she laid there. Today Evinha is 60 years old and lives on the same property with her three children. Hearing a story like that, one could easily think that this history came from a book about slavery, and the stereotypical image of the chained brute noir being whipped by his master springs to mind. In the history Chuta told me, those are the lives of these people, who still have to face the spoils of these master-slave relations. What is quite striking about Periperi’s trajectory is that unlike many other black “posseiro” communities in the region who were usurped in one way or another, the Vaqueiros and their descendants were able to hold onto to some of their original territory, which allowed them to persevere their ways of life as a community. This is what makes it possible for them to bring about collective strategies of resistance that would be aimless without their territory, scattered and powerless. The maintenance of their territory has to do directly with the partition between siblings that followed Maria Vaqueira’s passing. The first “posseiros” of what would become Periperi, Manoel Vaqueiro, and Dona Maria Vaqueira, had twelve children between them. Dona Maria died last, leaving 220 acres to nine living children. The other three children were the firstborn daughter, who died at age 10; Olegário, who did not leave any descendants; and Vicente, who had four children. Vicente’s children were disinherited in the partition that followed Dona Maria’s death. In speaking to Seu Raimundo about the disinherited, two things became quite apparent. First, a sense of justice in the partition that has to do with their blood connection to the family, but also sets them apart from the other ones in Caxias for their continuous presence in the community. Second, the idea that community land is not for sale and is not a right money can buy. Right is seem as endless and eternal, but inside the context of community, not as a means to obtain profit. That is why Seu Raimundo says they can build their houses anywhere in the community, whenever they claim it. But they do have to claim it, either by fighting for it or by settling in the 142 community. They cannot be free riders. This also builds on the idea of an extended community which reaches far beyond Periperi’s present grounds. The 220 acres was divided between the nine descendants in “tiras”, more or less rectangular shaped stripes of land that stretched from the Parnaíba River to the Chapadões. The mountains high above water level, singled out in the community’s geography by the distinctly drier vegetation, which is more connected to the “Cerrado” biome35. These “tiras” still frame the inside of the community, each at about 100 to 150 meters wide and almost 3 km in length. One of the sons, Zé Vaqueiro, who lived in Caxias, sold his stripe to his brother, Rafael. The resulting partition was divided among the remaining brothers and sisters, Cândida, Antônia, Balduíno, Luiz, Antônio, Lúcia, and Roberto Vaqueiro. Each was given a ”tira.” The “tira” of Lúcia was sold to the brothers-in-law of Antonio Vaqueiro, Valdino Veloso e Cícero Veloso, brothers to Maria Veloso, alias Maria Vaqueira, his wife. They may as well had twelve or thirteen children. Because when the partition was made, there were nine, and two had already died. Then it is twelve, isn’t it, if there was a loss, then it is from thirteen to fourteen. There was one, after the partition. […] I was born in 1945, she died in 1946, well in January, she remained still six months, after six months she died. There was only Zé Vaqueiro, who lived in Caxias. Because he lived there, because he had the vocation for merchant, he did not have much for the field. He was a road sales man, back then. Then he hit the road being there and married and constitutes all his family there. He remained in Caxias. The others remained here. Two died before she passed away. But there was an inheritor, Vicente. One left a son. The other left four children, but they were disinherited also. They did not take their inheritance. It was injustice. Their children were there? They weren’t, but I think they are all dead. But there is this grandson, this Vicente already has great-grandsons. They remained here by these lands. And they were disinherited, then there was only the nine, with him of Caxias. It was eight here and nine with the one in Caxias. The one from Caxias collected his share and sold to his bother Rafael that got two pieces. Then Candida got a piece, Tonha another, Balduído another, Luiz Vaqueiro another, Antonio Vaqueiro another, Lucia another, and Roberto another. After my grandmother died, from 46 to 47. Olegário and Vicente died. Zé Vaqueiro in Caxias. Because there was a girl who died at 10 years old, she was the littlest. […] in the documents of the partition, there are only nine truly. […] I even said to my cousin, they were disinherited, and if they want to fight for it, I would accept, because right is not paid. Right is right. Because ours, if it was ten ‘braça’ [2,2 meters], five ‘braça’, we had to open, because here is an injustice, we are on what is theirs, it is not ours. But they never claimed it. The disinherited boys have a lot of relation with us, these days of holiday they came here, because their 35 “The typical vegetation landscape within the cerrado biome consists of cerrado on the well-drained interfluves with gallery forests following the watercourses. The cerrado itself is very varied in form, ranging from dense grassland, usually with a sparse covering of shrubs and small trees, to an almost closed woodland with a canopy height of 12–15 m” (Ratter et all, 1997:1). 143 place is here. And if they want to build a house here, in any place here. They can build their house here. When they come here or there, they already have their space. It is an injustice. […] Because right is endless, it stays in eternity. So that is what happened. [Translated by the author from the originallxi dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] The remainder of this one that stayed with Manoel Vaqueiro was 220 acres. The other that belonged to Timóteo that is part of the other piece that was from the partners, which divided in two is approximately 200 and some acres, some 230, 250 acres, which is from Riachão coming here to our extreme. The other one there, a part of it, is from Balduíno’s land to here, for the other he had already sold there to other, which could be the Vitorino, but Vitorino already bought by the hands of others, with was all his in partnership with João Firmiano. I don’t know what is here or there, but it is some 150 acres, better some 300 acres that were João Firmiano’s, which is from Riacho Fundo to here. […] Because just the ones of the old Teodoro were 150 acres, and there was also Deo’s, another 60 acres. So it is really 200 acres. It will be more than 400 acres. [Translated by the author from the originallxii dialogue with Antonio Soares, June 2013] Though experimenting with the same pressure that was impressed upon other black communities in the region, and having sold cheap some parts of their original territory to white folk, members of Periperi were able to strong hold the significant 220 acres which makes up the community today. Resistance to this overwhelming pressure was created by selling among brothers, in the case of Rafael’s “tira”, by temporary, precarious alliances with local politicians and governmental officials, by local and regional political and syndicate participation, and also by making use of distorted kinship connections with white folk. There is a relation between Maria Veloso and the Portuguese family known by the same name, the “insquistozinho”, whom Seu Raimundo mentioned previously. However, the European family's descendants do not recognize their kinship to the Veloso of Periperi, due to their mixing with black people. Nevertheless, the distorted kinship connection was important in establishing the differentiated insertion community members had in the local political scene and the way they were seen by local “official society”. Seu Raimundo’s father, Antonio Vaqueiro, was the founder of Amarante’s Rural Workers Syndicate and an active participant in the local political scene. Although they were always being reminded of their pre-assigned social place, for this was no racial democracy, they were able to surf on the bits of waves occasionally left to them. Their connections, weaved in part from their own efforts in a cordial racist society, and part from their heritage, helped them push their endurance further. 144 Though a family name is still held as status today, racial marks speak louder in a society that has cultivated clear, carefully built, racial divides, among mixed offspring. Different hues in the color of skin dictated different social-economic status, which fed upon each other according to the interests of the “official society” generation after generation. The different hues are not so easily or intentionally distinguished, though, resulting in very close hues potentially ending up in very distinct social places. The “official society” organizes these hues according to their own convenience at any given time through secular power mechanisms, namely control of the local public offices, connections to regional and federal instituted powers, articulation with representation of workers, landowners and other private business. The form by which “official society” in Amarante works out these power mechanisms relates to the “power pattern” Acevedo Marin (2009; 1985) identified in the relations sustained by farmers to quilombolas of the Gurupá and Arari Rivers, in the Marajó Island, in the state of Pará, Brazil. Since the end of the 18th century, being the economic elite in the island, the farmers owned the production means, harnessed political power by controlling the municipal bodies, and were themselves the capitains and coronels of the local militia, and National Guard. Marajó Island became their own private domain. Their authority is the first social mechanism and their power is derived by it, as disobedience to the farmers’ rule implied sanctions. Their rule is supported by the control of the political-juridical system, which is at their disposal to establish their authority. That is the “power pattern” identified by the historian, one which is “the basic social structure, the social stratification base, it is derived from the legal system, which distributes power” [Translated by the author from the originallxiii] (Acevedo Marin, 2009: 10). In addition to that, we could clearly say that the blacker the phenotype in the local and regional society Periperi is inserted, the hardest to move around this curious, ever changing color-power scale. They say that we are all mixed, because even the names are compatible, but white business here is little, because our origin is right straight to black and indigenous. That is why our offspring is brown, mameluco. These people of João Paulino in the beginning, they were all blond, and today there is mixing, but in the beginning they were all blond really [Translated by the author from the originallxiv dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 12th, 2013]. 145 In the narratives of community members in Periperi “mameluco” was used to make a distinction between resulting mixed offspring from community members and those mixed who were from the outside, as Periperi regard themselves and bore the mark of being black in the region – a distinction that had to be made in relation to the other mixed from the outside. According to Ribeiro (1995), the “brasilíndios” [mixed white and indigenous] were called “mamelucos” by the Spanish Jesuits. The anthropologist wrote that “the term originally referred to a caste of slaves, whom the Arabs swept from their parents in order to raise and train them in their training-houses, where they developed the talent, if they had any” [Translated by the author from the originallxv] (Ribeiro, 1995: 107). In addition, Cavignac (2003: 2), addressing issues related to the self-identification of indigenous peoples and black populations in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte, stresses that categories such as “savage”, “barbaric”, “indian”, “caboclo” [black and white mixed], “mameluco” [indigenous and white mixed], “cafuzo” [indigenous and black mixed], “pardo” [brown], “negro” [black] were part of a constructed polarity in between these categories that was used to create a “white” version of history in the region, amid the troublesome historic process which imposed a forced reorganization of social relations, dictated by the colonial administration. The context in which the term “mameluco” appears in the community’s narratives, however, does not fully encompass neither the signification in Ribeiro nor the in Cavignac, although it refers to the process by which community members “mix” with outsiders. For one thing, these outsiders are not clearly identified as white folk; and Periperi themselves do not identify with indigenous peoples. The category is used by members of Periperi and, though it might relate to a foreign classification, it has acquired a distinct connotation within the community. What is quite interesting is the persistence of the need for classification, even between members of the community, based on racial criteria, a feature that will reveal further divisions within the community. As I watched Seu Raimundo mount his motorcycle to go on his way to attend to his chores related to the care of his cows that our meeting had interrupted, I could not help reflect on how his tall, proud, knowledge-driven presence had impacted our 146 intense after lunch conversation. The asphalt road that Seu Raimundo sped off down in the distance stretched longitudinally all through the territory of Periperi, dividing all the “tiras” of the community into two uneven areas, leaving the greater portion toward the communally used Chapadões. Occupation of the territory had always been closer to the river, and the divide had been previously drawn by another dirt road that followed the same line of the newer asphalted one. By and large, old and new roads remain as expressive marks in the community’s framework and reference points for the delimitation of space in their territory. That was quite clear in the situational map members of the community collective drew from their own experiences with the place. Though the dirt road does not show up in the map, for it has obviously lost use and momentum, it determines the limits of the houses built and is what the members use to communicate with each other in the near the river portion. As community numbers grew, houses were to be built on the other side of the road, creating an intense movement of people on and off of the divide. The twelve-year-old asphalt road represented disturbances in the bucolic community’s setting, along with the newer occupations. Community originally backed governmental drive for the construction of the road, expecting “evolution”, as Seu Antonio told me. But the fast vehicles that drove past the community brought along death to the people and animals alike. Everyone was shocked by the increase of violence rates, facilitated by the access outsiders had to start venturing into the community. “We did not think about the consequences”, said Seu Antonio. The road is also reference to the present struggle with the potential implementation of the dams 147 Figure 5 - Situational map of the quilombo of Periperi, elaborated by community's leaders, Periperi, Amarante, Piauí, Brazil. Source: Author's reap Date: June 2013 148 The road still remains as the most vivid thing on the map above that Nilda, Evangelho, Seu Manoel, Raquel, Marciana, Erika, and other 20 community members drew, aided by the careful counseling Seu Raimundo and Seu Antonio would shout and whisper. It struck my mind when I saw that worm-like road slithering on the map, splitting the community in half. Immediately it made me think of the image of another map I saw in the making while doing research (Brasil, 2014) some six years back in the quilombo of Santana, in Pernambuco (Appendix 5). There the canal of River São Francisco’s transposition, though not complete, was already a real presence that also split up the community, much like the PI-130 in Periperi. It was the first thing you saw on Santana’s map, and informed everything from where the community began, to every decision they would come to, whether in agriculture, goat raising, education, health, use of the territory, relationship with neighboring farms and cities, community organization, or political struggle. The canal stood out as a new and prioritized point of reference to Santana, overshadowing the existing natural references, such as the Pedro’s hills, or traditional ones like the agriculture fields and their communitarian use. The road in Periperi strangely even supersedes the Parnaíba River, whose waters bath the community. Though its name is chanted in rhyme and prose all throughout the state, particularly in Amarante (Da Costa e Silva, 1985), it is barely revealed on the map, only as a strip in the left-hand corner that indicate a few fish. Long has the road substituted the river as the main reference of the community. It is the necessary path connecting Periperi to the outside world, but also inwards, given the constant flux of community members, walking asphalted path back and forth. All houses face the roads both reading Amarante and Palmerais. Even the ones on “Rua 2” [street 2] have direct connections to the houses by the road, and the traffic is sometimes more intense than it is in street 2. The E. Soares bus stops four times a day in Periperi, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. Drivers and community members are well acquaintanced with one another. Everything is settled on the bus. Palmerais or Amarante, especially Amarante, are just waypoints to run errands that are already arranged. It does not 149 matter if someone is actually on the bus or not. Messages are sent through the drivers or other community members riding on the bus. Bills are paid. Dealings are closed. On the bus there is plenty of chatter and news of life in surrounding communities. Who married, who died, who ran for office, who is in jail, and the results of the next local soccer tournaments. The bus makes several stops in more or less predetermined spots on the way, according to where the next passenger is standing. Amarante is an endpoint and Palmerais is a stopover in the daily trajectory of the bus. Rather costly, at about eight reais back and forth, the trip needs to pay off. It was often Nilda I tagged along when I needed to go to Amarante. She frequently went to the city to buy groceries, pay bills, go to the Notary’s office, to the post office, and spread the word of the community all around. Everyone knew Nilda in town and she navigated it with ease, though it seemed always in pre decided places. Everyone was already waiting for her at those places and her dealings were carried out quickly with time to catch the next bus back. We carried a load back to Periperi with the help of the drivers and other passengers. We would be welcomed in several stops within the community by crowds waiting for the results of their what they had sent off. A watermelon here, a chunk of meat there, a message given, a letter posted, and we finally arrived at our destination in front of Seu Antonio’s house, which faces Nilda's house. She would spend the whole afternoon sharing the spoils of her trip around the community. Her children, Eduardo and Henrique, would also help in the task, gladly riding their bicycles in and off community houses. The road was inevitably incorporated into the notion of an “extended community”, reaching neighboring communities and farms, as well as the cities near by. In the map, they addressed this notion of “extended community”. No limits were clearly defined in-between Periperi and Riachão or São João, or even with the Ribeiro’s, the Paulino’s, and Bruno’s white farmers’ lands. Bruno holds a weir, where he raises fish for commercial purposes. He has more of a market base relation with the community. The Ribeiro and Paulino’s families are marked on community’s narratives as white 150 neighbors with historically uneven relations with Periperi. These uneven relations bear much ground in the idea of “acolhimento” discussed in the previously. The other areas were passed on to ‘terceiros’ [community outsiders]. Timóteo, who was my grandfather’s brother-in-law, who was my grandmother’s brother, and João Firmiano, who was also my grandfather’s brother-in-law, they took and held this league of land. Only that in the end, only this here of Manoel Vaqueiro remained. He held this land kilometre here in length. The other opened all to ‘terceiros’, sold it all. […] Today it is passing and passing, it is already well mixed. There are more than only Veloso. There are companies, there is all. The ones, who remained, do not have any land. It is not even 2 acres, which are in their races. But the rest they passed on. [Translated by the author from the originallxvi dialogue with Antonio Soares, June 2013]. The cemetery of the community is a living example of this situation, being that it is on Ribeiro’s land. The jigsaw puzzle of buying, selling, and taking land, that has framed the community’s 220 acres of today allowed for this curious situation regarding the cemetery. That part of the community had been sold cheap by their forefathers and ended up in Ribeiro’s hands. As part of the deal, community members were allowed free access to cemetery’s grounds. Over the years, Ribeiro’s deceased were also placed on the graveyard. They remain in momentous graves, built in privileged locations, contrasting with the humble burial places community members often intern their deceased, like that of Evangelho, who passed away in 2014. The cemetery gradually became “Ribeiro’s cemetery” and deceased from the community were granted a place on the grounds. When I went there in 2014, Chica and Luiza, who live in Cândida’s “tira,” and are Seu Antonio’s nephew and sister, respectively, explained to me the restrictions imposed by the Ribeiros as part of good neighboring practices, such as specific times and days of the week Periperi relatives could visit, specific places they could bear their deceased, and specific ways they should behave in entering the grounds. In relation to that, the community has also created its own set of rules dialoging with their traditions, such as never going in at night, and women on their period being restricted from the grounds. The Amarante city judge’s private property and airport are also curiously delineated on the map with no clear boundary with Periperi indicated. There is a quiet and discreet tension between the community and the Judge, who has taken possession 151 of his chunk of land in the Chapada close by to where the last landmark of the community is placed (point Chapada 1 in Figure 6). Taking into account all the difficulties in land registration and limitation in the region previously addressed, one could say the least that the Judge’s logic of occupation does not incorporate the notion of “extended community”. There is fear amongst community members passing through the Judge’s land, but when push comes to shove, a tacit, yet dangerous deal may be invoked, claiming the logic of “extended community”. From the road to the river, at points ESTBECO, ESTSANTO, BECO, and SANTO, respectively, in Figure 6, in an extension of around 1,100 meters, was where family run corn and bean agriculture fields, as well as other cultures such as watermelon, rice, and tobacco, were placed, cultivated with the low waters of the Parnaíba River. It is also where the limits of each family “tira” was established, with fences. From the road to the Chapadões, points CHAPADA 1, 2, e 3, in Figure 6, in an extension of around 1,400 meters, the use of the land is collective, circumscribed to all community members. There are manioc fields and cattle and ovine breeding, as well as the extraction of wood for the construction of houses and fences, and collecting of medicinal plant for the treatment of diseases. This territory remains until today without fences, collectively used. Inside the fences that divide fields of the several families from the road to the river, fruition is automatically allowed to each family who belong to the “tira”. Because today it is separated like that, but the families. They made an agreement, the nine brothers that the property limits reference, so everyone could work the land without invading the other, from the road, which was right here the old road, from here to the river, everyone had their limits. Not in the ‘chapada’. Everyone could work the land there. There was no such thing as this part id in front of me. […] If it was from the family, there was no such problem. Now, with the outsiders, they had to ask for our permission. And if someone from the outside wanted to work the land, there was no problem, because it had the consent of the owners. None of that I fenced. It remains open. Someone when works a filed, sometimes fences only till he produces, some two years. So this area of Periperi of 220 acres belongs to all of us, because the other are already marked. This area here by the road, of one kilometer length, wide is more than two kilometers, because only from here to the river is a thousand meters and to the outside more than a thousand. [Translated by the author from the originallxvii dialogue with Antonio Soares, June 2013] 152 Figure 6 – GPS limits of the quilombola community of Periperi, Amarante, Piauí, Brazil. Source: Screen snap in the author’s possession Date: August 2013 The Chapada and Chapadões further out are lands where many fantastic stories come from. Going into these parts is the work of brave, fierce, and skillful men who undertake the risk taken in order to provide wood, honey, medicinal leaves and herbs, wild meat, birds, the planting of an occasional manioc field, or graze horses and graze cattle for a while. It is a test every young male in the community will have to go through, and a necessary part of community life. Women often dwell in the Chapadões as well, but their presence is not made explicit in the narratives. Luiza told me they where grounds for men, but women walk their whole territory. Luiza’s commentary unveils a feature about the social role of women in the community in relation to Chapadões, but one I would find refers to other roles women play in the community social dynamics. It is men that are “vaqueiros encaborjados”, that lead the narratives about the community’s development and important deeds, and women seem to be figurative tokens on the background. However, their role becomes active in the communitarian life, as they are the ones who actually run things, from their households to the broad decisions that affect the community. Behind the scenes 153 marked by the macho demonstrations of power, men were often drawn to the commentary of women. Women also often gathered to discuss community’s life, but seldom expressed their opinions to broader audiences or on community gatherings. An exception was Nilda, who had been assigned the task to be the community’s representative in several meetings related to the quilombola issue. Nilda had been married twice, and had three children, but was single at the time the discussions over the implementation of the dams were taking place. She was a young woman and alive with interest on the matters involving the two intertwined issues. Last time I saw her, in November last year, she was married again and told me her participation in the gatherings was not as constant as she wished for, because she had to attend to her duties as a wife and mother. Nilda’s trajectory reveals the persistence of macho domination of social spaces and roles in the community, especially in relation to the outside, but also intra-community by means of exercise of authority in the family nucleus; by restricting participation of women in the decision-making situations and gatherings; and by creating assigned places for them, which all refer to the housekeeper. That persistence is also reflected in the narratives that are base for this study. Although I felt very included in the communitarian life as a whole, and had the opportunity to talk to several of the women of about their roles in the community, their participation in the communitarian struggles, customs, beliefs and traditions carried out in their families and within the community, I also felt that their narratives were often under surveillance and contemporized by the men’s. Chica, for instance, who was single and provided for her self as a maid in a nearby white-owned farm house, was often criticized by the men, who did not approve of her loud, wild, inappropriate ways. She broke into the spaces that were reserved for men or where they granted women permission, such as the bar or the communitarian gatherings to discuss the paths community would take. Most of the women in the community, however, assigned to their predetermined places, what made it difficult sometimes to dialogue with them. I often seek them though, and luckily managed to talk with the “wild” ones who 154 presented differentiated narratives that were quite useful in addressing unsettled issues in the community, such as the connection to African based traditions or the internal disputes within the community, as we shall see ahead. There is another sort of tension veiled in the map. The fences, which separate the inherited “tiras”, are not drawn in. Thinking about the political struggle for collective recognition, one could quickly arrive at skeptical conclusions. Nonetheless, the picture brings about a different a kind of sentiment that embodies communitarian relations far from the expectations of common sense that modernity’s cannons would infer. Divisions are marked only where each family has its personal use. House, pig corral, and orchard are the features which are “fenced in”. Other animals run lose from one “tira” to the other, generating occasional rows that are more akin to folklore than anything. Everything else, like the soccer fields, sports’ court, church, school, library, bars, terras filé, lagoa, and water supply are of relatively free for coming and going as people please. The transferring of the occupation in the territory is made by hereditary possession. At the time of the partition, 65 years ago, the descendants of Manoel Vaqueiro and Dona Maria Vaqueiro, helped by local politicians, succeeded in registering each of the “tiras” in Amarante's Notary. The measuring of the “tiras” was made from the road to the riverbed, and from the road to the limit established in the direction of the Chapadões. The system used was relatively precarious. Each “tira” was estimated in 23 acres. The measures were made in “braças”36. Nevertheless, the “rolamento”37 was not finished. The lack of conclusions to this procedure still harms the definite notary registration of the community’s real state to this day. Presently, the community’s occupation of the territory is only determined by possession. The “rolamento” is a relatively expensive procedure compared to the financial resources available in the community, ever in considering the actual technical requirements and their elevated costs. 36 Measurement still used in some parts of Brazil, equivalent to length of two open arms, 2,2 meters. http://www.dicio.com.br/braca/, 28.10.2013. 37 Notary procedure through which the domain chains are mapped and processed until the last living owner. 155 There are 23 acres in each piece. Here it happens like this. Lúcia’s piece here, they thought they would leave here in order to find better life there in the whereabouts of São Pedro, so they ended up wanting to sell the property. My dad had two brothers-in-law interested in living there by the river, and then, at this moment, he asked to my aunt and godmother precedence to sell to these brothers-in-law, and they accepted. So this piece here, connected to us in Claudino Veloso’s and Cícero Veloso’s, which was Lúcias piece, my mother’s sister. Those are the outsiders today, those apart from the blood of Manoel and Maria Vaqueiro, these two that already came by the hand of the brother-in-law, who is my father. […] Those days , they were able to register an estate for each one of them. Now, without ‘rolamento’. There in the Notary, they measured by ‘vara’ [stick], by ‘braça’, from here to there it wasn’t measured, only from the road to here, which is the reference, which is the business with the 2000 meters, and to there the calculated, because the topographer back then said it would be 23 acres each. It is been 65 years. That was at the time of the partition. They had very good relationship with the power of the politicians back then and they told the Notary what to do. And they said, boy, this is what is how it is going to be, we need to solve the problems here of these boys and I want the estate registered in the name of these boys, and that is what they did. 23 acres. So many lands. And then they made it there, so many meters, such and such. And they put it on paper and they grant them the deed with registered estate to each one of them. Only that, when they died, these heirs, already third and forth degree, inquiring why it was sold and passed on to on and the other, and the property was broken. When it comes the time for ‘rolamento’, they had to begin all over again from the person who sold to Maria Vaqueira, because at that time ‘rolamento’ was not made. Then they had to stop it all. So it is a title that worths nothing today. […] So if today all this piece here is sold, it is not doable, because a lot was taken, because it will have to do with all these details from then to now. And that is why everyone is an owner here, we use it, and nobody messes with it, and that is that. We almost end up returning to the communitarian. [Translated by the author from the originallxviii dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] Even Santo bought a land here from his brother and he went there to the Notary to see if he could transfer it, if there would be a way to register the estate. They looked in the book, and saw that she had bought this area here, which is my grandmother’s that she bought first in the hand of someone there, who nobody here is related from these people, because here none remained of these people. In this case, in order to make, what is it called, a historical assessment, they have to pay some fee there, a very fat fee. There is a fee there to get this information. In order to search it. In the Notary, they charge a fee there, some time results do come in the same day, but there is the possibility of finding this there. Because it is property, it was registered, the book I think they didn’t burn it, because there are some that were burnt, but I think that Amarante’s wasn’t. [Translated by the author from the originallxix dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro e Antônio Soares, June 2013] “Terras filé” and “lagoa” have some other histories, though. They are lands considered by the community to be “filé”, and synonymous with the best beef cut in Brazil, because they are bathed by the Parnaíba River, which brings fertility to these riverside lands. They were always seen as essential for the community’s collective organization. Ex-situ development projects in the 1980’s and 1990’s, financed by the Northeast or the World Bank, and implemented by Empresa de Assitência Técnica Rural 156 (Emater) of the state, with the support of Amarante’s mayor’s office, changed the logics of collective extraction and farming toward an entrepreneurial sort of exploitation of this prime land. “Terras filé” were the preferred home to babassu, carnauba, and tucum palms that added to the community’s economy prior to the implementation of the small dam that would regulate floods, aiming to establish a large production rice crop. As stated, Periperi members produced off the riverbeds away from the palms, important for their nuts, oil, and leaves used to build roofs, to extract wax, and trunks used for construction and charcoal. The palms could not compete with rice and were cut off. The ex-situ techniques drew on intensified frameworks of production that alienated traditional communitarian logic, stimulating competition also amid community members. Figure 7 - Board of the Association and the List of their Members in 2007 - on the wall of the barn that houses the rice-improving machine, Periperi, Amarante, Piauí, Brazil. Source: Author’s reap Date: August 2013 These development projects are the heart of the organization community has been undertaking drawing from the individual, family and communitarian identities 157 weaved on their participation in the local class struggle related institutions, such as the Amarante’s Syndicate of Rural Workers, where they were once identified as excellent producers of family agriculture. Shortcomings in their leadership and organization around Periperi’s Association of Community Development has shaken their identification with those identities, although their “glorious” past is often remembered in individual narratives, and the role of specific individuals in seeking a better social positioning for the community connected to the local development projects. It is as if “conditions of possibility” were in place then and a “transition moment” could have led to transforming Periperi in a “unit of mobilization” that fell short because of distorted, ex-situ, biased logics of production and organization sold to the community as “economic redemption” and because of their own inability, molded in the leaders of the communitarian organization around these local development projects. That has created grudges and resentments that reverberate until the present, which drew community members away from Periperi’s Association of Community Development, and away from the very own idea of communitarian association. - Here in Periperi, no. Do you know why? It is true that it may be, for nothing is impossible. But this boy here [Zé Filho], for him to gather 10 people, they have to be crazy. Zé Filho and Raimundo’s sons are peers, but they don’t trust each other, Do you get me? For an association to exist, trust is need, isn’t it? Raimundinho [Raimundo’s son] does not trust Zé Filho, isn’t it true? So, Periperi’s Asociation is over, because people are all, how should I put it? – ‘Descabriado’ [suspicious]. – They are all ‘descabriado’ too. – That’s what I have been telling him. – There is no association anymore. – And with a new direction? – With a new direction Zé Filho will not gi down with it, because Zé Filho fears, because he will be monitored by the others. Because Zé Filho does not have the knowledge of things. I will give you an example. We are 3 here, and then I am the ‘cumple’ [who backs up]. And then you have to pay me respects. João Vaqueiro is the president of the Association, you are the book keeper and this one here is the secretary. And then when the time comes, Daniel, do you trust João? (Laughter) Isn’t it the way it is? It is! – In order to function, there should be trust! – And then if you say you trust, the problem is yours! – Here it is over, as I was saying. There the elders, but it is only them; and they are all ‘descabriado’! – They are broke! [Translated by the author from the originallxx dialogue with João Vaqueiro e Zé Filho, Periperi, Amarante, August 2003] The individual, family and collective stress the potential implementation of the Estreito and Castelhano dams with speculated, imagined and immobilizing impacts has coaxed community to reassess these unsettled businesses and the existing “mazeway” community constructed to cope with the resulting realities of their heartfelt 158 shortcomings of mobilization. It has driven community into a “transition period” where traditional leadership is being re-signified, family relations are being reorganized, internal relations of power are being shifted, and new identities are being claimed out from the expected places “official society” has historically relegated them to, around a renewed mobilization connected to the quilombola collective identification. The process is happening amid reassessments of their history in relation to local and regional frameworks of understanding that produced dominant versions of history in the region as well as taken for granted thoughts, actions and practices, which are incorporated in the intra and inter communities relationships, mediated by that with the “official society”. Although still connected to elements of that resulting reality, Periperi is addressing new constructs of “conditions of possibility” that have driven the community into a new “transition moment” from which they have organized their present struggle around the quilombola identification, materialized in the claim for a formal-juridical instrument, the quilombola certification. Both past and present “transition moments” illuminate how mobilization can be triggered and retriggered by the awareness of the “conditions of possibility” in place. These conditions are intimately connected to different historical consciousnesses at the individual, family and community levels. As seem, historical consciousnesses arise in the midst of facing and encountering histories in relation to a dominant version available, as well as reassessments of the community’s organization modes of production, internal social relations, external interactions, and how they are manifested; their culture. That is the subject of the next chapter. 159 Chapter 5 - Let’s Be Quilombola! Wait! We are Quilombola! The month and so I spent in Periperi flew by in an instant, but I would not get to Brasilia just yet. The bus I took in the early hours of that night of June at the diminutive Amarante’s bus station blazed through highway BR 343 that would lead me back to Floriano, on the opposite direction of Teresina, where my flight was going to take off from, by only two-days’ time from then. I had not sent word to my family in the city that I would be going by their hometown, since I would remain in BR 343, after the bus passed by the Southern Princess, that would join state highway PI 140 and PI 141 until the transport reached São João do Piauí. Bispo had invited me to a São João Festivity in town that was supposed to shake the ground of the city and rival even the most famous of the wealth of festivities in honor to the Catholic saint throughout the Northeast. Saint John is the patron of farmers and the festivities that are celebrated in numerous Northeastern cities in different dates through June and July gather sometimes even more participants than Carnival in the hinterland of the region. I wanted to touch base with Bispo about the first experience in Periperi, since he had to return to his affairs after we spent the first days together in the community. But the festivity in which I would take part at the night would also be something to remember for the conversations it produced amid a lot of “forró pé de serra”, “cachaça”, beer, and empty glasses. Bispo gave sometime to rest in Sabinos’ room, his son who lived with him in the quilombo of Saco do Curtume, on the outskirts of the city, after I disembarked in the early hours of the festivity’s day. I woke up for a cigarette and lunch to find Bispo sat on the edge of the gigantic jacaranda log that beautifully lay on the porch of his house. We re-greeted each other, since at dawn both of us were kind of numb. I started telling him about what went on in the remaining time I spent in the community and he said he was sorry he could not have stayed because he needed be in his own community where his “ofícios” [jobs] needed taking care. 160 Bispo describes his actuation with the quilombola and black communities of his home state as an articulation. This articulation is done by an interaction with communities from a situation they are living, not because someone has told him or because of a previous intentional assessment. He considers himself an informant; one who brings information to the community that the community thinks it is valid for them. Their interaction may go on if the community thinks it is worth it, since the situations communities lived are an internal issue, and the articulation is built on solidarity from identified shared experiences, rather than from the commercialization of knowledge that would lead to marketing rights, access to then, and the knowledge to access them. Participation in the articulation is voluntary, as everyone has other occupations, and moving around communities is done by “caronas [rides]”, such as the one I had provided this time around in the context of the research we had engaged. Communities often housed those interactions and the people who participated in them, providing everything needed for them to happen from the meeting place to housing to feeding. A community invites me for a discussion, and I go. If the debate is reasonable, they invite me again; if not, they don’t. This was the case in Periperi. It is as if I was really an informant. I bring the information and the community takes it the way they want it, since it is a internal matter. We don’t go to a community because we heard about it, we arrive there because of a situation they are living, from an similar experience we lived. […] From then on, the community can take the rout they want. Besides, we don’t have conditions to do more than that. Because each person in Piauí constructs their actuation according to their real conditions, for instance, I live off my field, off my ‘ofícios’ [jobs], off my affairs. So I go to the communities in a solidarity action. What I have to offer to the community is my time. Periperi invites and we tell them, look, that day we have a ‘carona’ [ride]. If the agenda proposed matches the ride, ok, we are going to arrive there transport cost-free, but the housing and feeding are theirs. There is no other way. There is no such thing, every month you have to come with a contribution, and then bookkeeping and accountability [Translated by the author from the originallxxi dialogue with Antonio Bispo dos Santos, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São joão do Piauí, June 2013]. That kind of articulation reveals another feature that, in Bispo’s view, though not shared by all within and outside the quilombola movement, characterizes the interaction in between quilombola communities and their articulation at regional and national levels. He sees each quilombo as a political unit, and because of that no such national representation is possible or needed, for what it counts. When interests coincide, quilombola communities may articulate common agendas. I could see examples of that in 161 the recent mobilization which brought to Brasilia several leaders from different quilombola communities throughout the country to speak with Congressmen and women, government officials, and the Federal Supreme Court about their realities and the importance of Decree 4887, after an Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADIN 3239/04) was submitted to the Federal Supreme Court, sustained on the alleged assumption that the Decree violates Legislative powers, since Article 68 of the Constitution would be self-applicable. The ADIN also raises questions about the self-identification criteria and the process of characterization and delimitation of quilombola territories. The ADIN is still being discussed and up to now two ministers of the Supreme Court have casted their votes, tying the contest. The situation brings about yet another impending future for these communities that will not resolve itself in the short run. But interests may not coincide. Mimbó, for instance, is not part of the state articulation, around the Coordination of the Quilombos of Piauí, which Bispo and other leaders in the state helped to put together to address common agendas in the state from 1995. Neither the quilombo is part of the National Coordination of Articulation of Quilombola Communities (CONAQ)38lxxii. Although it shares some of the objectives of the articulation such as the implementation of projects of sustainable development and public policies directed to quilombos, as well as the common use of the land, the community certified by Palmares Cultural Foundation, is not mobilized for the guarantee of the collective property of the land where the quilombo is situated nor it recognizes CONAQ as their national representatives. They address local, regional and national contexts from their own organization in the quilombo (Antonio Bispo dos Santos, personal communication, 2013). 38 The National Coordination of Articulation of the Quilombola Communities (CONAQ) was founded in May 16th, 1996, in Bom Jesus da Lapa, Bahia. “CONAQ is a national organization which represent the quilombolas in the country. Participate in it representatives from quilombola communities of 22 states in the Federation. […] CONAQ’s objectives are the struggle of the guarantee of the property of land, the implementation of sustainable development projects and public policies, taking in consideration the pre-existing organization of the quilombola communities”. [Translated by the author from the original article by Ivan Rodrigues Costa – Coordinator of the Project Vida de Negro (PVN/CCN-MA)]. http://www.institutobuzios.org.br/documentos/CONAQ_UM%20MOVIMENTO%20NACIONAL%20DOS%20QUILOMBOLAS.pdf, 11.9.15. 162 The big issue is that quilombo is not a movement is an articulation. The quilombola issue is an articulation among communities. Quilombo is a community and the quilombola movement is not a movement is an articulation among communities. And it is not a national movement. Each community is a community; it is a political unit. There is no one who represents quilombos in Brazil. Each quilombo presents itself and articulates with whomever they are interested in. There is not, and maybe there will never be a national articulation among quilombos. Each one follows their own path and when is convenient they walk together, when it doesn’t they split ways. […] I participate in CONAQ, but CONAQ does not represent quilombos. CONAQ articulates quilombos. Each traditional community is a traditional community. Communities are not in the logic of the National State, although the State wants it, the political parties want it, even some people in CONAQ, suffer because of it, and think that there will be one day it will happen, but it won’t. If that day comes, articulation will break. The day quilombola communities turn into a national movement; quilombo is no more [Translated by the author from the originallxxiii dialogue with Antonio Bispo dos Santos, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, June 2013]. In Periperi, articulation with the quilombola community was weaved in the common fabric of the rural class struggle. In the wake of the potential implementation of the dams community sought Bispo, whom their leaders, Seu Raimundo and Seu Antonio, had know from their joint participation in the meetings and institutional places promoted by the state’s Federation of Rural Workers. They had shared the same struggle for the property of the land, and the rural class framework of understanding (family agriculture and cooperative or individual property) and identities (rural workers and peasants) that spun from it. But they had not been really eye to eye on the multiple social identities of black communities Bispo identified with, although they were blacksmiths, midwifes, “benzedores”, “raizeiros”, “oleiros”, carpenters, joiners, the cobblers, “fazedores de jacá”, and donkey tamers, as well as “vaqueiros”. They also recognized members in their communities and in their local and regional settings as “posseiros” “meeiros”, “arrendatários”, “foreiros”, “moradores”, and “cablocos”, but as all these identities did not make sense within the rural class struggle framework as well as in the assymetric local and regional power relations informed by a field of signification constructed on ex-situ, biased references, they silenced the histories and social relations spun from these identities. However, the common fabric of the rural class struggle was key to establish a common language to talk about renewing their mobilization around the quilombola issue. But they would have to face and encounter their histories embedded in these previous but still present, frameworks of understanding in order to develop new “conditions of 163 possibility” that would allow them to become a “unit of mobilization” again. And all that under the collective stress the potential implementation of the dams drove them into – a “transition period” that coaxed them to reassess their previous frameworks of understanding; their “mazeway”. Seu Raimundo, who had connections with Amarante’s “official society” and respect in the community, having been “blessed” with a larger chunk of “terras filé” in his own ”tira”, took the lead of the development projects that were implemented in the community, discussed in the previous chapter. Results were far from what was expected, generating a sentiment of detachment from the collective use logic in the community, and provoked upsetting disputes with neighbors. The case of the development project aimed at producing a rice crop in the community illustrates how these dynamics operated. As some members were seen to be working harder than others, production was unevenly shared. The mini-dams that were built to regulate waters of the river that came into the “terras-filé” did not work properly, for the topography had been poorly assessed, resulting in constant floods in unexpected areas, like the neighbors lands who did not have anything to do with it. They did not put up with losing parts of their own lands, and the project had to resume, leaving barren, palm-less lands otherwise “filé”. The large iron tubes that bombed water from the river to regulate floods still remain, along with weed of all sorts, in the “terras filé”, as a constant reminder of a time of great expectation, but mostly of a delusion that created unsettled divides. There is the project of 84. We irrigated here, isn’t it? It was like 12 acres of river, in the lake. And then the drain, we did them. It was a carnauba palm field, and we drained it. We paid sseveral hours of tractor work, we did all the process. And then God sent a big winter [rain] and the flooded area reached almost 3 km. It was up there, up there, and then the neighbours here they were hurt by it. And then at midnight, they only came at night, and broke the wall for the first time. It wasn’t in the middle of the lake, they broke it here near the mango trees. Then when we arrived there the rice was all dry, and the wall in crumbles. [...] And then when the men broke it, we came and repaired it. But then, Daniel, the waters there and the people said ‘we will brake it, we will brake it’. […] But the water was only flooding up there, and the right thing was for it to have arrived down here, near the river, but the water didn’t reach here. And to get there, there was no way, because there is high. And then there was a sea of water here, and the people telling they would brake the wall. […] And they did it and went away in their motor boats. And then when the day dawned we found the water draining through the wall. The river was taken. And the water flowing and the men clapping. We know we were wrong, because we were the ones who made the drain. And then the project was over. So, 84, 94, 2004, 2014. How many years? 30 years this Association has! [Translated by the author from the originallxxiv dialogue with João Vaqueiro, Periperi, Amarante, August, 2013] 164 Another part of the development project was the manioc-flour-making house and the rice benefaction machine that were implemented again in Seu Raimundo’s “tira” and placed under his brothers’ care, Seu Manoel and Seu João, also called community’s computer. While the bulding for processing manioc flour augmented sentiments of breach in the collective pact, the benefaction machine was a starling success that placed Periperi in an important position in relation to the surroundings. People from nearby communities and other municipalities would come to Periperi to improve their rice crops. Seu João ran the process like a computer and community members felt privileged to have that asset on their grounds. Otherwise, they would have to pay a greater share of their production for benefaction elsewhere, but having other producers come to their community was a source of pride. This was another part of the “extended community” logic, as Seu João described, while showing me how the machine worked in a shed that still retained clients’ names and amounts of crops, under the label of the Periperi’s Association of Community Development. – I improved monthly, at that time, 4000 kg of rice, three times, charging at around 5 cents a kilogram. After I increased to ten. And then the money goes into the hands of a bookkeeper. 180 reais free. And then with the money free, you could get it, rip it, and burn it. […] It was for the benefit of the community, for the maintenance of the machine, because the pieces brake, the rubbers rotten. – They came from the Pedras, Palmarais here, from São João; they came even from the Muquila dam. – My friend, in the first year I cut and improved 80 thousand kilograms of rice! Boy, sometime it was midnight, and the men arrived. It didn’t sleep [Translated by the author from the originallxxv dialogue with João Vaqueiro e Zé Filho, Periperi, Amarante, August 2013] The project also presented challenges for the community before the financers, mainly the Northeast Bank. The project was divided in three tranches and money was distributed to the community, following the first and second tranches. Representatives would come “with their pockets full of money” and deliver packages in the hands of community members. Because of the problems in the implementation of the project discussed, Periperi could not match the financed money Northeast Bank loaned them with their expected production. Community as whole fell into a debt they are not able to pay and are being sued by the Bank. As for that, they cannot take other loans and they cannot access other development projects. 165 And then we gathered and the coordination, we went to EMATER and made an invitation for EMATER, Northeast Bank, and the community. By this hour, there was everybody, and we presented the project, our proposal. And the Bank was very favorable. If the problem is this, we will solve it now. And then EMATER solicited everybody be registered, based on acres. Who could place ten, would place ten, who can place one, would place it, in proportion to the capacity of each one. That was made in order not to exert pressure on each one. After around 60 days, the bank was ready. Then came the technician with his pockets full of money. When he came, everybody smiling. He came with a sac full of money. Project to finance the fields. Manioc and rice. It’s been what Antonio? 97, 96, 97. Then we got the money everybody, proportionately. Money was given in the hand. Project was divided in three trenches, one was for land preparation, other for planting, and other for harvest. The first passed, the second also, and even the third passed. Only that, in the second year, when financing was needed, then they disappeared. Bad investment. It was detoured, and according to that, it did not come to do what it was supposed in the project. This bill is still there today to pay. And it is high. This last Thursday we had an audience. And then Bank sued us. Yeah, everybody, everybody is involved [Translated by the author from the originallxxvi dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013]. Despite their unsettled past and present grudges against the results of their part in those development projects, the “negos do Periperi” are still known in the region for their collective organization. They were pioneers in the organization of the Amarante’s Rural Workers Syndicate, founded in 1962, and as protagonists on these various rural development projects, partnered with the state and municipal governments and international organisms, they have established a perception of distinction that is known and feared by many government and elected officials, as well as other communities in the region. In 1962-61, we won Amarante’s Rural Workers Syndicate. First associates, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, all from the community. The one who knew how to elaborate ideas, he was called the intellectual boy, who then took the proposal to those who were courageous in the city, and from there, they implemented the work within the syndicate movement. And them when people got together at the syndicate, the bourgeois were jealous, because people cannot be united, but do they want really? What do they want with that? Wasn’t it to torment us? Then one said: these blacks need to be whipped, with this thing with the meetings there, what business do they have in wanting to be something? But it wasn’t enough to intimidate. In 64, the Revolution came, because of military dictatorship, and our syndicate became fifth in the syndicates of the region. There were five syndicates registered back then in the region, and these five, Água Branca, Amarante, São Pedro, Campo Maior, and Teresina.. And there was an adherence of rural workers of Amarante. And we participated in the foundation of the Federation of Rural Workers in Agriculture, Amarante of Piauí. Federal Police came and supervised, but did not present any danger to society. Because it was an authentic and registered syndicate, so how was this idea created? They came because they did, but saw that we were under our mandate, doing normal things. [Translated by the author from the originallxxvii conversation with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] 166 The distinction they have cultivated for community organization was always a source of tension among elites and other white locals. Many times these groups made use of racism and of the support of local and even federal government to undermine the communitarian organization, which continued to resist until the present day. They were historically accused of been lazy, unable to manage their destinies, and demotivated to pursue their autonomous development. This went hand in hand with contradictory stimuli now and then, when the community became stage for outside interests, often materializing in development projects that were financed and planned elsewhere, and then implemented in the community. Periperi was catapulted to an organized, smart, entrepreneurial community that deal with all that was thrown at them. Only to be forced to return to their expected places, with bills to pay, when the projects failed and the money was gone. The renewed collective organization also arises with the acknowledgment of the vicious role they have played over and over. Owing Northeast Bank a great deal of money that had been lent against their lands as guarantee, the leadership saw in the collective quilombo certification a way out of the mess in which they had been embroiled. Results of this chess move are still uncertain, nevertheless, as mixed feelings about the certification had already disseminated in the community, ranging from the maintenance of the status quo as it is to using the certification as a motif for increasing the collective use of the territory. The extremes are in between the ones established in their “tiras” that would stress the status quo, and the others facing relative over population and consequent resource drainage that would be more inclined to collective titling. Business is complicated. Community was on default with these situations and we could not manage and we are still held up by that, with a way out, especially those who coordinated the projects, without way to do nothing, in relation to banks in order to ameliorate things. We are watching development by the television, but it does not reach the community because of these things. Government has already done numerous proposals but there is no way we could pay in government terms. And now we are struggling to see if we can develop this business, there in the Justice…Wellington Dias [Governor of Piauí] was here now, February 27th, and I myself made a proposal to see if they had a way to organize and renegotiate these debts, such as the State does, the municipality does, with the IMF, with the World Bank, like if you do not fulfill your trenches, you can come and renegotiate, it goes to 20 years, to 30 years, and you remain paying those trenches and stay with your way free to do things. If there was such a way, first because we are not feeling well, because we know we did some things wrong, second 167 because we are impeded to participate in these questions of the development of the country. And then we are slaves of ourselves, and the situations we are in. And then he [Wellington Dias] said there was a way for us to solve our problems and said it was for us to organize within the community and he would send an advisor to see how they could solve it. Here form Teresina he said: Raimundo, it is all solved. What is in Notary, you can claim and go to the Bank and the Bank negotiates with 85% of loss, government will cover 85% as subsidy, and the producers will pay 15%. If you can pay cash, pay cash. If not, renegotiate in 10 years. We went to EMATER and asked for the sheets on three producers, each has an average debt of 150 thousand, from a loan of 15-30 thousand. And then they said the same thing. We are in that now. [Translated by the author from the originallxxviii dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] Cândida Vaqueiro’s “tira” is today the most abundant in Periperi. Her descendants are known in the community to have intermarried with people from the neighborhood of Areias, in Amarante. Areias is said to be the “blackest” neighborhood in a city with a majority auto-identified black population, data from the 2010 municipal census. The connection between the neighborhood and Periperi is clearly stated both by the inhabitants of the community and people from Areias alike. Areias welcomes Periperi members coming into the city, which is within Amarante’s limits in the direction of Palmerais. There was not a single occasion that I tagged along with Nilda, Seu Antonio or Seu Raimundo that we did not stop to chat with someone from the Areias on our way to Amarante. The neighborhood’s connection with Cândida’s descendants is, nevertheless, more intimately related. Cândida herself married a man from Areias, who went by the nickname of “Soin”. I had heard the expression many times and it was not difficult to understand the prejudice behind it. “Soin” refers to a type of monkey endogenous to the region. I had often heard the expression being used to tell off people of black skin, but I did not know then the dimensions of its use in Periperi’s context. Several of these couples and their families, as well as their descendants, came to settle in Cândidas “tira”, up to the point that “Rua 2”, a second street, was opened behind the original houses by the road. The occupation is seen as natural by Seu Antonio, the head of the “tira”, although he recognizes problems that arise from the relative lack of space and use of resources, such as electricity and water. Other concerns brought up now and then by members of other “tiras”, though. Here is where the mix of moral considerations, fear of over population, and inward prejudice come to play. The 168 “semelhantes” [relatives and related to community members], abundant in Cândida’s “tira”, are held against the “heirs”, the direct descendants. The generations were generating up to this point and this here belonged to my grandfather. And the fields we plan how to do. If it is not possible to place it here, we place it outside. But the houses are safe. And then, there in Antonio [Soares], in their context there, there are people not only from the family, but also ‘semelhante’ [relatives and related]. They are not outside the blood, the blood I say, the blood of quilombolas. They are all humble, simple people, that sometimes arrive here, make friendship, and they say: boy, place your house here, and here it is. So, there, there are people who are not from the family, in the blood, but they are poor and made their houses there and stay there. Sometimes or they are together with or married, and make their house there. Because here in our case, here no. There in Jesus, in Santo, no. Here only the tradition of the heirs. [Translated by the author from the original dialoguelxxix with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] The descendants of “Soin” are also “soin” in the minds of other members. It is a disqualification based on the assumption that they are not organized, live to drink and sing, reproduce a lot, and sometimes disrespect family and religious values. It has to do directly with power relations inside the community. Long have the “soin” been kept out of the decisions that shaped the community in the past years. The disenchantment, provoked by the results of the most recent development projects, has turned the tables. As the “soin” had greater numbers to share, a different form of solidarity was generated amongst them that today stands out in the collectivity. As the head of the “tira”, Seu Antonio has taken upon himself the organization of the community members around collective works and deeds. The works concern overcoming the representations impressed on them by the community. The port of entry used, considering the political spaces that were occupied by other members, such as Seu Raimundo, Seu Manoel and the late Balduíno, was the Catholic cult. In Periperi, no different than other communities in the region, traditions related to the cult of Catholic saints are re-signified in the communitarian traditions based on black culture, as well as local festivities and imagery. There are moments during community congregation in which prayer, chanting related to the saints as well as local realities, and affirmation discourses about the historically built way of life, are mixed together. The festivities in Periperi and in other surrounding black communities are famous in the region. The calendar of the festivities stretches all through the year, starting with São Sebastião 169 [Saint Sebastian], from January 14th to the 20th, followed by the observance of the lent. In May, members flock to the neighbouring community of Barroca Funda for the celebration of Nossa Senhora de Fátima [Our Lady of Fatima]. The São João [Saint John] festivity is held in the community of São João, from June 15th through the 25th. The most important festivity is related to São Raimundo Nonato [Saint Raymond], which happens between August 23rd and the 31st. Then Nossa Senhora Aparecida, from October 3rd through the 12th. Santa Luzia, from December 1st to the 13th and, at last, Christmas. São Raimundo Nonato, being the patron of the community, inspired the idea of building a church off the ground, though it is still under construction. Starting in 2012, Seu Antonio coaxed members of his “tira” to sell bingos and raffles in order gather funds for the church. In the next year’s São Raimundo Nonato festivity, he moved one step forward and rounded up members of the “tira” in their leisure time to build the Church’s club and bar to accommodate the activities following mass. Plenty of beverages and food were sold to community members and people from the surrounding communities and cities, and the reception was relatively successful.170 Figures 8, 9, 10, 11, Bar, Bazar, the Church, and kids playing at the São Raimundo Nonato’s Festivity, Periperi, Amarante, Piauí, Brazil. Source: Author’s reap Date: August 2013 Figure 11 - Kids Playing Figure 8 - Bar Figure 9 - Bazar Figure 10 - Church 171 Another objective is also on the move, since the level of communitarian organization that required the year round activities for the festivity are not frequently seen in other community projects. It has solidified Seu Antonio as a necessary partner in community’s organization, especially around the collective identification issue related to the quilombola identification and the discussions about the potential implementation of the dams. It has reached a point of no return now, since relations of power were shifted by communitarian dynamics, but also anchored in the present political struggle. The political struggle is also informed by other strategies of land occupation, again veiled within the situational map community members drew. In the upper curve of the Riacho Mulato river that runs through the Chapada, near the Judge’s land, the community is fighting for an estate to be granted by the municipality, under agrarian reform legislation. The “Incra land”, as they call it, referring to the government body responsible for agrarian reform in Brazil, is presently under consideration by the local elected body. The issue has created some heat, as real estate developers are also aware of the intentions of the community toward the land. The tension is increased by the recent certification of the community as quilombola and what could become of the “extended community” by potentially granting them the “Incra land”, in relation to the historically sustained power relations in the locality. All landowners in the locality fear the shift that Periperi is presently causing. The situation reminded me of a passage from Thomas King’s book, in which he narrates the case of the Tohono O’odham Nation. They had used profits from a casino built on their reserve to acquire adjacent land in Glendale, Arizona, USA. Instead of individually dividing it amongst themselves, or “developing” its market value, they claimed it in order to add it to their original reservation. As King (2012: 211) states, “instead of pursuing the American dream of accumulating land as personal wealth, the tribes have taken their purchases to the Secretary of Interior and requested the land they acquired be added to their respective reservations and given trust status”. The claim did not go by unnoticed by Glendale’s “official society” who “watched as a perfectly good block of fee-simple land was taken out of local and state control and 172 removed from the tax base” (King, 2012: 212). The claim generated several counter-claims that are still under consideration in the state’s courts. What if Periperi moves in that direction in relation to the “Incra land”? Can they all be part of the same territory? There are examples of quilombola communities of the Ribeira Valley, in the state of São Paulo, who moved in the direction of certifying and later titling part of the claimed territory as a quilombo, and another part as a Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS)39, one of the categories that allow supervised extraction from the ecosystem, under environmental law in Brazil. By that, they could guarantee some of the traditional use of the reserve by the members of the community and at the same time preserve it from real estate speculation. Titling it all as a quilombo would have weakened their claim at the time, as it would have conflicted with the interests of the environmental bodies for the land that was already under great pressure from real-estate speculators. It would also weaken their ability to preserve the territory in the face of pressure by real-estate developers, as the titling as quilombo does not include resources and the enforcement of regulations available to sustainable development reserves. It remains a mosaic, though, since both regulations do not converse. […] characteristics of the early Jacupiranga State Park considered, such as misplacing restrictive areas over traditional communities, lack of adequate management and financing, social-environmental conflicts - characteristics often seem in Brazilian Protected Areas and aggravated on Jacupiranga State Park by the presence of more than 8000 inhabitants spread over more than 30 rural villages - it is clear the creation of the Mosaic was, along with the participation of the involved communities, the best strategy that could be taken to mediate conflicts and develop conservation strategies [Translated by the author from the originallxxx] (Bim, 2012). In “conciliating the sustainable use and management with biodiversity preservation in situ” (Brasil, Abichared, Shiriashi; 2010: 6), I argued that this lack of conversation between environmental and quilombola regulations exposed an apparent antagonism between cultural and environmental rights. On the ground, the result was a failed, unarticulated governmental planning, which allowed for situations where the categorization of a conservation unit did not correspond to the traditional uses of the land among the community. It also did not allow for adjustments in those traditional uses that 39 The RDS Quilombos da Barra do Turvo was created in February 21st, 2008, by Law 12810. 173 could better preserve the biodiversity. Most of the time these confused and morose decisions benefitted real-estate developers who then advanced over the “no man’s land”. In the case of the Ribeira Valley, quilombola communities forced their way into the committees that discussed the re-categorization of the original conservation unit, Parque Estadual de Jacupiranga, and negotiated with state officials, other traditional communities, real-estate developers, and general occupants, their presence on the mosaic. Results were not what communities expected and that still generates tension. Imperfect as it is, the mosaic sheds light into what could become an evener policy for land conflict resolution regarding environmental, land reform, and traditional use. It also opens up new ground for access to land by quilombola and other traditional communities in Brazil, in the midst of the vacuum lack of proper regulation leaves combined environmental and traditional uses. In this region, the re-categorization issue was very questioned by the quilombola community. It was one of the richest and most controversial debates of the process, because quilombolas, at first, did not accept the proposal of transforming their territory, which was still superposed by the old PEJ [Parque Estadual Jacupiranga] in RDS, because they did not understand the significance of a Sustainable Development Reserve, besides being there, at the time, discussing the recognition of their territory as quilombola. Discussions moved on to reach a consensus. Nevertheless, there is still some questioning about the re-categorization. [Translated by the author from the original]lxxxi (Bim, 2012: 110). I talked to quilombola Ribeiro Valley community members in 2013 during a seminar in Registro, São Paulo, where official bodies were promoting the implementation of the 169th ILO Convention. They said they understood quite perfectly what a Sustainable Development Reserve was, and they understood quite well what was at stake in those negotiations, though information was less available to them. The negotiations led to agreements, and are still being considered by communities. They see it as an on-going process, in a world of ever-changing rules. In Periperi, however, no conservation units are under dispute, therefore the mosaic model, under present national environmental law, could not be used as it is. Nevertheless, the potential “Incra land” granting could open up similar disputes that characterized discussions that coaxed government and society to move toward the mosaic model. It remains to be seen what kind of occupation Periperi will make of the “Incra land” and 174 what resistance strategies they will engender to defend the territory, for dispute is under way. Today, all in all, the lands are perceived as collective and defended by all, despite the inward and outward tensions discussed. A level of communality in use can be perceived in the midst of all these tensions. There has been no formal or informal sale within the territory of the community of Periperi, after the conformation of the present 220 acres. The new generation establishes themselves in the territory by family relations. Present inhabitants who came from outside the community, had to built their homes through relations of friendship or “need”, negotiated with the community, mediated by the leaders of each “tira”. The community’s population grows by marriage and the coming of “friends” and “semelhantes”. The permanence of these “friends” and “semelhantes” are determined by consensus amid the inhabitants, mediated by the head of each “tira”, where the person and his family are to be settled. In the neighboring communities, Riachão, and São João, properties are not sold formally, because of the same situation related to the lack of definite titling, shared by Periperi. Nevertheless, a practice of informal sale to “terceiros” (outsiders) exists in a grey area, effectively allowing possession without document. That is a feature that is no stranger to Periperi, as well, as seen previously. Nonetheless, the 220 acres have stood the test of time and need and community has found ways to preserve the territory, which included the purchase of “tiras” by their own members; the settlement of extended families within the territory, and most recently, its political struggle for the certification as a quilombo. They have not moved to titling, though, as this is seen as requiring much more maturity and settling of old business within the community. Therefore, the breach by outsiders still remains a threat to cohesion in the community. I can sell it informally. For instance, boy, how do I go about building a house here? Boy, I can’t sell it but I buy it. Then a guy can buy it, because this is happening not only here, it is not all these properties, in all of the others, it happens like that. A guy buys it knowing that a guy had the inherited right from his father. Only he cannot provide document. There in Riachão, for example, there is it all divided, but they cannot provide document. That riverside is all sold, but the guy does not have title. He buys it because I want to make it my ranch, but there no document. Here in Periperi it is all family. Here there are homes, houses, but everything is conceded, the come when it is allowed, because it is part of friendship connections, or makes 175 his house connected to a relative, something like that. For example, there I have a house, which has a value for living. We can ameliorate the house, but the title value, of document. We do not have. [Translated by the author from the originallxxxii dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] The process that led to the quilombola certification in Periperi also caught the eye of members of both São João and Riachão. In 2010, in the wake of the tension generated by the potential implementation of the power plants, the lack of information on the expected impacts, and the consequent uncertain results for the community, Periperi started its organization around the collective struggle for the certification of the community as quilombola. Issues related to understanding what that acquired identity meant both within the context of the community and regarding its relation to the “official society” arose in the process of discussion. This discussion began on an individual level, between members, and then collectively, in group meetings promoted by the community’s leaders both in its grounds and with the communities of Riachão and São João, and in managing the fuss of the news that their movement provoked from ever watchful political bodies and established members of “official society”. Similar processes could be observed by Periperi leaders in the mentioned neighbouring communities, when they organized meetings to discuss the issue. There was a sentiment in Periperi, referring back to the idea of “extended community”, that they could not leave them out of the process. Periperi saw itself as the root of it all, and that perception was confirmed in the meetings I participated with the other communities. All communities associated Periperi with a “true” quilombola identity, from its traceable connections with a past related to slavery, to the maintenance of communitarian uses of their territory, and their perceived allegedly “blackness”. Other communities’ constructions were recognized as missing one thing or the other, either by them and Periperi alike. The missing parts always connected with the representations of ”blackness” which were absent or diluted by mixture with white folk. Nevertheless, in the meeting of both São João and Riachão, they stressed their ancestral ties with black or indigenous peoples and the maintenance of traditions related to what they referred as “these cultures”. These representations of blackness or indigenous were continually referenced in bloodlines and shared histories communities and members had with Periperi. 176 We here are quilombola. Only nobody had seen themselves as quilombola, yet. With the incentive of the comrade that came talking about the histories of the communities, then we went ourselves looking for our roots and we found ourselves quilombolas in truth. That is why we began to organize, but we are very backward we ourselves. The business with certification we had put aside, so came Bispo, and he is a guy that has helped us a lot. We made a plan because the neighbouring communities São João and Riachão, because it has always been like that. But we are studying here in our sector here to begin with Periperi. So, we are here in this studying, searching for our identity […] we are in this process of certification of the community as quilombola. Or quilombola community or traditional community, but what we want really is quilombola. Bispo came, it’s been two or three years, and he thought we were really quilombola. Then we made here a base work. We gathered there in Riachão, with families and did the assessment of the origins, there is none who does not have part of black or indigenous, all of them. We also did it here in São João, everybody identifies as legit part of black legit, and others as indigenous and such thing. [Translated by the author from the originallxxxiii dialogue with Antonio Soares, June 2013] By the time I got involved with Periperi, their leaders had already gathered members of each community in two meetings, in which memoires were transcribed in accordance with the direction of their certification as quilombola. By then, Periperi leaders ask me to join them in new meetings with both communities for they did not feel reassured that the position gathered previously still endured. Their mobilization had caught the attention of outsiders, as well as some members of both São João and Riachão who started to mobilize in the opposite direction. Examples given were João Gualberto, also known as Garimpeiro, in Riachão, and the Gabriel family in São João. The case in Riachão is an example of how the mobilization has instigated opposite reactions based on the fear of the reorganization of the status quo relations that could result in land loss, often “acquired” or claimed under the sign of the “acolhimento” logic or by the aid of influence with “official society”. Those claims were always referenced with a distinction from the communities based on racial grounds. João Gualberto claims for himself several chunks of land in Riachão but also in the “Incra land” which Periperi is in the process of being granted. His claims are based on his blood relations with Riachão ancestors, but also in his influence with politicians and government officials. His interest is clearly opposite to the communitarian logic. The case in São João draws on perceptions orientated by prejudice toward discussed black representations in region. Around the quilombola issue they are added by stereotypes supported by “official society” that link the quilombola identity with backwardness and with being a slave. Behind it are interests 177 of advancing on lands in an individual fee-cell model, just like those of João Gualberto in Riachão. History was always like that. We are known here as the ‘negos do Periperi’. We never want to be separated. São João and the people from Riachão. But we are known as ‘negos do Periperi’. They envy us, because we organize better. They do not swallow us. It is because we never did want only for us. The blacks we wanted for us. We try and we get together, but at the time of the meeting, all is good, but identification really…because if we look at their descendants they are all black, there is nowhere to run, but carry that thing inside them, anything it is with the ‘negos do Periperi’. Since the beginning, we messed with everyone, and everyone came forth as quilombola, in a big meeting we made. But this issue is very slow. But here we did not leave anyone out, so when tomorrow comes, when we have a result, they don’t say we left them out. […] Because there is a way for a guy to fell quilombola, there is a certain right, differentiated, then things change, but inside the chest, in the heart really, to fell black…but there is nowhere to run, they are black, they just don’t want to fell black. That is why the center is us really, we are going to work from here, from Periperi. In this quilombola issue, the axis is Periperi, really. […] In São João, for example, their mother is black, and their grandmother is even blacker. Only she married the Gabriel, who were more red, white really, and their children came out whiter. So, in truth, this roots issue, ther is no way of being 60%; everyone is black. […] There in Riachão, there are few who oppose. Adonias neither does nor doesn’t. The other who is not part is the ‘Garimpeiro’ [João Gualberto], who is for the whites, but the other part for the blacks. Manuca, whose grandmother is also black, black origin and poor. They are a third black and two thirds white. Their origin, they say is Portuguese. [Translated by the author from the originallxxxiv dialogue with Antonio Soares, June 2013] The process of identification is not homogeneous, as it could not possibly be in a region marked by asymmetric racialized power relations. There are still those who think they have a more “vain culture”, wanting to be “proud”, as they say in Periperi. According to the leadership in Periperi, these minority groups do not feel they are quilombolas “at the heart”, and “in the ethnicity”. Even before the discussion around the quilombola issue started, they felt whiter in comparison with other inhabitants seen as phenotypically blacker or that socially affirmed their black traces. Due to the practice of informal sale, land beyond the “extremas”, limits of the community of Periperi, are “properties” of João Francisco dos Reis, known as João Paulino, whose land lies in between the limits of the community of São João, and Antônio Ribeiro, within the community limits of Riachão. Both identify themselves as white and acquired their properties by means of informal purchase from black occupants, kinsmen of the Vaqueiro. 178 He is neighbour there in the other extreme with João Paulino, João Francisco dos Reis, who got his area from the family. By then he did not have possession and ways to acquire land, because one needed to have resources to acquire land. As he didn’t, my grandmother was solidary, gave the power of possession to him, for him to have property. But he was already not in the blood. In the other extreme, we have him as Antonio Ribeiro, is his family. White and proud. This one is mixed, is not black nor white. Only he never wanted to mix. They thought that about us as blacks, and they felt they are white. [Translated by the author from the originallxxxv dialogue with Antonio Soares, June 2013] There is black and indian. My mother is mixed, you see. She is there. She is in bed. But if you see her hair is plain, plain, impressive. Mixed almost, because it is black and indian, she, all her family. My grandmother, my great-grandmother, back then I called her ‘pregadeira de cachorro’ [referring to her plain hair]. As she was, my grandmother, also here part of the Vaqueiro, my grandmother, she lived 120 years, indian legit. So my grandmother was mixed black, indian, I don’t know if there is white, in the family it had, but it was a one time only thing, I don’t know if she married again, I don’t know if she married another, with the cousin yes, but my grandmother really is black and indian. [Translated by the author from the originallxxxvi dialogue with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] The “acolhimento” logic rolls its dice again in the descriptions made by both Seu Antonio and Seu Raimundo, regarding the mixed relations that involve marriage and temporary alliances. This allows for shifting identities either as black or white, and even “indian”. It also configures shifts in community membership or one's relation to it. On the other hand, the dynamic can be seen, from a point of view of the maintenance of the community, as a resistance strategy. Temporary alliances also played a great role in allowing a connection to “official society” that enabled Periperi to hold on to their present 220 acres. The way that local society works in regard to racial stigmatization, however, permitted “new whites”, Ribeiro and Paulino, to distance themselves from their original ties with the community. They claim to be white and do not mix, and have never done such thing, by their own account. They endure relations with the community now from the “acolhimento” prism, but referring to an alleged solidarity in times of need, which materializes in temporary political alliances during election for public offices, provision of products and labor at a “family price”, and settling occasional disputes “in-house”. They even considered turning quilombolas in the wake of the potential implementation of the power plants, but that could not be done both because of race hatred and political interests. 179 It is such a complex web that intertwines power and race that even the Ribeiro’s, who built their case on the assumption of being white, foreseeing benefits from the quilombola identification in the wake of the potential implementation of the dams, turned black on the surface out of the blue. Suddenly solidarity ties were rebuilt, kinship was re-invoked, and openly, at least momentarily, they affirmed themselves quilombolas. As in the case of São João and Riachão, they referred to Periperi as “the root of it all”. In Periperi, everyone knew that their case was built on thin air, but following the logic of “extended community” and “acolhimento”, they created no fuss against them. Although, behind closed doors, the Ribeiro’s kept walking on the same path of their distinction based on whitened representations. Talking to them [Antonio Ribeiro’s Family] they say they are white, but when it is time they say they are quilombola, because they say there is no other way. But because our culture is like that […] never has a black man got a black woman in the same way. Among these nine, never has one brought a cousin to marry. Always from the outside. No, no sir. It has to be from outside. Or male or female. Do you copy me? […] That is why we have this difficulty. And the other, who have a prouder culture, these are the ones when we brought this quilombola history, they started to say I am more white than this one or the other. Always by this comparison. [Translated by the author from the originallxxxvii conversation with Antonio Soares, June 2013] The “acolhimento” logic presents a gap between silence and situation, as Sider (1993) states, regarding the indigenous Lumbee and Tuscarora peoples, in North Carolina, USA. Of course Periperi knows they are being used by white-identifying farmers, in the situations described, and of course this is a product of local racialized power relations. In these relations they are asymmetrically forced into an expected polluted (Douglas, 1966) place, and resist this using different strategies. What Sider brings to light is that in the midst of all these imposing forces that silence the community and force them into ‘acolhimento’, there is also a choice they make to be part of this, in the parts they want to convey in their struggle for re-writing their history. Yes, they could simply denounce it, and expose white-identified farmers, regarding their troublesome identification as quilombola. Yes, they could go by the book, regarding the other troublesome identification processes of neighboring communities. After all, they are the “root of it all”, they have “root hog of die”, just like the indigenous in North 180 Carolina; all those years, taking everything that was thrown at them, and being told off by “official society”, white-identified farmers, and even neighboring communities, on account of their blackness. And yet they choose not to, for it still remains important for them to maintain the idea of the “extended community”, and perhaps hoping to transform ‘acolhimento’ for its own good. That choice is also what singles them out in these very own asymmetric racialized power relations. It not simply a question of recognition, it is a question of situation in their own world. This is not a gulf between silence and voice. To call it such, would be to imply, from our safe distance, that the Indians could have talked publicly about this, or more than talk, they could have created a discourse with its own potential and actual confrontational momentum. But to call it a gulf between silence and situation is to recognize they knew they were silent, and why, and that they also knew that their silence was not fully determined for them, not completely imposed. It was perhaps both imposed and chosen. (Sider, 1993: 14) That is also why, according to the leaders in Periperi, the community first assumed a traditional collective identity rather than a quilombola one. The word quilombola is still difficult to sustain amid some inhabitants, for they say “it is not in the blood, not in the culture”. This fact relates to the sheer invisibility of the quilombola issue and to the racism impregnated in local social dynamics. Since the formation of the community, around 1880, until the present day, almost 140 years later, the “negos do Periperi” only heard about quilombos through the didactic books, always relating them to a trajectory of exploitation, poverty, and backwardness. That is why “in the blood” and “in the ethnicity” quilombola issues remain very far from the local reality. From this point on, there also remains a stigma in using the word quilombola as an amalgam for collective identity, because it was thought that to be a quilombola was to be apart from the more developed social environment. That is why, in this context, we had it here as a traditional community and not quilombola. Now with the word quilombola, a black person to swallow it is a fight. Because it is not in the blood, it is not in the culture. If we say from 1800 to 2014, it is what, it is 130-140 years, and it was never said, we heard people talk about quilombola like in the books, like very far from our reality, but inside the blood, in the ethnicity, that has never arrived associated with us really. So it is this difficulty that we have found in the aspect inside us here to adopt the word quilombola. Now there are some who have already grown conscious, we know there is nowhere to run, there are some who already accept it well. Now at first, when there was tlak about quilombola, they jumped ten meters high. Because it was thought quilombola was to be 181 apart from the evolved social environment and all. [Translated by the author from the originallxxxviii conversation with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] So they silenced it and adopted the dominant version of their history to try to maintain a shred of their autonomy. As the quilombola issue was poorly known to them, they tried other paths available, in trying to fulfill requirements recognized by “official society” to provide their historical continuity. This is a paradox that continues after the recognition as quilombola as well, as requirements change, informed by asymmetric racialized power relations. And there the importance of re-writing their histories on their own terms, which sometimes means accepting, even temporarily, the dominant version available. To many Native American peoples who must […] each remain an autonomous people to be considered Indians, must also in the midst of their autonomy adopt the dominant version of their history, and the dominant society’s requirements for historical continuity, in order to maintain even a shred of their autonomy. The paradoxes continue and even are heightened after recognition. (Sider, 1993: 21) Side-by-side with this collective identification process, the discussion around the prejudice against blacks is renewed inside and outside the community. In the social spaces of the municipality, racialized differences still persist, impeding the full social shift of blacks, particularly those of humble origin who are frequently associated with rural environment. Even when the black person sticks out from the crowd for their individual capacity or because of the collective organization, he is systematically delegitimized based upon racism. Such was the case with Seu Raimundo, who narrated his trajectory in Amarante’s Rural Workers Syndicate, who reached the board of directors only to be ousted when his agenda would not comply with “official society”. He became just another “neguinho abusado” [impertinent blackie], in his own terms. This practice is so strongly deep-rooted in the social relations that it trespasses the barriers of phenotypic stigmatization and impregnates economic and cultural relations, even among subjects socially identified as black in both urban and rural environments. The issue is also related to the tinting between who is “blacker” or “whiter”. It invades the communities and undermines the process of assumption of their black as well as quilombola identity. 182 Because we know that there is still prejudice, our society holds prejudice against blacks. That there is none who can erase it, it is very difficult to erase it really. You are in a meeting, even the people who are there in the social environment, black, they look at you with despise. We see it, ah, the intelligent boy, but when they want to place their own, they call you ‘nego’ [black] or ‘neguinho’ [blackie], to say he is intelligent, but still black. It is a culture, it is racism really. That is why, people have difficulty, in order to recognize and assume [their identity]. [Translated by the author from the originallxxxix conversation with Raimundo Vaqueiro, June 2013] Periperi finally gained enough grounds on where to base their demands for the recognition of their quilombola identity. In São João and Riachão, however, the process will need further discussion, for there is a bigger parcel of the inhabitants that identify otherwise, under both racialized and market-value claims, sometimes alien to the quilombola issue and sometimes directly against it. It is a process that has directly to do with what Sider (1993) calls “historical fluidity”. Fluidity is presented to “people involved both within and outside the ethnic group, with unavoidable and irresolvable antagonisms between their past and their present situation, and between the present and the impending future” (Sider, 1993: xviii). In writing their future in the present both people in the Periperi, São João and Riachão are confronted by their past, which also needs to be re-written, either commemorated or silenced. So the discussion around collective identification does not follow an evolutionary line that stretches from early Mimbo’s experiences to a waypoint in Periperi, drawing a potential future for other communities in the region. The past is part of their future constructions, and needs to be re-written to cope with present struggles. The present version of the past as told by “official society” is embedded in community histories, speculating on and impeding the future. This version creates antagonisms with communities’ histories as they relate to their present struggles for it is often forced on them “by their vulnerability in a larger society that simultaneously insists both on ‘otherness’ of dominated peoples and on their compliance with a wider set of constantly changing standards, laws and practices” (Sider, 1993: 9). Such was the case with the Lumbee and Tuscarora indigenous of North Carolina who Sider studied for over two decades. Bearing imbricated histories, the Lumbee and 183 Tuscarora worked their affiliations with their past differently, and struck distinct positions in their present struggles. The past is informed by histories related to the early contact with Europeans that imposed on them the name “Croatan”. Some English sailor carved the expression on a tree and the State found it nice to grant recognition to the indigenous by that name. It was a take it or leave it situation. The past is also informed by a confrontational Cherokee descent, built on a history of indigenous defeating whites, which produced the Cherokee Indians of Robeson County. Yet another version that labelled the indigenous the Siouan Indians of the Lumber River is based on several anthropological and historical investigations connected with social movements that were stimulated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s programs for farm reclamation, and support from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, aimed at developing a large cooperative farm for Indians. These opposing histories are also informed by the present struggles as the Lumbee chose momentarily the “Croatan” identity, aiming at educational autonomy, when it was allowed. On the other hand, those who came to identify with Cherokee Indians of Robeson connected more with local issues than with potential benefits spun out from government recognition arrangements, and today they concentrate on their claims as Tuscarora. Though seen as the most accurate history of both Lumbee and Tuscarora, the process that led to the creation of the “Siouan Indians of the Lumber River” became the most problematic and divisive of all the names, since it did not speak to their struggles aiming at solutions ex-situ. Affiliations are not identifiable in coordinates, members of both Lumbee and Tuscarora claim parts of all these histories at once, and swing between identities. In the midst of it all, a strong opposition reverberated by “official society” against whichever re-writing of the past proposed by the indigenous states a clear divide between those who seek to maintain status quo and those who depend on its rearranging to climb out of their expected impeding future. All this was strongly opposed by local Whites, who saw their control over Indian labor and their other forms of profiteering from keeping people poor and dependent threatened. It was also opposed by influential Indian people who were against the idea of being reservation Indians or were against emphasizing this particular Indian identity, either because they had another identity in mind, or feared the social and economic consequences of being too specifically Indian. (Sider, 1993: 5) 184 Recognizing historical fluidity is one thing that is quite difficult to imagine being within the process of history in the making. Exercising it is a whole different ball game, though. It often places people at a crossroads; some they have driven by, others they will revisit, and others are new and unexpected. It also opens the possibility for to reiterate or turn against the history that they still live in, the “forms of meaning it encouraged, the forms of meaningless it generated” (Sider, 1993: 7). Recognizing historical fluidity is at the heart of the use Almeida (2008) makes of Foucault’s (1966) “conditions of possibility”, often woven within contexts where “transition periods” (Peluso, Watts, 2001) arise, rearranging historically knit power relations by the implementation (or the struggle to implement) legislation refereeing to the rights, forcing upon community collective stress situations that Wallace (1956) describes. Exercising historical fluidity relates more with “transition moments” Almeida (2008) qualifies, when “conditions of possibility” are woven in demands, materialized in basic claims, in the recognition of collective identities and in the transformation of it all in a formal-juridical instrument. To urge people to claim a different version of the past and a different vision of the future is to mobilize people to accept a new history that does not fully make sense, that moves against the still strongly flowing currents of power and of present history. To say that this new emerging sense of history simply ‘legitimates’ new claims is to turn away from all the tensions, gaps, pressures, fears, and hopes that live in and between people’s multiple, uncertain senses of the past and of the impeding future – the multiple, co-existing histories that people live within and against: the histories of their own dreams and hopes and fears, and the histories of power – of what they know has been, and still could be, done to them. (Sider, 1993:8) At this moment there is some re-writing of history being done in Periperi, as the community is facing challenges related to the struggle that led to the quilombola certification. They have driven by some crossroads that inform their present struggle, such as the community’s earlier collective organization around Periperi’s Association of Community Development; they have revisited some, realizing new forms and paths for leadership; and they are still looking at other newer ones, though they cannot fully grasp them, as in the case of the instated tension toward titling and the assumption of a quilombola identity both inside and outside the community. It is not a synchronic process, but it is one that singles them out from the other communities, in the midst of co-existing histories described earlier. 185 I arrived in Periperi last time at the end of last year, with an anxious heart. I had spent a year living in Havana, Cuba, and though Periperi and I made considerable efforts to communicate and share ideas, space and technology did not aid us in the task at hand. There is no internet access available in the community and phone calls are made to a cellphone wired now and then to an improvised amplifier antenna. On the other hand, in Cuba, I could only make international calls in specific days and hours, and internet access was virtually prohibited or prohibitive (cost-related) to individuals during all 2013 and 2014. Even with this year’s improvements in service provided to both Cubans and foreigners in the Island, the costs present difficult barriers to overcome in order to maintain thorough communication, also considering conditions of access in Periperi. Working at the Embassy of Brazil as an administrator, I had much less time than I had hoped to spend with the quilombolas in Periperi and inhabitants of La Marina, a neighborhood in the municipality of Matanzas which is 92 kilometers from Havana. On the other hand, that is what made it possible for me to spend two years working with the neighborhood in Cuba, as well as following up on the Hwlitsum case, in Canada. By then, I had been sharing other histories with La Marina that always seemed to bring my mind and heart back to Periperi. La Marina and I had come to terms with our shared desire to move towards recognizing the historical fluidity of their local context. This was informed by a relation to the progressive displacement of enslaved Africans and other minority groups to the neighborhood situated in the banks of the Yumuri river, a zone connected with the port and the colonial, slavery-run, sugarcane plantation. According to the collective memory in the neighborhood, local society has relegated to the marginal fringes activities which seem of less importance to them. In a city crawling with poets, musicians, and actors, who proudly claim the name of Athens of Cuba, no less, stevedores and fishermen activities and identities were polluted social positioning. Such a huge Eurocentric reference would force colonial relations into the present, manifested in the stereotypes about the neighborhood built by “official society” as being inherently conflictive, a place where one catches every type of disease, where there is prostitution: a “neighborhood of blacks”. On the other hand, as we will see in the 186 next chapters, the neighborhood has historically engendered resistance strategies by means of collective organization in the form of “cabildos” and “casas templo”, black benevolence societies, and fraternities, such as the secret “abacuá” society. With strong references to its cultural manifestations, namely the rumba, the comparsas and the processions of Catholic saints referenced in Yoruban orishas [the Yoruban patheon which represent the forces of nature], these collective forms of organization are based on traditions of African origin, tied into the communitarian processes that inform the neighborhood’s identity struggle of today. These organizational spaces allowed for the generation of a sentiment of possibility in the community. A sentiment that the process initiated with an earlier communitarian project called “Proyecto Socio-cultural”, organized by protestant-related institutions, supported by international organizations, and aided by local government, could move on to register the history of the community. This also meant a possibility, in the sense of revealing their traditions, modes of production, and identities inside the community. Sentiment and possibility are woven in the desire to reverberate a different, unpolluted perception of the neighborhood to the local “official society”, including municipal, provincial, and national governments. Gathered around a new communitarian project called “Identidad y Barrio” a neighborhood collective has been conducting interviews with inhabitants and local personalities, and searching for information about the neighborhood in archives and literature available, aiming at producing a monograph about the neighborhood. This project is supported by a network of collaborators that I am involved with. The collective that conforms the project “Identidad y Barrio” sees the monograph as a platform for revealing the community’s owns views about themselves to local society. The neighborhood’s identity struggle is driven by a desire for the “institutionalization” of their specific claims, which has to do with recognition by the State which is still seen by the community as incomplete. In La Marina and Periperi they both recognize the historical fluidity that they live in, marked by changing rules, co-existing histories, and impending futures. That is what 187 brought my mind and heart toward Periperi, while I was uncovering histories in La Marina and thinking about the ones being re-written in Periperi. That is also the base from which dialogues with the Hwlitsum leadership were constructed. After settling my place as a collaborator in yet another joyride of a project in Cuba, in November 2014, I scheduled my trip to Periperi, never knowing precisely if the scarce communications we had would actually inform them of my arrival. I had made a short stop in Brasilia prior to boarding on the TransPiauí bus in Teresina heading to Amarante. There, inside the bus, I could picture that landscape that was imprinted on me. It is striking how much landscape is shaped by the impressions one constructs and destructs and rebuilds about it. The images that jumped through of the bus window on that November dawn cut right through the early memories I had of the place, reminded me of discussions we shared and the faces in Periperi that brought me about a sense of belonging. This was unequivocally added to by the experiences I had been a part of in re-writing community’s history. “The landscape, thus, expresses, simultaneously, both the imposed histories of changing systems of production and the claimed histories of daily life and work in families and communities” (Sider, 1993: 7). I arrived in Amarante early in the evening and hired a motorcycle-taxi to take me to Periperi. The driver was not quite as concerned as I was with the size of my luggage on the 125 cc vehicle, grabbing one of my backpacks up front and ushering me to climb on the back with the larger backpack. I noticed the city had not really changed as I looked in every direction for familiar faces and places from the bus stop onwards. Gerivaldo, the driver, was somewhat intrigued by my wanting to go to Periperi, a locality that he only sort of knew about. The mayor’s office, the house of representatives, the colonial houses, the market, the E.Soares bus point, the hospital, the school, the cars, and the great number of motorcycles, bikes and people moving by in those early hours were all framed with a sense of knowing and wanting to know. When we left Areias neighborhood behind, that pounding sensation grew by the second, watching the tabletops in full, approaching Arara’s Rock and closing in on the community. The wind caught my hair and the look on 188 Seu Antonio’s face after I shouted at him as both motorcycles passed by each other was a mixture of surprise, happiness and welcoming. “Boy! You came back!” – he said while dismounting his motorcycle in the middle of the road, just a few meters from his house. We stood there in a long embrace that seemed to last an eternity while no vehicles or people noticed our presence. “You are for real!” said Seu Antonio remembering the last contact a couple of months before when I finally accomplished a call to the community’s cellphone and spoke with Osmarina, his niece, about my plans to come to Periperi. He was on his way to Amarante to run some errands and we decided I tagged along with him. There was not much available information about the city itself let alone Periperi in public record on Museum, Library, or Notary office in Amarante. Most of the history of the city is told on booklets that are printed in-house and resumes to compiled information of the accomplishments of politicians (Ayres, 2013; Moura, 1997) or dips on regional folklore (Castro, 2001; Neto, 2010; Vilarinho, booklet with no date; Costa, booklet with no date), or on general ad hoc statistical data about the municipality (IBGE, 1959). Except for a rarity like the three volumes of Odilon Nunes’ (1966) “Pesquisas para a História do Piauí [Research for the History of Piauí]”, which added significantly to my comprehension of the state dynamics, and some other lucky findings, such as Carvalho’s work (2005) on indigenous resistance in the state; Oliveira (1985), regarding colonial insurrections; and Falci (1995), about slavery relations in Piauí, my several visits to these public record places had been disappointing. Not a single mention of Periperi or other black communities in the region. As stated before, the interest on Mimbó has increased over the years as the community struggled for its recognition and there are already some dissertations written about the quilombo concerning their history, traditions and communitarian organization that I have cited here. This kind of interest has also turned to Periperi with at least one dissertation being in the making about the interaction with the power plant complex, by anthropologist Ornela Fortes de Melo, from the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), which is entitled “Drama social no quilombo Periperi: Conhecimentos tradicionais no contexto da 189 Implantação da Hidrelétrica de Estreito [Social drama in the quilombo of Periperi: traditional knowledge in the context of the implementation of Estreito hydro plant]”. The anthropologist’s work aims at mapping the socio-technical network that Periperi has weaved in facing the potential implementation of the dams with effects to their territory and the various dynamics and interests that are intertwined in the production of significations and mediations around the territory of the community. Fortes singles out what she calls a “translation process”, by which social relations are being re-signified in the region in the wake of the potential implementation of the dams40. Results of her work could not be thoroughly discussed in this study, since the dissertation has not been published. It was also high time to find out about the developments Periperi had undergone in relation to its own quilombola certification process. Prior to my coming to Cuba, they had agreed on a community meeting and gathered signatures to send a request to Palmares Cultural Foundation for the quilombola certification of their community. The request would be sent by mail, but it never made it to the Foundation. The letter returned unexpectedly months after it was sent. This frustrated the community, raising all sorts of suspicions of local officials and interested groups having intervened, which pressured the community in immobility. In 2014, on an unusually cool night, on the Church’s doorstep, they decided to revitalize the process and gathered a new set of signatures, renewing their request for the certification. The signatories asked me to be the bearer of the documents produced there, since they felt that either their suspicions could reveal new impediments in sending the documents by regular mail or that it could simply be the result of poor logistics on behalf of Amarante’s post office. I accepted the task and provided FCP in Brasilia with a statement 40 Fortes has discussed portions of her work in the XIII North and Northeast Anthropologists’ Meeting and IV Equatorial Anthropology Meeting, in 2013, in the working group: Territorial Dynamics, Political Processes, and Identitary Logics, under the title “A rede sociotécnica do território quilombola Periperi no contexto de Implantação de uma hidrelétrica [Periperi’s social-technic network in the context of the implementation of a hydro plant”. http://www.reaabanne2013.com.br/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GT13.pdf, 12.09.15. As well as in the II International Congress of Tradicional Communities and Peoples’ Rights, in 2014, under the title, “O território quilombola periperi no contexto de implantação de duas hidrelétricas [The quilombola territory of Periperi in the context of the Implementation of two hydro plants”. http://www.grupodepesquisapct.ufba.br/?p=340, 12.09.15. 190 of members regarding their demand for certification, accompanied by a list of all members present in the mentioned meeting with their correspondent signatures; resumed information on their history, family ties, and traditions related to their current occupation; GPS coordinates of community’s limits and territory as we tracked it, documents gathered at local Notary that supported community history and the limits tracked by GPS, and a set of photographs of reference places in the community. It was a rather swift process and Periperi entered the following year with the certification that recognized the community as quilombola. Still bearing the documents in my backpack, I left Periperi with a swollen eye from a bumblebee attack that was trying to defend its share of the goat dried meat I was preparing to bring with me to Brasilia, but my stomach was filled with the delicious “sarapatel” Maria, Seu Antonio’s wife, had made for me, and my heart full of hopes and dreams. Now my eye is better, my stomach is yearning for more “sarapatel”, and Periperi is visiting new crossroads. In their own backpacks they have new histories to share, not only those of their own experience, but of different places too, with different co-existing histories and different forms of re-writing in the making. I am fully aware now that this very thesis in the making shares with Periperi’s histories the possibility of becoming transformed into reality. I must take full responsibility for what I have written, as Periperi is also doing for their own good. Thinking about it, it was already part of the compromises we made in our early contact when we shared our views about the ways the research would involve with community’s histories. It is a choice we made both in silencing and bringing to life histories in the direction of shared views about the world around. There is not a line here that was not referenced in collective memories, documents, or available literature, but I do understand where different interpretations, informed by distinct views of the world and of the local racialized power relations, might be drawn from, and that is the path we have chosen. In these contexts of imposed demands for continuity and prior recognition, the histories and anthropologies we write take on the possibility of becoming transformed into reality; if we have called a people Indian, then they can become so; if, in our search for more popular case studies, we have bypassed such ‘irregular’ groups to focus on the Navajo, Cherokee, or Iroquois, then the 191 government will be willing to share our lack of recognition of a people who want – and in some instances desperately need – their claims to be met. (Sider, 1993: 21) That was my own impression of their reaction to the photographs, letters and information we shared about La Marina. More than only identifying themselves with the phenotype, the histories or the landscape, the experience was revealing in a sense they were able to converse with the material, being presented with and exploring ideas for their own struggle. Furthermore, they felt like discussing about the processes of resistance being engendered in La Marina not from a higher or lower ground, but on level ground, recognizing the distances in both realities, and the approximations possible. It was an opportunity to move away for a bit as it was from their own uncertain, impeding future and quietly refer to another one. I could say the mana passed along when I saw Kimbo, leader of La Marina, fully dressed with a quilombola shirt (Figure 12). He wore it on the day we met again back in Cuba, discussion on Periperi having been the topic of their project’s managing group. They later decided to adopt the fist as their logo, both making reference to the baggage it carries on his own terms, but also specifically connecting them to their “quilombola brothers in Periperi” (Kimbo, personal communication, January 2015). Figure 12 - Kimbo with quilombola shirt and the black fist, which became the logo of the project “Identidad y Barrio La Marina”, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Author’s reap Date: January 2015 192 Chapter 6 - Pollo por Pescado I could not see where he came from before his tall black and elegant figure was already half inside our white Lada 2107. Through the other back door of the vehicle his wife would enter, equally black and talkative. They did not seem to share the same awkward look our fifth black companion threw towards our vehicle when we had gone to pick him up prior to meeting the couple. Much later in my Cuban experience I would find out white Ladas are known in the streets as “la rubia de los ojos azules” [the blue-eyed blonde], in reference to the blue sirens attached to the roofs of the white Ladas the police often patrol the city with. Chaperoned by Bárbara, my wife, all of us in the car were invited to Matanzas, a city 92 kilometres distance from Havana. There we would meet Kimbo, leader of the neighbourhood of La Marina, where the festivity for the burning of the effigy of San Juan, Oggun, in the pantheon Yoruba, would take place that night, after the Brazilian soap opera show. As Kimbo would tell me later on that evening, “everything in Cuba happens before and after the soap opera”. Soap operas are like a whooping cough spread throughout Cuban television, and Brazilian’s are the talk of the town, being released onto the market some two or three years after being aired in Brazil. I had never made a habit of watching soap operas while living in Brazil, so I was not much fun for the Cuban crowd, who were eager to find out what was going to happen to this or that character in the following chapters (I told that to Dona Maria, Seu Antonio’s wife, in Periperi, and she made me sit down with her a couple of nights to watch the “noble-time” soap opera of the moment [I cannot remember the name], so I could later tell my Cuban friends. It was a shame to her I could not remember the contents of the soap opera). Soap operas are shown on public television, normally “Cuba Vision”, a channel that presents general interest programs, shows, and sports, which include programs produced in Cuba and abroad, such as the Brazilian soap operas, but also Colombian, Mexican and even Chinese and Korean shows. All open television in Cuba is State-run. “Cuba Vision” is 193 also broadcasted internationally with a selection of the programs focused in the ones produced on the Island. In addition, there is the “Tele Rebelde”, for sports; the “Canal Educativo 1”, which specializes in televised classes; and the “Canal Educativo 2”, which also broadcasts televised classes but includes informational programs and documentaries. It is through “Canal Educativo 2” that Telesur41, the Venezuelan-based broadcasting company is played. I was quite curious about “Multivision”, since the channel broadcasts a wide range of shows, series, and films, directly taped from the classic cable TV channels from the United States. The only explanation I could conjure for its maintenance is that Cuba is not a signatory on international intellectual property conventions. Finally, there are specific “canales territoriales” [territorial channels], such as the “Canal Havana”, in the capital, or the “Tele Yumuri”, in Matanzas, which is more related to local news. They also broadcast important public service announcements that range from scheduled electricity disconnection for maintenance (as often as twice a week in Havana), to instructions from civil defence for protecting one's self against hurricanes. Television is one of the most widespread means of communication throughout the Island, as Internet is still poorly universalized among the population. It is through television that everyone gets to know what is going on in the country. We clearly had to change our television habits moving to Cuba on a “do-or-die” basis of getting to know things from the cultural agenda of the city, to what days of the week propane would be provided, to when Seminars and Conferences important for our research would be held. Watching more television we inevitably came by Brazilian soap operas and the realities it dramatizes. Even though I was not an aficionado, I have always followed the debate on soap operas and their content, which relates to the very 41 “TeleSUR is a Latin American multimedia platform oriented to lead and promote the unification of the peoples of the SOUTH: Geopolitical concept that promotes the struggle of peoples for peace, self-determination, respect for Human Rights and Social Justice. We are a space and a voice for the construction of a new communications order”. This year TeleSUR celebrates its 10th anniversary, with more than ten millions of people worldwide accessing the channel. http://www.telesurtv.net/english/pages/about.html, 22.06.15. 194 constitution of media in Brazil42, as it is today concentrated under the influence of six families43. This kind of concentration has allowed for a homogenization of the content being broadcasted to viewers in Brazil, and the soap opera is a grotesque testament to how lacking in diversity television (and media in general) is in the country. A Brazilian filmmaker Joel Zito has produced a documentary44 about the roles given to black actors and actresses on Brazilian soap operas and the stereotyped images of the place for blacks in the Brazilian society they reinforce. After getting to know more about racial relations in Cuba, I could better understand why it is no surprise that Brazilian soap operas are a success in a country that produced Félix Caignet’s “El Derecho de Nacer” [The Right to Be Born], the Cuban soap opera which centres around a denied identity and its moralist reparation, which has garnered some of the greatest international recognition ever45. “El Derecho de Nacer” was recorded in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, México, and Brazil, where it was a national success on the radio. In Brazil, one of the protagonists of Felix’s drama, “Mamãe Dolores”, was played by black actress Isaura Garcia. Araújo (2000a) argues that the role of the “Black Mommy” Isaura played in that soap opera is one of the stereotypes Brazilian television has built for the black people broadcasted nation-wide. Other stereotypes include the “house-maid”, the “jagunço” [hired-killer of the Brazilian countryside], the “bouncer”, and the “drunk”. These stereotypes persist on Cuban television as well, according to Irene Ester, who worked as a journalist for over 60 years in Cuban media. For her, “television will never 42 For a historical panorama of how media industry in Brazil was developed, and its connection to politics and concentration of power in the country see: Morais, Fernando. Chatô, o Rei do Brasil. A Vida de Assis Chateaubriand, un dos Brasileiros mais Poderosos deste Século. Sebo Digital, 1994. 43 Globo, the major network in Brazil controls more than half of the national television market. According to data from the National Newspaper Association, from 2001-1003, only six business groups [families] concentrated property of 55,46% of all daily newspaper production in the country. The debate around media democratization in the country is not new and it is now being discussed under the proposition of a Regulatory Guideline, which includes forms for letting the viewer screen through the content being broadcasted and parameters for controlling media content. http://cartamaior.com.br/?/Editoria/Politica/Os-dilemas-da-comunicacao-no-Brasil%0D%0A/4/15378, 17.06.15. 44 Araújo, Joel Zito. A Negação do Brasil – O negro nas telenovelas brasileiras. Documentary. 90 min. Casa de Criação Cinema. 2000b. 45 Associated Press, 2008. 195 contribute to demythologizing race as long as it only emphasizes the high proportion of black people in prison, working as prostitutes, or unemployed”46. She reworked some of these conclusions when we talked about the role of television in Cuba and the impact of the whitened images over the years of Revolution. Following a massive number of complaints originating in the black movement regarding the stereotypes of black subaltern positions, television in Brazil reserved other social positioning for blacks, but they proved to be equality polluted. They incorporated the black businessman or the liberal professional into a few soap operas. But it was almost as if the authors had embodied the assimilation role model Richard Pratt presented to the 1892 US Nineteenth Annual Conference on Charities and Correction: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man” (King, 2012: 107). Araújo (2000a) points out that these black characters were disconnected from their communities of origin, having fully embraced the ways of the white society. Their success was based on this premise and they were often reminded of that in the development of the drama. It is a representation of what Rafael Osório47, supported by data collected over two decades about racial inequalities in Brazil, concluded when “black people fight for a higher unexpected social position, racism operates more intensively”. Osório was able to capture the social mobility of racism over the years of universalization of income. He affirms that racism only becomes more intense the more social positioning is disputed, so privilege today in Brazil is not on white over non-white for the next day’s meal, but for better job opportunities or access to the university. As we will see, similar shifts can be identified with the rapid changes Cuba is going through under “economic actualization”. This paradoxical drama is amalgamated in the representations of the “mulato” [mixed] in both Brazilian and Cuban television. According to Araújo (2008: 981), “mulatos” have always played intermediate servant roles “more interested in moving up in life at any cost, bearing humiliation because of their ‘impure’ origin, seeking to avoid references to their mixed condition and serving necessities of black control in society” [Translated by 46 http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=3580, 22.06.15 47 Osório, Rafael. Las investigaciones sobre la desigualdad racial en Brasil. Seminnar at the Instituto Cubano de Investigación Cultural Juan Marinello, Havana, 2015. 196 the author from the originalxc]. The representations of the “mulato” on the Brazilian television coincide with the descriptions of an identity, which Couceiro Rodríguez (2009: 134) implies “mulatos” deny in Cuba, allegedly preferring to identify as blacks, for “black is a race and ‘mulato’ not even a race is” [Translated by the author from the originalxci]. The results of the study that the author conduced in neighbourhoods of Havana support the polluted representations of roles for “mulatos” in both Brazilian and Cuban television. It suggests a necessity or aspiration that “mulatos” would hold a deep desire to access the white world, inclusively exposing themselves to ridiculous situations. It is also shameful to the author that lighter skinned “mulatos” claim a black identity, as if they were fooling Cuban society. The result is that racism is not imposed on “mulatos”, but they impose racism on themselves, according to the author. Beyond the multidirectional racism, those whites that by saying they are anti-racists or by simply being snobs, they intend to be, some way, blacks or, at least, ‘mulatos’, as well as those blacks, and above all, mixed, who, risking high chances of being considered ridiculous, say they are white, because they hold a racist complex, including against themselves. [Translated by the author from the originalxcii] (Couceiro Rodríguez, 2009: 135). According to Sarduy (1995), “ever since television reached Cuba 40 years ago, the image projected has been overwhelmingly white”. De la Fuente (2014) highlights a period just after the Revolution when very insightful works were developed for theatre and cinema, but television on the other hand has always been a symbol of a whitened Cuba. What is black has been heavily stereotyped, says Sarduy, and it can be easily seen in Cuban television nowadays. There are few black actors to be seen and the thematic deals very much with the stereotyped images Sarduy, De la Fuente, and Irene Ester identify. It is also one of the conclusions addressed in the documentary “Raza” [Race], by young Cuban filmmaker Eric Corvalan48. I had been in Cuba for almost a year and only got a chance to watch the documentary in Vancouver, Canada, while catching up with the Hwlitsum indigenous people's lives and struggles, as I will adress ahead. Interestingly, the impact of the film on the audience at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) was connected 48 Corvalán, Eric. Raza. Documentary. 35 min. Martin Luther King Memorial Centre (CMMLK) Higher Institute of Art (ISA), Delfín. Cuba, 2008. 197 to images of the Cold War, more so than it was with the individual and collective racial dramas being displayed. An educated insight from an audience mostly of students and professors, the impressions corroborated dearly with one of the key points about the racial issues in the Island: an open field for politics in the battle between Cuba and the United States. It was quite difficult for the audience to see past that iron curtain, and as I would find out, it is still very difficult today to address the subject in the Island without falling into the same trap. The biggest challenge of this chapter will be to demystify such images and bring to light the challenges facing racial issues in Cuba. Racial issues have been at the heart of social change in the country since the colonial period, through the Republic that emerged from the wars of independence, and into the Revolutionary years. Cuba also represents a racial oxymoron, since no other country in the continent has actually implemented continuing equality-oriented policies as it was done on the Island, while also persisting in discriminatory practices. Racial issues are also a key component to understanding social dynamics in La Marina, not only because of the predominant phenotype in the neighbourhood, but also because of how black Cubans are seen in society, tinted by embedded images produced towards the neighbourhood by the history connected to the sugarcane slavery plantation and the marginalization of the port activities. Following Foucault's (2006 [1971]) idea about the place of discourse in society, I was quite taken aback by exploring on the interdictions the representations of black roles in Cuban television provoked and how they related to the interdictions much closer to my own understanding of Brazilian media. It shed some light on the part they played in controlling, selecting, organizing, and redistributing “by a number of proceedings, which have a function to conjure its powers and dangers, dominate its random event, dodge its heavy and frightful materiality” (Foucault, 2006 [1971]: 9). It took me through not only identifying the processes by which these interdictions are carried out, but also their content and materialization in connection to socio-cultural processes that are conventional in the nation. Because the racial discourse in Cuba, as with Brazil, is not only 198 present in the struggles of communities fighting against systems of domination, but is also in the very power of which these national societies are trying to gain control. This kind of quest creates a separation that leads to the “true discourse”, that which was “pronounced by who had the right to and according to the required ritual” (Foucault, 2006 [1971]: 15), creating a “system of exclusion”, characterized by “the forbidden word, the segregation of madness, and the will of truth” (Foucault, 2006 [1971]: 19). That “system of exclusion” is what has allowed for racism to persevere in a country that has implemented more than 50 years of continuous equality-oriented policies. It constitutes the very power society desires to control, and by controlling it (or trying to); it reproduces the proceedings that led to the materialization of racism. The ethnography in La Marina allowed for an understanding of how that “system of exclusion” operates by the “social appropriation of the discourses” (Foucault, 2006 [1971]: 43). By recognizing the “historical fluidity” (Sider, 1993) that allowed for the domination of discourses about the neighbourhood, La Marina exposes the “system of exclusion” that has kept their way of life rooted on their traditions and outside of the discipline which is accepted by society. It also calls into question the “social appropriation of the discourses” that were constructed about the neighbourhood. It is not by chance that much of the social positioning of those living in La Marina coincides with the stereotypes that Araújo (2000a) identifies in Brazilian soap operas, as well as those depicted on Cuban television programs as well. That is why I was somewhat troubled by the fact that the neighbourhood’s traditional festivity was set for a time right after the display of the Brazilian soap opera. It also shows how powerful the message is and how it penetrates Cuban social context, reinforcing stereotypes, jokes, and prejudice against black people in the Island. It also perpetuates non-belonging by reproducing the idea that there is not an identified social position for blacks outside of those characterized by subordination or assimilation to the white world (another form of domination in itself). The attempt to occupy unexpected social positioning leads to the intensification of prejudice, which targets the ones who are prejudiced with claims that they are disrupting the national unit. 199 In this study there were an abundance of statements of those that insist (though not explicitly) in privileging spaces for blacks just because they are blacks and not for their human and social values as individuals, or support their personal overruling in their skin colour (and call racist everyone who allows them to) […] Those influences are even more virulent from the Caribbean ‘négritud’, more than that of the Rastafarians, cultures of difficult insertion in the history of Cuban racism. […] I always stress the differences between Cuban and US racism, less traumatic in the case of Cuba where, by chance and logic, its importation does not promise perspectives. […] It is wrong to determine those roots only by the parameters of physical anthropology, when culture goes beyond blood and biotype, and evaluation is needed of the factors that range from living together to means of massive diffusion. Cultural mixing, at least in communities such as those researched, precisely because of their cosmopolitan and metropolitan essence, is much larger and complex than the ethnic mix, and that is much larger, complex and rich than the racial, which is a lot to say. These communities greatly resume the new identity, which supports the Cuban ethos, defined by Jesus Guanche (1996). It is certain that in Cuba, as it is popularly said, ‘quien no tiene de congo tiene de carabalí’ [who does not have congo has carabalí], but it is needed to aggregate that who does not have descent of ‘canario’ [from the Canary Islands] has of ‘gallego’ [from Gales], or of ‘chino’ [Asian, mostly Chinese], or of pre-Columbian, Arabian, Hebrew, French….Traits of intolerance are evident inside communities when alleged promoters intend to develop more ‘African’ activities than Cuban, at the cost of others […] and intend to exclude then from ‘Cubania’ [Cubanity]. […] even the blacks participate in projects dedicated to the Hispanic roots, although they rarely match the folklorist exotics, diversity which is also appreciated in exclusive exponents of African roots, although some are exposed in a racist, exclusivist way. [Translated by the author from the originalxciii] (Couceiro Rodríguez, 2009: 139-141). Couceiro Rodríguez’s argument is based in a “system of exclusion” where the “forbidden word” is clearly identified with the totality of the forms of racism in the US model, or claiming biological concepts of race, or even repulsion of “actividades ‘africanas’” [African activities]. Furthermore, “the segregation of madness” is present in the affirmation of “mestizaje cultural” [cultural mixing], base for the “ethos cubano” [Cuban ethos], root to the “cubanía” [Cubanity], as a discipline that eschews other ethnic and racial identification. Finally, the “will of truth” completes this “system of exclusion” in labelling black identification “racistamente exclusivista” [racially exclusivist], reserving no social positioning for individuals and collectives trying to address racial issues in the Island, let alone racial identification. It took me a while to identify this “system of exclusion” and the proceedings by which it materializes in the daily lives of Cubans in the Island. My door of entry was not only television, but also my previous impressions of an early work with a fishing community some 500 kilometres from Havana, as I will describe ahead. 200 We had been in Cuba for half a year or so, following my transfer to Havana as a member of the Brazilian Foreign Service, also known as Itamaraty. Unexpected as it was, the transfer shook our lives like a cyclone, destroying certain things along its irregular path and leaving fertile ground for others in its wake. By 2013, I was set to be posted in Vancouver, Canada, working at the Brazilian Consulate. That would grant me the possibility of attending classes at the University of British Columbia (UBC) as part of the joint PhD agreement the Centre of Research and Post-graduation of the Americas at the UnB and the Department of Anthropology at UBC had struck up between one another. It would also be an opportunity to develop research with Northwest Coast Salish indigenous peoples that could serve as a comparison with the case in Periperi. The “cyclone” came and changed our plans vigorously. In the lottery of Foreign Service postings, I was placed in Havana, and though I was excited about the perspective of living out a historical moment in Cuba, other things like family, work, and research arrangements were all up in the air. Everything came down on our shoulders as the cyclone passed and we could take a moment to reassess our lives. We had some three months until we arrived in Cuba and that was time to make peace with our family and kids expectations, renegotiate the terms of leaving our jobs, and revisit our research objectives. To my bewilderment, Barbara had woken up excited on the warm August morning that followed the news of this big change. She had figured it all out for her research plans and was quite thrilled about the opportunity to sink into the depths of racial relations in Cuba. She always intrigues me with the possibilities of the unknown, which has made all the difference in our life together. Out of the blue, the kids were on intensive Spanish, I was working up research plans with my supervisors in Brazil and Canada, professors Stephen Baines and Bruce Miller, cardboard boxes were being dragged into the house, and before we knew it, we had our home on a container and everything was contained. Everything set, ready to go, but we still needed to wrap things up with our Cuban counterparts. Months had gone by and I was quite worried about the reality of our researching in Cuba. After the initial excitement, and numerous contacts, our hopes were 201 low. I was still finishing some of the mandatory courses at Center of Post-gradution and Research about the Americas at the University of Brasilia (CEPPAC/UnB), and one afternoon I ran into an agitated mother-like figure, speaking “Spanguese”, loudly along the Centre’s corridors. I was in Jacques de Novion’s class on History of the Americas and, hearing the chatter, he explained to us the “Spanguese” was coming from a Cuban researcher who was a resident in the Centre for a joint course on Cuban history. Wouldn’t you know? Despite the fact that it took another eight months for the Cuban government to authorize our research in the Island, were not for Caridad Massón, our research plans to be in Cuba would have been detoured by deterrence. The answer we got was not exactly a “yes”, but Caridad introduced us to a very common feature of social relations in Cuba: personal contact. In a very bureaucratic society, where everything is planned and sized up to the common good, “colas” [lines] grow quickly, everything is stamped numerously and vigorously, and the regular answer to “odd” cases such as ours is generally “no”. Which is what we got from our first contact with Instituto de Investigación Cultural Juan Marinello (ICIC), where Caridad was based as a researcher, which later ended up becoming our point of entry to researching in the country. During our first contact I found that as I was with the diplomatic corps, I could not be granted a student visa and that was that. Nonetheless, Caridad filled our hearts with some hope when she said: “Don’t worry; everything will be different when you talk to people face to face in Cuba”. Some months later, as authorization was still not granted yet, we asked Caridad during a lunch at her house why the authorization was taking so long and she said: “They are investigating you”. There was laughter at first on our part, but Caridad’s expression did not go along with our reckless giggles (probably originated from a reflexive reaction based on the general dismissal Brazilians have toward control schemes). Caridad’s contradictory semblance turned into the warm embrace that told us everything we needed to know, though not really knowing anything: “Sit back and relax”. That didn’t stop me though from examining different possibilities for research within the boiling identity caldron that is Cuba. I did not conduce proper fieldwork with 202 any community during the period, and impressions were taken from examining literature available and occasional touristic insights. It was rather important to approach research this way during the period when authorization was not yet issued. Part of the Cuban idiosyncrasy is the idea of control that permeates every sphere of social relations in the country. It constitutes a myth that generates rituals, often related to the images of the Cold War, the necessity to fight American imperialism, and soviet intensification on the Island, which materialized in the period referred to in Cuba as “quinquenio gris” [grey quinquennium] 49xciv, the five years that followed after 1971 in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis50, when bilateral relations with the URSS were resumed. The “grey quinquenio” unleashed a culture of control of the unknown that stretches through the present day, though is not often in line with the welcoming of presence of the Cuban people. This has created the duality that Cubans live in: controlling and being controlled, as well as both complaining about being controlled, or being dismissive about it, but never careless. The idea of control is intrinsically connected with another key element of the Cuban ethos (Guanche, 1996) that has taken a heavy toll on self-identification processes in the Island over the years: national unity. In the name of unity, a process of indistinct, rapid and thorough exposure to the world’s literature and thought, which characterized the early years of the Revolution (De la Fuente, 2014), was vertically substituted by 49 “But the analysis of the phenomenon was being postponed, as other things that deserved discussions were, and by the same reason: so that unity would not be put in danger. [...] What is the relation between such a profound phenomenon [the Revolution], which had really changed the lives of millions of people, which had educated the illiterate and fed the hungry, which did not let a single child out of school, which promised to brush racial discrimination and machismo away, which placed in bookstores, for the price of fifty cents or a peso, all the universal literature […] what is the relation between such a deed of dimensions with my sexual preferences or with the pilgrim image of an virtuous and virile artist, always willing to sing the patriotic glory? […] in the dogmatic circles it had been intensifying the idea that the esthetical discrepancies veiled political discrepancies. The socialist realism was not ‘intrinsically perverse’; what was intrinsically perverse was the imposition of this formula in the URSS, where what could have been a school, a literary and artistic trend, was converted into a official doctrine, of obligatory acceptance” [Translated by the author from the original] (Fornet, 2006: 3-4) 50 The Cuban Missile Crisis or the “Crise de Octubre” [October Crisis] was the climax of Cold War-related tensions. In the negotiations of the crisis between Presidents Kenedy and Krushev, Cuba was left out, what shook relations with the URSS off balance. These bilateral relations were redesigned, by the incorporation of Cuba, in 1972, to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), also known as Council of Economic Mutual Aid (CAME), the economic organization of communist states. As of 1985, Cuban sugar exports to COMECON countries corresponded to 80 % of Cuba's exports. 203 dogmatism caused by the necessary alignment with the socialist field. In the First Education and Culture Congress, in 1968, Fidel addressed the nation, corroborating unidirectional views of fear generated by the incipient reactions from leftist intellectuals worldwide to the early manifestations of this dogma. By doing so, Fidel propagated these unidirectional views under the presumption of defence of the Revolution, and thereby transformed them into an official doctrine. [...] In his closing speech [First Education and Culture Congress, Havana, 1968] Fidel would accuse of arrogant and prepotent those ‘liberal bourgeois’, instruments of colonial culture, who intervened in our internal issues without having the least clue of what our true problems were: the necessity to defend ourselves from imperialism, the obligation to provide care and feed millions of children in the schools…The country was going through a period of accumulated tension, among which were the death of Che, the soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia – which Cuban government approved, though with a lot of reserve -, the Revolutionary Offense of 1968 – perhaps a premature process, maybe even an unnecessary process of expropriation of small private businesses -, a the frustrated harvest of 1970, or the Ten Million Harvest, which, though it was ‘the greatest in our history’ – as the newspapers proclaimed – left the country exhausted. Under imperial economic blockade, in need of a stable market for its products – sugar in particular -, Cuba had to radically define its alliances. There was a greater approximation with the Soviet Union and with the European socialist countries. In 1972, the country would be incorporated to the Council of Economic Mutual Aid (CAME), what would structurally link our economy to the socialist field [Translated by the author from the originalxcv] (Fornet, 2006: 13-14). The exhaustion which followed the State's effort to address the “true problems” of the country produced an open field for opportunists within the Revolution to express their discriminatory perspectives and reverse the rich, diversity-oriented environment that had been established during the previous decade. Even though the direction started to gradually change after 1976, the marks of the “grey quinquennium” are still imprinted in Cuban society and are an important component of the “system of exclusion” that characterizes both racial and ethnic issues in the country. Early on I thought about working with emerging labour identities, such as fishermen communities, not yet fully comprehending racial relations in the country, nor the identity caldron that the idea of Cuba came from. I traveled with my family to the municipality of Trinidad, where I was able to get some impressions from fishermen at the community of Casilda, which is situated in the surroundings of the city of Trinidad (8 204 kilometres from the city centre), near the province of Sancti Spiritus, some 500 kilometers from Havana. We ended up visiting Trinidad twice as tourists. Based on the conversations I had the two times I went there, I began to see based on a number of different elements that a collective self-identification process around their labour identity was very feeble. Historically, the village of Casilda has been connected to the port of Trinidad, housing sugar exporting facilities. Fishing activity was a means to round up the village’s collective identity and, on an individual level, earn a living apart from the port activities. But there were scarce reminiscences of this scenario which I could identify. Sugarcane industry has depreciated over the years post-Revolution and the port went along with it. Trinidad, 8 kilometers from the village, has turned to tourism in the wake of a nationally planned orientation that identified the picturesque historical city as a United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO)’s world heritage site51. Casilda has been absorbing some of the spoils of this new reality connected to tourism. It has a definite impact on collective identity in the community, and fishing today is more of a private initiative of those who dare to face the authorities and sell their fish directly to tourists and private restaurants, “por la isquierda” [by the left]. The rest of fishing production (the greater amount) is sold to a State’s cooperative, at a much lower return rate than that they get in this sort of side market. Strange as it seems in a supposedly “leftist” country, “por la isquierda” means off sight, and is considered by some authorities to be outside of the law, while others consider it to be quasi-legal, though often it goes unregulated. Since whatever is out of sight is out of mind, “por la isquierda” has turned into a nationally diffused practice, as 51 Trinidad and the Valley de los Ingenios [Valley of the Sugar Mills] became UNESCO’s World Heritage Patrimony in 1988. Founded in the early 16th century in honor of the Holy Trinity, the city was a bridgehead for the conquest of the American continent. Its 18th- and 19th-century buildings, such as the Palacio Brunet and the Palacio Cantero, were built in its days of prosperity from the sugar trade. Twelve kilometers northeast of Trinidad are three interconnected rural valleys – San Luis, Santa Rosa and Meyer – that make up the 225-km2 Valley de los Ingenios. More than fifty sugar mills were in operation here at the industry’s peak in the 19th century, and in 1827 more than 11,000 slaves were working in the mills. A long, gradual decline in Cuba's sugar industry accelerated significantly in the 1990s. The former plantations, mill buildings and other facilities and archaeological sites in the Valley de los Ingenios represent the richest and best-preserved testimony of the Caribbean sugar agro-industrial process of the 18th and 19th centuries, and of the slavery phenomenon associated with it. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/460, 15.06.15. 205 authorities turn a blind eye on it, and population deals with the risks of undertaking numerous activities that are not permitted in the Cuban legal arrangement. It is a risky task nonetheless, selling fish and other groceries to private individuals and businesses. Things commonly sold this way are potatoes, fruit, beef, and hygiene products, along with other genres that are not provided by State-owned stores (for instance, chlorine and cleaning products) as well as other genres widely unavailable in the official market, such as clothing, car parts, and construction materials. It also refers to evicting taxes on “cuenta propismo” [private licensed activities, permitted after 1993], such as renting, “paladares”52 [private-owned restaurants], and beauty parlours or buying diesel and gasoline outside government-owned gas stations. As it has a broad range, “por la isquierda” commerce both deals with an imaginary of necessity and profit. At the State-owned store, a plain tennis shoe can cost over 200 pesos (CUC) [200 USD], a simple oven pan over 100 CUC, shampoo and conditioning at 10 CUC a piece, and a “guayabera”, a linen working shirt widely adopted in Cuba as well as other Caribbean countries, over 60 CUC. These are products that one can easily find on the streets for less than half the price sold in State-owned stores, though never knowing their origin or if they will work properly, since there is, of course, no return policy or guarantee. Car parts and construction material can also be found in this parallel market, under the assumption that they were procured from government companies. I experienced firsthand trying to find a spare tire and not being able to get it anywhere in Havana. My car had been parked in the garage for a month by the time we found out from some acquaintances that there was a spare to be sold by someone who worked in a State-owned car rental. Although I was relieved at first to have found the tire, I had to turn the seller down when he explained that he needed my torn spare to exchange with the one of one of the rental cars. The practice reaches virtually every sphere of the daily life and is viewed as a necessary means for survival under the precarious conditions of access to economic 52 A paladar is a private-owned restaurant. The name was taken after the Brazilian soap opera “Vale Tudo”. Numerous other expressions from Brazilian soap operas are widely used by the population in Cuba, such as “jeitinho” [making one’s way into doing things], “favela” [insalubrious neighbourhood], or a “garangao” [security guard, specially in ports]. 206 genres on the Island. Earlier this year at a seminar Bárbara and I organized, “Identities and Collective Mobilizations: perspectives from American contexts”53, a Cuban professor spoke widely about how every Cuban needs to find a “pela isquierda” way to survive. She herself sold cakes (without an official license) to complement her income. “Pela isquierda” even reaches into State-owned companies and services. It is a common practice to offer tips and presents to physicians to get attention, and to hire plumbers and masons that work for State companies and nonetheless do jobs on the side (which is not permitted by law). A lot of “pela isquierda” was going on in Casilda during the times I was there, notably regarding the fishing business, but also in renting, restaurants, and other activities related to growing tourism in Trinidad. Although it was seen as a promising source of income to individuals in the depressed fishing village, it also had demobilizing effects over communitarian organization. Although Casilda represented a very interesting case study, I was always worried about the lack of a declared self-identification process. Of course the evaluation of the impact of this historically constructed process on the community is quite an interesting matter, but the engagement of the community with research and the value they might see in such work remained uncertain at the moment, mainly because the fishing identity remains obscured by relations with tourism and the necessary individualization of the risk associated with this otherwise clandestine activity. Fishermen identified as “prosperous” in the community sell fish directly to tourists and privately-owned restaurants, away from the eyes of the authorities. The issue of licencing also contributes to this risk individualization, as fishing licences are granted individually to fishermen and their boats, at a one-time-only basis. Licenses cannot be passed on to their descendants or exchanged in the market with other interested fishermen. This has a lot to do with State’s plan for the fishing industry, but also with the embedded ideas of control over embarkations fleeing from the Island with “dissidents” from the regime. 53 “Seminnar Identities and Collective Mobilizations: perspectives from American contexts”, Instituto Cubano de Investigación Cultural “Juan Marinello”, Havana, April 14-15, 2015. 207 The Cuban exodus of Mariel, in 1980, and the Malecónazo, in 1994, still linger in the imaginary of national society. Marques (2008: 477) considers the exodus in 1980 as the “greatest internal crisis since the triumph of the Revolution of 1959”. His argument is corroborated by Port (2012: 47) who considers both exoduses, “significant internal moments of destabilization”. Both authors clearly position themselves in a pro-liberal approach to the crises and were intentionally chosen here to demonstrate how perceptions about the events were constructed from outside the Island in contrast with internal discourses about how the State dealt with the crises they generated. These perceptions recognize a shift in the identification of the “marielitos”, exiles of the 1980’s, and the migrations of 1994, in regard to the sentiments towards the Revolution and its accomplishments. They fail to recognize, however, the continuity of US Cold War-oriented policies towards accommodating Cuban exiles in the United States which marked the issue of Mariel, beginning in 1980 and continuing to the present day. They also fail to address the response of Cuban authorities towards the population following the Malecónazo, which were intended to explain the last resort nature of the measures at hand, in the context of liberalizing measures such as incentives for tourism and joint ventures with foreign companies, and the depilatory effects they would have for egalitarianism in the country. Nevertheless, both authors address an important issue derived from the crises which relates to the nature of control over embarkations and the idea of control as total on the Island. In 1980 the nature of this control was justified by the military threat US represented and the necessity for discipline and alertness among the Cuban population. In the Malecónazo, following the fall of the socialist field, came an intensification of the economic crisis and tightening of the economic blockade by US, as well as the threat that the Cuban-American community in Florida represented - bombings of hotels in Havana, sabotage of the Island’s production, boat and plane hijackings, among others (Morais, 2011) – were key to strengthening control. The exodus that followed the crisis in 1980 brought about by the assault on the Embassy of Peru in Havana by a group of Cubans pleading for political asylum solidified a policy of control over migrations in the country. The aftermath of the political 208 confrontation following the incident in the Embassy was the incorporation of over 125 thousand Cuban expatriates by the United States under a policy that granted automatic citizenship to Cubans who came to the country (Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966). The boatlift was mostly organized by Cuban exiles residing in Florida, and its name derives from the port of Mariel in the surroundings of Havana. But because the US incorporated Cuban expatriates and made accusations, supported by President Carter, about a lack of human rights on the Island, the Cuban government took it as a direct threat to their regime. The blow the Cuban government took by the exodus during a period referred to as the “Edad de Oro” [Golden Age] of socialism in the country was heavy, and provoked an intense response. The “marielitos” who left the country were pictured by the national society as scum and dissidents from a regime that had been experimenting an “Edad de Oro”, a period of continuous policies of equality boosted by the economic aid of the socialist field. According to Port (2012: 80), “the reality of the military threat from the United States was bound to the need for discipline and alertness, yet supported by the spirit of victory in the symbolic Mariel skirmish between the two countries”. Unlike those of the 1980s, the events in 1994 were framed by the unprecedented extremities of the hardship during the period that followed the fall of the socialist field. Several boat hijackings preceded a mass demonstration that began in the neighbourhood of Central Havana and occupied the open space of the “malecón”, the gigantic dike along the sea line of the Cuban capital. Fidel faced the mass almost single-handed and was able to revert the odds, but could not completely control the exodus of people throwing themselves at the open sea on anything that floated which followed this. Also differently from 1980, the negative sentiment towards the migrants was evened out by the alarming economic conditions of the “special period”. The governmental response was, nonetheless, intensification of control over embarkations of any kind and anything deemed dissident. Port (2012: 136) suggests that In 1994, those involved were described with less insulting or even somewhat neutral language, while in 1980 the discourse contained a high frequency of insults and derogatory language. In 1980, the discontents and migrants were constructed to a much larger extent as antisocial criminal elements, rats, worms and scum, opposed by loyal and righteous revolutionaries. […] In this sense, 209 they [in 1994] were presented more as victims than as criminal elements, as had occurred at the beginning of 1980 Mariel. The idea that individuals with different opinions were morally questionable or anti-social, rendering their contributions illegitimate, was present in Cuban governmental discourses regarding both moments of crisis. According to Port (2012: 147) “the discourse argued that hegemony and unity were necessary due to the disproportionate position of independent Cuba in a war-like situation, allowing some diversity only within its secure structures”. That was certainly aimed at de-stimulating migration, but had severe effects on the idea of control in the Island. A Congressional Research Service report (Wasen, 2009) states that “since the last upsurge of ‘boat people’ in the mid-1990s, the United States and Cuba worked toward establishing safe, legal immigration, which includes returning migrants interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard”. According to the report, the legal instruments in use related to the migration issue are the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, the Cuban Migration Agreements of 1994 and 1995, and the Special Cuban Migration Lottery. The first Act establishes the conditions for incorporating Cuban citizens fleeing the country on a refugee and asylum basis. The Migration Agreements restricted the number of situations in which the Act would be applied, and created the wet feet/dry feet policy, by means of which quotas for visas would be established annually and a “visa lottery” would be held ad hoc. Both governments would repress boatlifts, and deportation became policy after the 1995 Agreement. Nevertheless, as the report recognizes, Cuban apprehensions have escalated in the recent years. Migration routes have diversified to include land crossing through the Mexican border. It is interesting to note that after the Agreements, screening of Cuban citizens desiring to leave the country was left to the US authorities and I was not able to identify any direct intervention on the Island in the narratives I recorded while researching in Matanzas or Havana. What remains present in these narratives is the permanent option to either access migration mechanisms established by the legal instruments mentioned, or flee in boat rafts and embarkations, even finding a way to reach the Mexican border. “Every time someone from the neighbourhood travels abroad, one thinks about the 210 possibility that they will not return”, Kimbo told me, who had been to Chiapas, Mexico to participate in a Seminar with Latin American communitarian leaders. It creates a permanent feeling of fragmentation, which is a recurring subject in the narratives of inhabitants of La Marina, but a topic seldom addressed in the newspapers or television. I was very curious to read a 2015 newspaper article about Casilda in the “Granma”54, the official newspaper of Cuba’s Communist Party. “Granma” is the main daily newspaper on the Island, along with the “Juventud Rebelde” [Rebellious Youth], which allegedly focuses on more cultural and educational news, but practically reproduces the news printed in Granma. The other print news sources are the local “Tribuna de La Habana” or the “Girón”, in Matanzas; the “Orbe”, which is a weekly newspaper centered on cultural and international news; and the “Trabajadores”, another weekly newspaper that shuffles news from Granma’s previous week papers. There several monthly newspapers that are irregularly distributed, such as the “Calle del Medio”, which once printed an article on Kimbo and his role as a member of the Cuban civil society (Appendix 7). There is also the traditional magazine “Bohemia” that has been running since 1908, and concentrates on current issues and editorial articles about the country's idiosyncrasies and realities. June 23rd‘s Granma article on Casilda exalted the persistence of the village in reproducing their way of life around fishing. The headlines caught my eye right away as it ran in direct opposition to the conclusions I described above, imperfect as they were for my fragmented contact with the village. Nonetheless, the article did not point to any elements of such persistence, and based its conclusions on the testimony of one outsider, “a vecina del pueblo” [from the surroundings of the village]. Persistence seemed to be the focus of one episode in 1963 when, “according to investigations of the Interior Ministry”, the village was attacked by, “counter-revolutionaries rooted abroad”, rather than in evidences of persistence of fishing activities and identity, bringing to life again testimonies of outsiders who do not live in the village presently. Evidence of persistence is also given in relation to the cyclone Dennis in 2005, which destroyed a number of fishing boats, some industrial facilities and left several 54 http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2015-06-22/la-persistencia-de-casilda, 14.09.15. 211 of Casilda’s inhabitants homeless. But then again, in the article, the representations of persistence and recuperation of the village’s economy are related to the association of Casilda with touristic activities around Trinidad, rather than to the reconstruction of the fishing industry. “Casilda represents today an extension of Trinidad”, says Conrado Nuñez, in the article, a veteran working in the local government. Furthermore, the article makes reference to the Capricious location of the village as a trampoline in between the city and the beach, the increasing arrival of touristic cruisers that has transfigured the original functions of the port and this fever of hostels and ‘paladares’, which already add up to more than 80 in a community used to living off the sea and for the sea. [Translated by the author from the original articlexcvi] (Article in Granma, June 23rd, 2015). Instead of demystifying my early impressions about the persistence of communitarian organization and identity around fishing, the article rather reinforced them, pointing out towards the influx of tourism and its umbilical connections with the village’s economy of today, though not addressing its negative effects. The article’s exaggerated focus on “counter-revolutionary” activities in the locality also supports local narratives about fishing activity control by local authorities that I came across, based on suspicions of aiding and abetting “dissidents”. It makes you wonder about the goal of a half-page article in the main government-run newspaper in the Island that, although allowing that “despite the proliferation of tourism, fishing endures as a distinctive activity in the community”, clearly offsets fishing and fishermen, highlighting touristic activities as the main source of income in the locality. Where is the place and what is the momentum, then, for ethnic identity in Cuba? Compromises offered to these complex emerging ethnic groups will result in varying levels of exercising choice or the possibility of self-managing. In Casilda, the state’s plan for the whole fishing economy of the country has led to transformations in the community’s organization with effects on its identification with fishing. Every fisherman is registered to a cooperative owned by the State. A great part of the production has to be sold to the cooperative at a lower price. Fishing is mostly done on big dragging boats, “chincharos”, which are also owned by the State. These “chincharos”, according to the 212 fishermen in Casilda, are said to kill small fish in the dragging, hurting the individual fishing which catches fish closer to the coast on smaller boats. As individual fishing licenses are limited by the State, it has led to a gradual decline in the number of individual fishing boat owners, and, thus, has diminished the exercise of choice and self-management. Claims for the revival of the traditional fishing can be heard everywhere amid the local population, but the compromise being offered through the planning scheme, the tourism “fever”, or the “pela isquierda”, way does not allow for their development. All in all, this has driven fishermen away from the idea of a community built on solidarity values associated with their labour identity. It remains as a very fresh memory to elder inhabitants in Casilda, who still recall narratives of a self-made community, and of times of sharing the bounty of fish brought to the village. This was all at a first glance, but I was willing to investigate these different forms of self-identification in the midst of the distinct realities more than 50 years of Revolution has produced in the country. The 1959 Revolution has indisputably contributed to the development of various ethnic groups in the country. Its classist structure and orientation has, nevertheless, suffocated self-identification claims over different periods. It is a process that has directly to do with the idea of a “nueva Cuba” [new Cuba], and the dealing with racial issues under the new social order that the Revolution tried to address. As we will see in more detail ahead, by trying to promote change in regard to racial issues that marked colonial and republican periods, the revolutionary government undertook “medidas inteligentes” [intelligent measures] for the integration of the population, aimed at defining the idea of “cubanidad” [Cubanity] (De la Fuente, 2014: 343). “Cubanidad” would be built on equality, and the work around it would constitute an opportunity to make José Martí’s55 dream of a nation “con todos y para el bien de todos” [with all and for the good of all] come true. The racial divide between black, whites and “mulatos” [mixed] would be central to it. It is wherein equality turned to unity and, within the unity promoted, identification was troublesome for it inevitably challenges preconceived views. This was certainly true for 55 The Apostle of the Nation, as José Martí is known in Cuba, was one of the main leaders of the “Independentist movement” in Cuba in the nineteenth Century. Martí is a reference in Cuba for his role in fighting colonialism, and for his vast works. An interesting feature is that he revered both by revolutionaries and dissidents alike. 213 black racial identification, as well as ethnic groups such as the indigenous peoples or fishing communities. I spoke with Rodrigo Espina Prieto, Vice-Director of the ICIC (personal communication, 2015) about how class and race discourses encountered each other throughout the different historical process that informed and shaped the Revolution. This dream of a nation with “all for the good of all”, connected with the period of the independence wars was still present in the discourse of that brought together the country to fight Batista’s regime, and it was the principal motif in the early years of the Revolution. It motivated the drive towards an equality-driven society, which had to, consequently, address racial separations that had maintained unequal distribution and the stigmatization of black and mixed in the country, as seen. The approximation with the socialist field allowed for the re-signification of the national revolution agenda around the Marxist thought and its relation to the class struggle frameworks of understanding. Class struggle fit like a glove into the equality-driven sentiments of the nation and both were gradually amalgamated into the “Cubanía”. Prieto’s argument is that over the years of the Revolution identification of Cubans with the “Cubanía” has grown above both class and race. As we shall see ahead in this chapter, I argue the “economic actualization” the country is going through presently has created a new “field of significations” in which representations of both class and race are reworked in the wake of the economic transformations in place. Equality-driven relations are being challenged by market-oriented logic, and “Cubanía” is being questioned by emerging self-identification claims. Part of Cuban society tries to cope with this deteriorated equality through official statements, academic insights, and embedded images of the national unit, still trying to build a stronghold on the idea of “Cubanía” through discourses of national cohesion. Nevertheless, it has provoked totalizing narratives that have placed “Cubanía” and self-identification claims on divergent sides, reinforcing the idea of control and not inclusion. At the aforementioned Seminar at the ICIC, a researcher from the state-run institute Casa de las Américas, Jaime de Almeida, stressed that there are on-going 214 indigenous self-identification processes in Cuba, particularly in the provinces of Baracoa and Guantánamo. Panchito, Francisco Ramírez Rojas, “el Cacique de la Montaña” [Mountain Chief], head of the community of “La Ranchería” deep in the mountains of the province of Guantánamo, participated in the discussions of the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples, and signed the final document as a leader of the Taino People in Cuba. Although it is not the objective of this study to analyze the issues around current indigenous self-identification process in the Island, it is quite disturbing to note that there are no indigenous peoples recognized by the Cuban State, and no policies that address the on-going issue of self-identification. In the mentioned Seminar, the historian Pedro Pablo Godo from the Instituto Cubano de Antropología (ICAN) [Cuban Institute of Anthropology] presented an on-going project of an Ethnographic Atlas aiming at completing a historical vacuum on the sustained presence of indigenous peoples throughout the colonial period. The idea of the work is to position the Atlas among archaeological findings, such as those undertaken by the “Gabinete de Archeología”56 in the province of Baracoa, where several bones and artefacts related to the Taino people were found, and the studies on indigenous folklore and its memories in the nation’s traditions, its fusion with contributions from the other groups that form the “Cubanidad”. Never overshadowing the importance of such work, the connection between archaeological, folkloric or historic studies with the current self-identification indigenous process is not being addressed. Moreover, presently the claims of such groups are seen as troublesome both by the State and the academy in Cuba. They are seen as such in principle, for it is given that indigenous groups were allegedly extinct in the colonial encounters (something that the mentioned Atlas is trying to demystify), or in nature, as the indigenous self-identification processes were now and then connected to dissidence and counter-revolutionary activities. The idea of extinction has created a taboo within the indigenous issue. The idea of living and breathing indigenous acquires burlesque tones in governmental and academic discourses, which disqualify present self-identification claims based on grounds 56 For more information on archeological fidings in Baracoa see (Fernández; Cesar, 2012). 215 of authenticity. Pachito’s incorporation of a stereotype related to the American Indian, dressing up in a feathered garment and reproducing some of the ritual dances in his community were regarded by some scholars in the Seminar as proof of inauthenticity or how troublesome addressing the issue would be. Although dealing with stereotypes of the “dead Indian” King (2012) refers to, the demonstration worked out by the “Chief of the Mountain” was aimed at creating awareness about the self-identification indigenous issue in Cuba and a way to connect to the larger struggle of indigenous peoples world-wide. Moreover, as Miller (2003: 6) points out, “the personal and collective narratives remain significant, on their own and independent of social scientific and historical explanations of why these groups exist”. Foreign support, such as that of Taino Nation, a Puerto Rican non-governmental organization, back in the 1990’s, ended up being dismissed and framed as “dissident aiding and abetting” by the authorities. Nationally, the “Grupo Kaweiro”, a collective of students and interested Cubans based in Havana is quietly publicizing articles and information on issues related to the indigenous peoples in the country, but with no structure of articulation with these growing self-identification claims. There was no place for indigenous self-identification in the colonial, republican or “nueva Cuba”, the Revolution was keen at constructing. “Cubanidad” embraces white, black, and mixed races as the amalgam of the “mixed Cuba”. The indigenous peoples play no part in it, if not folkloric, forgotten, disconnected ideas, robbed of their belonging and presence in the contemporaneous Cuban nation. It is possible to trace a parallel with “ethnogenesis”, regarding self-identification processes of indigenous peoples especially, but not exclusively, in the Northeast of Brazil. Arruti (2006: 51) defines “etnogenesis” as the “construction of a self-conscious and of a collective identity against a disrespectful action (generally produced by the national State), aiming for the recognition and the conquest of collective objectives”. The Northeast of Brazil, being the stage for colonial sugarcane plantation, watched the intense contact of indigenous peoples with the colonizer, which led to the invisibilization of several ethnic groups. Such is the case with the Tremembé, in the state of Ceará, who 216 today constitute a population of more than 5,000 people (Baines, 2008: 14), following a process that anthropologist Carlos Valle (2011: 49) calls “semantic field of ethnicity”, by which “cultural elaboration is configured by inter-ethnic processes”. I understand the semantic field of ethnicity as a body of statements, judgments, reports, oral narratives and legend, which are creatively addressed and reformulated in the present by the Tremembé, considering their internal diversity. They could also be commentaries, anecdotes and proverbs. I seek to circumscribe a discursive and symbolic horizon, in which the diverse social actors can understand, describe and interpret, by structured processes at the conscious and unconscious levels, the social life, the facts and social phenomenon, as well as their own actions and other actors and agents’ practices, all supported by content originated in the dynamics of interethnic relations. This semantic field does not structure by itself, because it requires synthetic operations in the apprehension of facts and questions of an ethnic profile by the diverse social actors. In this sense, the semantic field is ‘open’ to produce distinct ethnic interpretations or even antagonist, considering the actors and social groups that undertake them, after all they use it in a differential way [Translated by the author from the originalxcvii] (Valle, 2011: 49). The depression of the economy, and more recently the introduction of market value practices through the incentives on tourism as well as “cuenta-propismo”, has stimulated different forms of self-identification claims which are difficult to incorporate within “mixed Cuba”. It is a process identified with “inter-ethnic friction” Cardoso de Oliveira (1976) develops to understand indigenous-non-indigenous relations in Brazil. The anthropologist argues that the possibility for egalitarian relations between indigenous and whites “seems to constitute only a theoretical possibility, since one cannot say they manifest empirically” [Translated by the author from the originalxcviii] (Cardoso de Oliveira, 1976: 58). Baines (2008: 7) dialoguing with Cardoso de Oliveira highlights that, although vested in an “egalitarian ideology”, “generated by sectors of the national society, positioned far from the direct confrontation with indigenous groups”, it is the lack of contact with inter-ethnic relations of friction that allows for the production of ideologies of equality. The process of ethnic-political mobilization and identity building in Cuba, as in the case of the Tremembé, shuffle and question not only anthropological representations, but also the very social categories that historical processes have shaped in the country, namely those that came from the Revolution. Results are pointing more towards the increase of social stratification than to the incorporation of the claims of self-identified 217 ethnic groups, which in itself contributes to disqualifying those claims in the wake of a homogenizing urge to update the country’s economy. While these elements of the neoliberal creed are being gradually introduced in the Cuban economy, the state has been trying to cope with an orientation towards the social-solidarity values the Revolution has inculcated in the country’s society through years of egalitarian policies. Claims for “the protection of the entrepreneurial and competitive behaviour of cost-benefit calculations” (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009: 50) are exploding, though. The anthropologists use the above affirmative to refer to the “planetary politics of identity”, as if indigenous peoples were globally “commodifying their culture”, and placing it for sale on those same markets, and under the same rules that excluded them in the first place. To my mind, Comaroffs’ fallacious argument that, for instance, an indigenous people’s owning of a casino and profiting from it is evidence of their acquiescence to cost-benefit logic and competitive behaviour (consequently neglecting their own culture) falls under the same problem of those saying that Cubans’ claims to access economic goods is direct evidence of their repulsion towards the regime and its accomplishments. Social rights acquired under the Revolution process are seen by the population as a “base-line” and not as a contradiction to these claims. To many groups in Cuban society, as we shall see in the next chapter, demanding access to economic goods is not to diminish or reject the accomplishments of the Revolution. The State itself has called the transformations that are being undertaken in the economy an “economic actualization”57, and is incentivizing the renting, leasing and selling of houses58, the establishment of small private business, and loosening regulations for buying cars and other imported goods. All 57 VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (April, 2011). 58 Before “economic actualization”, houses could only be permuted, though people did end-up having private ownership of their houses. That caused several difficulties for social mobility, ranging from difficulties in finding people who wanted to move from one city to the other, specially from Havana to the countryside or more distant provinces in the orient of the Island, to mobility in between neighborhoods within the same city, considering living conditions. That was the case in La Marina where people in the city of Matanzas would openly say, place signs on their houses, and place advertisement stating that they wanted to permute to any place but La Marina. Now, with the permit to sell and lease houses, another sort of problem has arisen as money talks and people walk. In Habana Vieja and Centro Havana, neighborhoods built in the 18th and 19th centuries, respectively, right at the heart of the touristic part of the city, the buildings that are barely resisting with structures of the day are being sold to Cuban buyers boosted with international capital for prices as high as 150 thousand dollars. “And that is still cheap”, says one real state person that works on the parallel market and prefers not to be identified. 218 under the idea of the permanence of what is seen as “accomplishments of the Revolution”, such as massive access to education59 and health60 (Appendix 6), public safety61, and an incomparable structure of distribution that finds no parallel in the continent. Besides the benefits of free education and health, the social security network in Cuba includes an egalitarian distribution of food through the system of “libretas” [booklets], by which every employed citizen is supplied with an amount of basic need items monthly. Government’s payroll is also structured under the lowest discrepancy rate in the region. Effects of “economic actualization” have already taken their toll on this social network, though. The government has advertised that health and education are free, but they are not cost-less. People are complaining that the programs of international cooperation such as the “Mais Médicos”62 in Brazil, or the exchange with Venezuela, or 59 Unesco’s First (2002) and Second (2009) International Comparative Study of language, mathematics, and associated factors for students in the third and fourth grade of primary school. Santiago, Chile: Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of Quality in Education, 2002 and 2009. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001231/123143eo.pdf, 21.07.15. See also Ferrer, Guillermo. Educational Assessment Systems in Latin America: Current Practice and Future Challenges. Washington, DC: PREAL, 2006. 60 For more information on Cuban health policy and comparisons with other American countries see: Evans, Robert G. Thomas McKeown, Meet Fidel Castro: Physicians, Population Health and the Cuban Paradox. Health Policy. 2008 May; 3(4): 21–32. 61 In 2012, there were 477 intentional homicides registered by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) in the country. Intentional homicide rate per 100,000 population, in the same year, was of 4.2%, raking lowest in the Caribbean and second lowest, behind Chile, in the Americas. 62 The program “Mais Médicos” was launched in 2013, aiming at expanding access to basic health in the country. The program concentrated in the “Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS)”, the public health system in Brazil. According to the Pan-American Health Organization (PHO), which co-runs the program, Cuban doctors count for more than 80% of the total 14.462 physicians working in 3.785 municipalities (equivalent to 68% of the municipalities in the country) and 34 “Distritos Sanitários Especiais Indígenas (DSEI)” [Special Sanitary Indigenous Districts], benefiting nearly 50 million Brazilians. Despite being selected amongst those physicians with more than 10 years of practice and holding one of more international missions in their curricula, Cubans were strongly repulsed by Brazilian physicians, who questioned their skills, education, political orientation, gender, race, and clothing. The campaign Brazilian medical class raged at Cuban professionals under “Mais Médicos” also included the idea that Cubans were modern slaves, since part of the money for their services was redirected to the Cuban government. Education of health professionals is part of a strategy Cuba has developed over the years following the Revolution. Having the highest rate of physicians per capita in the world (Human Development Report, 2007, United Nations) has allowed the country to provide the service in the form of international aid and cooperation, which generates revenue that ranks third in the Island’s income presently, behind tourism and the money that is sent from the Diaspora. Health professionals are public servants and may work abroad on governmental missions under a previously signed contract that states the conditions for their work and pay. Despite claims of exploitation of their services, Cuban doctors already amount to more than 12.000 doctors working in Brazil under “Mais 219 even the solidarity missions, in the case of Sierra Leone, have suppressed important human resources in the area working on the Island. The shortage of physicians and health professionals has created long lines in the hospitals and “policlínicos”, basic health units that can be found in every neighbourhood across country, though still no comparison to the present health chaos in Brazil, for instance. Medicine is hard to find at government-owned drug stores. The practice of tipping doctors and health professionals, “pela isquierda”, for services that are free under law, is an institution in the country. The education system has also incorporated some paid services to the free but not cost-less structure. Children’s uniforms are no longer provided by the education system (though they remain very low-cost, around 10 CUP a set of shorts and shirt), and there are complaints about the standard of the courses and subjects that are being taught in relation to what is required in the exams for accessing higher education. The complaints also regard the commitment of the teachers to education in public schools. In the mentioned Seminar, several leaders from poor communities in Havana and Matanzas reported that without hiring tutors on the side (each class ranging from 5 to 10 CUC an hour) kids are not able to pass the exams for higher education. Most times, the professionals who are hired for these follow-up classes are the very teachers that work at the same public schools kids go to. “But, when you pay in ‘divisa’ [CUC] the attention is differentiated”, said, in the Seminar, Hildelisa Leal who lives in Marianao, a neighbourhood of Havana. “Libretas” is one of the striking accomplishments of the Revolution in distribution policies, and following the soviet model, lingers in narratives about the present and in those about their functioning in the 1980’s. During the aforementioned Seminar, Maritza López, from Balcón Arimao, a neighbourhood in Havana recalled that “Then [in the 1980’s] in the State-run groceries everything was accessible, you could buy a can of sweet-condensed milk for a peso cubano [CUP]”. Maritza's neighbourhood was on in which there are some zones that fall under State categorization of “zonas insaludables” [insalubrity zones], parts of the neighbourhood with more intensive social challenges relating to the Médicos”. References: http://nacoesunidas.org/opasoms-divulga-nota-sobre-o-projeto-mais-medicos/, 21.07.15; www.saude.gov.br/maismedicos, 21.07.15. 220 precariousness or absence of public services. Back in 1980’s, products came from other socialist countries, mainly from Eastern Europe, under socialist field’s exchange network, COMECON, in which Cuba played its part mainly as a sugar exporter. With the dissolution of the socialist field, the Cuban State had increasing hardships to maintain the distribution levels through the “libreta” system. “I receive every month half a pound of beans, two pounds of rice, and half a chicken in exchange for fish”, said Maruche during the Seminar, who lives in the neighbourhood of Playa, in Havana. “Pollo por pescado” [chicken for fish], as the “libreta” was structured to have every nutritional element necessary for the human diet. Fish, for example. As fish has become a treat scarcely available in the market, particularly after tourism increased (for the State needed to provide fish to the hotel industry), it has simply vanished from the “libretas”. Government supplies another ration of chicken in exchange for the unavailable fish, though the chicken ration itself is insufficient for the monthly diet. “Pollo por pescado”, and that is how Cubans refer to their continuing inventions to cope with increasing difficulties in making ends meet. It is a widely disseminated expression that has overflown its original meaning and now refers to everything that was supposed to be there, available, but the fact is that it is not, and one is forced to agree to something similar, often of lower quality as a replacement. And hurry, because the next day you will not find it at all! This happens with toilet paper, cleaning products, cheese, bathroom appliances and other products that “sacaran ahí en la tienda” [were put on sale] one day and then might not be there the next. It creates offset calculations of goods sold in the market for there is no base for comparison being it quality, price or brand. It makes it harder for the poorer, who have fewer alternatives to buy from, mainly by State-run stores. As “libreta” has gradually decreased items distributed to the population, Cubans have had to acquire more and more goods at the market, and quite often turn to “pela isquierda” for its better immediate exchange value. The mix of insufficient goods provided by “libreta”, mainly State-run stores with offset prices, and “pela isquierda” practices has created an unregulated market that is increasingly unfair, particularly to those who are poorer. 221 Social stratification is increasing at large in the services related to the “divisa” market, as discussed, but also inside government payroll. A striking example is that of the physicians, who with their growing importance for the country’s income, and having already absorbed several cut-downs on the perks63 they received in exchange for the hardships faced in missions abroad that lasted up to a decade away from their families64, demanded to the State and in the end of last year were the first to be granted a substantial raise in their salaries. Salaries that ranged from 480 CUP [20 dollars] were boosted to 2,000 [83 dollars], and may be incremented with some perks that are not automatically regulated, but granted ad hoc. Some other sectors that have been following that line, though have not made as much public commentary as that of physicians, are the telephone companies and the banking system, where a worker can get up to 4,000 CUP on a monthly basis, plus ad hoc performance prizes in CUC. Another feature of social stratification is in the ability to establish a small business, such as a “paladar”. In order to do so, the citizen needs to get a license demanded by the State and is immediately bound to pay a fixed tax value whether they meet the projected profit with the activity or not. Adding to the fact that credit is virtually unavailable in the State regulated market, alternatives range around income from the Diaspora, informal “partnerships” with foreigners in precarious under the table agreements often enforced by coercive means other than the legal ones, or the mentioned “pela isquierda” practices. This rules out a great part of society who does not have access to these means, who often coincide with the black population for a number of reasons that we will see ahead. The results of these contradictions do not reveal a clear path out as of yet. Claims have been increasing with the recent re-approximation with the United States, and are driven by reestablishment of “business as usual” relations, always under the sign of State 63 Physicians would be able to choose between a car, often a 10-year-old lada or moskovitch, or a house, as a perk, when they returned from their mission. The benefit is not automatic anymore under “economic actualization” and is granted under ad hoc authorization. Perks included also Internet access, which is still a very valuable permission today, since most Cubans only have access to a State provider that allows for an email account, which is all they can access. 64 There is a very interesting cartoon from Cuban filmmaker Ernesto Piña (“Puberdad” [Puberty]. Animation Series. Thrid Season. EGREM-Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) [Cuban Institute of Art and Cinema Industry], 2012) that address these hardships faced by families and physicians that go on missions abroad. 222 control over big contracts and services, to be provided by private-owned foreign firms. The Cuban government is no stranger to this model, and numerous companies have been established in the country in a 51% State-owned, 49% business-owned basis, since the “special period”, beginning with the “período de rectificación” [rectification period], after the Third Congress of the Communist Party, in 1986. During the “special period” that lasted until the late 1990’s (some claimed it has not ended still), the government was forced by the fall of the socialist field, the drop in the international prices of sugar, and the overall depressed national economy, to dismantle the pragmatism that “had characterized the 1971-1985 period, centralized the decision-making process and revitalized mass mobilizations and voluntary work as a means for work organization” [Translated by the author from the originalxcix] (De la Fuente, 2014: 406). The measures undertaken by the government, though seen at the time as of last resort and the only way out, generated an increasing inequality that reaches even higher rates in the present. It also, according to De La Fuente (2014), provoked a feeling of neglect in a population used to a highly egalitarian society. After 1993, the government was forced to undertake measures with an objective to foment productivity and coax the depressed economy: legalized the American dollar, allowed different forms of private business, and promoted foreign investment and the ‘liberalization of agriculture markets’. The program produced a shy recuperation after 1995, but the Cuban authorities recognized the relative success had a certain social cost. [Translated by the author from the originalc] (De la Fuente, 2014: 407). The issue presently lies under the State’s ability to oversee this avalanche of new dealings, which will probably leave an increasing number of the small business unchecked with very loosely-enforced regulations that allow for an intensification of an informal economy, mainly through “pela isquierda” practices. De la Fuente (2014) points to a “specific racial impact” that continued throughout the “special period” into the present, and even though authorities expected a “neutral” impact of market forces on the ability to withstand equality in society, “the evidence available indicates that in the so-called special period, racial inequality and racially defined social tension has increased” [Translated by the author from the originalci] (De La Fuente, 2014: 407). 223 “Economic actualization”, as it was framed by President Raúl Castro’s announcement to the nation in 2013, has driven different perceptions of Cuba from both inside and outside of the Island. These perceptions are often bound to totalizing narratives, which generates the idea of an inexorable process that will “open” an otherwise “closed” Cuban economy to capitalism, and inevitably deteriorate the ongoing socialism and Communist Party. Nevertheless, Cruikshank (1998: 98) reminds us, “despite the ongoing presumption that cultural homogeneity will inevitably flow from international communication networks, we continue to be confronted with discrepant meanings, and even with the possibility that frameworks of meaning are incompatible”. These discrepant and even incompatible frameworks of meaning escape the current analysis of the present situation in the Island, and are found in how Cuban society is addressing change within “economic actualization”. There are “fidelists” (who align with Fidel’s ideals, but not necessarily with Communist Party’s directives), Communists (who fully support the Party), dissidents (both self-proclaimed and forcefully isolated by the State), revolutionaries (who fully support the Revolution, but do not necessarily support the Party, liberals (in favour of a quicker and deeper economic actualization than that being promoted by the Party), and so on. However, views on social relations in Cuba imbricated in the context of “economic actualization” seem to refer back to what Furniss (1999) calls the “epitomizing moments”, in relation to the country’s trajectory, narrated from both Revolution supporters and the opposition. The Revolution, in 1959, the exodus of Mariel in 1980, the fall of the socialist field in 1989, the “special period” in the 1990’s, the Malecónazo in 1994, and the present “economic actualization” are taken for granted as “epitomizing events”, or “dramatic incidents that serve as convenient and easily grasped condensed symbols that represent more gradual and insidious forces of historical change”, much like Furniss' (1998: 18) description of the frontier myth in rural Northwestern Canada. She depicts these “epitomizing events” as typically dealing “with the heroic actions of individuals whose values, moral standards, characters, motives for action, and internal struggles define the public ideals” (Furniss, 1999: 18). All the elements Furniss attributes as being public ideals 224 of American and Canadian culture can be seen in common with the Cuban revolutionary context, such as independence, self-sufficiency, freedom, courage, materialism, and advancement through hard work. Both within the sphere of Cuban Revolution supporters, where this form of public ideal is daily affirmed65, and within that of their opposition, where the same public ideal is sustained66, only in a way to disqualify the very existence of those values in Cuban society, “the distilling of history into a simple narrative structure of the encounter of opposites renders invisible the complexity of historical interactions and diversity of social groups encountering one another” (Furniss, 1999: 18). Cuban life has been informed by these narratives of encounter of opposites, the dichotomy of good and evil, an opposition that has reached global dimensions, part of the Cold War setting, but also reminiscent in the present “economic actualization”. Present narratives are informed by these “epitomizing events”, very closely related to colonial unsettled issues of domination and resistance. These narratives often leave out the complexity of historical interactions, their historical and present struggles, and the diversity of groups both within Cuban society and their Diaspora. So, in some respects, they are playing the cards as they are dealt, since the State has begun to see their citizens as “calculating entrepreneurs and consumers”, albeit demanding them to be “rule abiding citizens” (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009: 50) under available regulations that deal more with the pre-“special period” reality than with 65 Examples of this kind of public ideal are affirmed in the country’s official newspaper and television. Medals of honor for workers who were not absent from a single day of work; exaltations of achievements by State companies; excellence in sports; the mass media cover of the solidarity missions of physicians (most recently during the Serra Leone Ebola crisis and the aiding the victims of hurricane Erika in the Dominican Republic); the stand against the United State’s blockade; and most recently the demonstrations of power within the scope of the negotiations of re-approximation with the Americans (demands for the return of Guantanamo military base territory, and the firm position on the issue about the debt claimed by Cubans-Americans that left their property in the Island in the wake of the Revolution). 66 Florida media, such as the Havana Times, insists on smearing the regime on issues related to human rights being denied in the Island, as well as exalting the imaginary of economic opportunities in Miami and the United States. US Immigration policy, although it has been circumscribed over the years of opposition between the two countries, continues to reverberate instability in Cuban society, creating possibilities for Cubans, coming into the US, like for no other people in Latin-America. The Cuban State has also denounced the harassment Cuban professionals, especially physicians, receive from the United States, while serving abroad, inciting desertion from the Island. 225 present working relations and the necessity for market regulation. On the other hand, it seems as if these calculations are somewhat lopsided. As we have seen, Cubans are a well-educated society, far above Latin-American average, who are privileged to live in a country where daily violence experienced throughout the continent is virtually non existent, and where public services, though precarious in some respects, function for the majority of the population like in no other country south of the Rio Grande boarder. To some extent, that is the base line of their claims, and puts them in an offset position in relation to their fellow Latin-American nations. It sets them apart from an identification that is foreign to them, with struggles of peoples that want to eat, go to school, and not be killed on their way home. Moreover, it mistakenly approximates Cubans to “societies of well-being” of the North. For one thing, those “societies of well-being” do not exist anymore under the premises in which they were created. Furthermore, as Zurbano (2015: 17) notices, though being the only socialist country in the continent, Cuba’s regime remained “peripheral, underdeveloped, and economically dependent”, which has not allowed for a shift in the country’s insertion in the global order and, consequently, there is a greater potential insertion of Cuban professionals into the international labour market, which is at the heart of individual claims for economic “openness”. The idea of “asa de passáro” [bird wing] Florencio (2014: 174) constructed around the images of “floating signifiers” (Hall, 1996: 6) inside “hybrid bodies”, aided me to understand these complex feelings of belonging that Cubans have experienced in the midst of potential and present opportunities of interaction with an imagined global community. The “economic actualization” brings about a new “field of significations”, in which “floating signifiers” arise in the frontier between communism/capitalism, Cuban/Latin-American, European (American, Canadian)/Cuban, civilized/primitive, democracy/dictatorship, white/black, or educated/rich. In the “hybrid body” all these new “floating signifiers” are being cooked-up in between the imagined (and stereotyped) “concepts” and “assumptions” as well as individual experiential impressions that contradict and reinforce these imagined stereotypes. It is a state of permanent otherness 226 in between a “diasporic identity” (Hall, 2003) that does not fully connect, and “double consciousness” (Du Bois, 1999) that lingers. It brings about a hybrid idea of belonging that places in the first frame the necessity for cultural translation and, particularly, the permanent doubt about the possibility of “being home’” [Translated by the author form the originalcii] (Florencio, 2014: 67-68). This “permanent doubt about the possibility of being home” is at the heart of the feelings of belonging that troubles Cuban society under “economic actualization”. It creates transitional non-belongings and a permanent desire to “perambular” [wander], “to pass, to go through spaces and things” (Florencio, 2014: 69), and also to experiment, to prove oneself against the odds, to live a different life, without exactly knowing what to expected, and wishing for something more. How does one settles in time and space when living with the feeling of continuous passage? How to make oneself present? […] I need to update the sensation of being continuously transiting in the in-between of languages, times, and territories [Translated by the author from the originalciii] (Florencio, 2014: 69). Florencio questions the “possibility of presence for who is in constant state of wandering” (Florencio, 2014: 70). The “in-between” produces a broken presence that is diachronic, multi-situated, and polyphonic; creating a sense of loss that characterizes the “wanderer”. A picture on Mercedes’ dresser of her son who left for Canada 23 years ago and never set foot in the Island again helps the 85-year-old plastic artist and “ialorisha” [the director of a “santería”67 temple] from Havana to connect with her son, and defies time, space and possibility of communication. The “in-between” is also present in the reunion between Zulueta, 63-year-old reformed major of the revolutionary army, and his brother who returned to Cuba for a visit, some 15 years after he left for Miami. The “hybrid bodies” that emerged in the period the brothers were apart could not reconcile, despite all previous fraternal connection that lingered, but was experienced as a memory that vanished with their very contact. The Facebook images of people “who made it”, as the messages on their pages from their relatives and friends “who remained”, highlight 67 For more on “santería” and “Regla de Ocha” see (Aróstegui, 2014) and (Lachatañeré, 2011). 227 their new condition outside the Island as “in-between”, just like several of the Cubans I worked with at the Embassy and left the country in wandering abroad. It is interesting that, though living in Miami or Europe, their Facebook pages are almost all filled with commentaries from their relatives or friends in Cuba. Their condition abroad has created a “double consciousness” inside the “diaspora identity”. At a party last year at the house of a couple (he is Cuban and she is Swiss), I came by a most interesting narrative about these feelings of wandering, “double consciousness”, and the broken “diasporic identity”. It ended up in a joke he would tell me so I could apprehend what he meant by being Cuban in a foreign country (as he had lived in Switzerland for a while and came back to Cuba along with his wife and children). It also had to do with why you could not find Cuban expatriate communities outside Florida (where community cohesion is built around the clear opposition to the Island’s regime), like other Latin-American expatriates, as I was pointing out about Brazilians, who tend to group in communities when away from their country. As we will see in the telling of the joke, it shows that everything is connected since “pela isquierda” is both acceptable and repressed in a society where “floating signifiers” are informed by a new field of significations that the “economic actualization” has opened up. It also shapes the way identity is constructed in the dispute between diasporic images and lingering consciousness. The “hybrid bodies” that emerge from this identity construction do not find a way to reconcile, since, as Hall (2013: 82) has noticed, “hybridization is haunted by an irreconcilable feeling of loss”. In that sense, part of Cuban society is like “bird wings”, disconnected to their body of significance, and unable embrace other “hybrid bodies” that emerged in the “in-between” that a field of significations has produced, for their wings are also disconnected. This is how I remember the joke. A Cuban, a Russian, a Japanese, and a Senegalese were playing dominos on a street corner in Havana. Out of the blue, and to the astonishment of all (particularly from the Cuban), the Russian jumped up from his chair and said that in his country they have the deadliest game in the world. He explained how Russian roulette works, ending up in the death of one of the players from the one bullet in 228 the gun’s barrel. The Russian’s outburst stimulated other narratives of deadly games among the players. The Japanese fellow impressed everyone with the crudeness of “hara-kiri”, which reserved a bamboo stick for the stomach of the unlucky player who drew the shorter stick; and the “suzette” was the grotesque game told of by the Senegalese, who claimed it to be the deadliest, since the loosing player, chosen by the point of the knife that was spun in the circle of people around it, was actually eaten by the other contestants. This really troubled the mind of the Cuban who listened to all that with great astonishment and awe, as if the narratives were a sort of magical realism. Suddenly, pressing his feet to the ground under the table the four of them were sitting around, he realized he also had a narrative to share. And his was nothing but the deadliest game ever: the domino. The other players were not impressed at all and could only but laugh at him in a patronizing way, figuring his odd appreciation of dominos to be his acquired naiveté. After all Cuba was not a violent place at all, and dominos was nothing but an amusement game, and Cubans know nothing of the world anyway. He raised his voice to be heard and started to explain why. “Say we are all Cubans here playing dominos and I tell you Maria there is selling potatoes. Feeling a necessity to reciprocate what that was gifted to you, you tell the fellow next to you Javier is selling beef down the corner. As the next fellow was telling our fourth companion about the next ‘pela isquierda’ tip of the day - Yaima had conjured some milk ‘por la libre’ [at a reasonable price] - his face turned white as he saw the expression on the face of the other player. He knew better. It turned out to be that the last player was an undercover ‘seguridad del Estado’68 [hired by the ominous Cuban Interior Ministry information network] and took them all in. So, dominos was the deadliest game in the world, because instead of one, three went down, and the danger is all around. After telling the joke, my friend informed me that in Switzerland there were several Cubans, but they seldom congregated. He used the joke to explain the mixed feelings they had being away from their country, but how they are still haunted by the necessary loss the rupture provoked in their affiliations. He said he could never know 68 It is an urban legend in Cuba that more than 60% of the population works for the “seguridad del Estado”. This is often told referring to the ominous presence and control of the State over the lives of citizens. It makes you wonder: if more than half of the population works for intelligence then who is left to investigate? 229 what the other Cuban’s previous (or even current) affiliations were in the Island, which he identified as being one of the main reasons why they did not form a community, like other expatriate Latin Americans in Switzerland at the time. It also expressed his mixed feelings about the reality of his present experiences in Cuba, in between worlds, permanently half aboard the Island, his mind wandering in the in-between of Central Havana and Plainpalais. Being half aboard does not necessarily imply one is away from the local idiosyncrasies, but it does confer the possibility to opt-out. However comforting the possibility may be, it inevitably also stimulates the “double consciousness” that characterizes “hybrid bodies”. And, as Florencio (2014) states: “how to make oneself present?” This condition which allows for skewed representations of themselves, of Cuba, and of the world around that does not necessarily correspond to their own expectations about the “opportunities” “economic actualization”, is opening up. Some of those expectations have to do with full use of capacities and education. ”The Revolution gave me all this health and education, but never the opportunity to use it. “The Revolution gave me all this gold and I don’t have where to spend it”. Those are timeless and placeless commentaries that followed the telling of the joke. They imply a potential that is deliberately disregarded. In relation to the “economic actualization”, it presupposes a quasi-immediate insertion in the global liberal work market. Other representations have to do with individual references often connected to American, Canadian and European standards, rather than with those of Latin Americans. Zurbano (2014: 17) explores the idea that by being the only socialist country in the hemisphere, it made Cubans think “they have escaped the geopolitics of coloniality”. That allows for a disconnection to the peripheral condition Latin American countries as a whole are in. Those representations do not recognize the “internal limitations, which accompanied over half a century of socialism in the Caribbean” (Zurbano, 2014: 17). Perhaps the singularity of being the only socialist country in the hemisphere has made us think that we have escaped the solid geopolitical structure of coloniality, thanks to our bold and inevitable conversion to socialism. This is an incontestable reason, one, which set us apart from the other Caribbean and Latin American countries, though we cannot forget that our socialism has been 230 peripheral, underdeveloped, and economically dependant, and all the internal limitations with which we have lived through half a century of socialism in the Caribbean. [Translated by the author from the originalciv] (Zurbano, 2014: 17). Recognizing that peripheral condition and the internal limitations it has produced under socialism is key to understand present social challenges in the country. By being on the periphery of the world-system (Wallerstein, 1980), Cuba also shares with other Latin-American countries the spoils of colonialism, regimes of domination characterized by racism, capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism (Laó-Montes, 2010: 286). The failure to recognize this condition has allowed for, according to Zurbano, a form of “internal colonialism” (González Casanova, 2007) to flourish; the perseverance of colonial signs, under the assumption that the Revolution had dealt with these contradictions for good, and for all. To de-idealize socialism’s hegemonic practices as a political system and introduce the possibility that, from inside and despite their emancipatory effects, socialism also generates their own internal colonialism, allows for a colonial space inside their own structures, from where (consciously or not) specific groups are included or excluded [Translated by the author from the originalcv] (Zurbano, 2015: 18). According to Zurbano (2015), González Casanova’s concept of “internal colonialism” could be applied to socialism as well, a lo cubano [with adaptions regarding Cuban reality], because in revolutionary Cuba the signs of colonialism have persevered. González Casanova (2007: 1) affirms that “internal colonialism” was rather difficult to digest by ideologies of liberation movements or socialism because they were not able to see or otherwise recognize that the same colonial internal structures that were present during the colonial or bourgeois rule are those that asphyxiate the struggle of “national minorities”, of “nationalities”, or “original peoples”. The correlation of forces sub exists without being altered in the way it could modify and restrain internal colonial relations inside the Nation-State. For González Casanova (2007: 2), who based his studies in the Soviet Union, Guatemala, and Mexico, these struggles of “minorities”, “nationalities” or “original peoples” relate to their situation within this correlation of forces. They are often in a 231 situation of inequality in relation to the dominating elites; their administration and responsibility concern these same dominating elites; their inhabitants do not participate in the higher political and military positions; except when they are “assimilated”; they are generally from a distinct race than that which dominates the central government, often “considered ‘inferior’, or otherwise converted in a ‘liberator’ symbol that takes part in the State’s demagogy”; and “the majority of the colonized belongs to a distinct culture that does not speak the national language”. Of course, adaptations to the specific settings and realities communities are inserted within their Nation States, let alone their distinct local and regional arrangements of power, are necessary. As seen, they may assume concurring narratives that support the dominating elite, accommodating temporary alliances; they may manage to be inserted in the elite positions, using these spaces to aid their struggles; it is not always they are from a distinct race than that which dominates the central government; and, taken from the cases discussed here, they often speak the national language. The totalizing statements made by González Casanova would not aid the understanding of the interactions communities have with their national, regional, and local arrangements of power taken as they are laid by the author. However, the sociologist also highlights the other signs of “internal colonialism” in relation to revolutionary movements that are based in liberation or socialist ideologies that can better position the analysis that is being conveyed here. González Casanova (2007: 9-10) identified inequalities produced by “internal colonialism” in the strategies of overseeing or intentionally suffocating public discussion about “internal colonialism”, based on the justification that it was not characteristic of democratic, liberating or socialist movements, because they foment division within the working class and a rupture in the collective struggle for power in a multi-ethnic State for “all the people and all peoples, or for an alternative socialist power”. These strategies are also based in the assumption that struggles of ethnicities and addressing the racial agenda conduce towards “ethnicism” and the “clash among ethnicities”, which helped the “colonialist policies of the major and peripheral powers to accentuate differences and internal contradictions”. 232 They exalt the role of the class struggle in addressing the same cultural problems of “traditional societies”, which are going to be solved by “modernization” policies and by “national integration”, through the constitution of a homogeneous State, under the same language and culture. They stress that the struggles of these ethnicities or the racial agenda individuals and collectives within the Nation State press are the domains of individual rights of ethnicities colonially or neo-colonially originated rather than collective rights; and they are built under the assumption that these struggles and agendas undermine the role of the Nation-State in fighting against “neoliberalism” and “globalization”. These constructed oppositions between the class struggle and the struggle of ethnicities, with the particular racialized tones it acquires in Cuba, took me right back to my dialogues with Bispo and the difficulties he encountered in addressing the quilombola issue with the framework established by the Rural Workers’ Federation of Brazilian the state of Piauí. Bispo said that, at the beginning of his participation in the Federation, he tried to create a section within the institution, in which he could address the specific issues that arouse in relation to the black and quilombola communities of his state, much in the way gender or generational issues were being worked in Federation. He found intransigent positions within the Federation which eventually made him move away from the work in the syndicate’s logic. Quilombo is not a matter of socialism; it is not communism; it is a communitarian matter. The quilombola issue cannot be read from the logic, or the reading of the class struggle. Because the quilombo is formed from a process of colonization. It is not from the slavery process. The slavery process is a consequence of the colonization process. And the process of colonization is a struggle of a nation against other nations. A nation that wants colonize other nations. And this nation does not want to colonize the worker; it wants to colonize the people. […] That is why these people have no juridical personality; these people are not entitled to rights, and they cannot even be judged by the legislation of the colonizer. So, if they not people entitled to rights, they are a thing. So, if they are things, they do not fit in the class struggle. Because what is the class struggle? It is the fight in between two groups that have rights; the right of the employer and the right of the worker. […] So the slave is not entitled to rights, so the slve is not a category of the class struggle; he is not class; he is a thing. […] So when you bring Marxism to understand the quilombos, there is no way. You will inclusively recolonize, hurt, fragment [Translated by the author from the originalcvi dialogue with Antonio Bispo dos Santos, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, June 2013] 233 For Bispo, quilombola related issues in the present carry the colonial signs of their historical construction. They refer, within the colonial process, to an objectification of the enslaved by the colonizer, which considered them a thing rather than people entitled to rights. As seen, identities present in the black and quilombola communities of the state today were weaved inside colonial settings that still inform local and regional arrangements of power. Within the quilombola struggle mobilize “meeiros”, “posseiros”, “arrendatários”, “foreiros” “moradores”, and “cablocos” and also blacksmiths, the midwifes, the “benzedores” “raizeiros” “oleiros”, carpenters, joiners, cobblers, “fazedores de jacá, donkey tamers and “vaqueiros”. That is why the quilombola issue today cannot be understood only by the class struggle framework, robbed of the significance of these identities for the struggles communities are undertaken in the present. Insistence upon this unidirectional framework of understanding may even, according to Bispo, “recolonize, hurt, and fragment”, the self-identification processes and the collective struggles of these communities. The narratives surrounding the denial of “internal colonialism” in Cuba are built around the epitomizing moments mentioned and found in the fundamental arena around racial issues. The Revolution led by the charismatic figure of Fidel Castro would remedy the racial dissent that was produced in the colonial slavery relations and carried throughout the republican period. The clash of the soviet bloc along with the fight against the United States’ imperialism would be barriers for addressing the issue fully and adequately because, in the asymmetric position they created, there was no room for dissent. The “special period”, along with the blockade, would constitute yet another banner for uniting the country against the dreads of the foreign menace and the national challenge towards surviving in isolation. Finally, the current “economic actualization” overshadows demands for racial equality in the midst of unregulated market realities. It is not very difficult for a Cuban from the middle of the last century in the Island to recognize that during the years of the Revolution there was in Cuba close to a soviet form of internal colonialism, because the popular person became aware of it, and was whipped by it, by a collection of jokes and criticisms which arrive in the present. Such an internal colonialism began as soon as Cuba joined the socialist world. I do not identify it with this maniqueist idea of Cuba as a military satellite of the old URSS, if not with an idea much more complex which explains the sinuous manner by which part of 234 the academic and ideological thought of the country was put at the service of the normative premises of a political-economic block, which was supported on and shared the anti-capitalist project of the revolution [Translated by the author from the originalcvii] (Zurbano, 2015: 20) That has created what Zurbano (2015: 25) calls a “doble consciencia revolucionaria del negro en Cuba” [a double black revolutionary consciousness in Cuba], which consists of a “political existential drama” materialized in the acceptance by blacks in Cuba of jests, jokes, and humiliations perpetrated by persons or institutions identified with the Revolution and communism. That acceptance is based on the belief that the Revolution has granted them a social positioning, otherwise denied in latter regimes, by eradicating racism, and creating universal access to jobs and public services. For that, according to Zurbano (2015: 25), blacks are deeply thankful to the Revolution, both personally and collectively. Society as a whole has incorporated the mantra, reinforced by the government propaganda, to the point that the author identifies it has become a “contention wall to the increasing anti-racist claims” (Zurbano, 2015: 25). One might think that the results of that present reality in Cuba are like “pollo por pescado”, and that the Revolution has substituted one form of colonialism for another. Nevertheless, drawing from impressions originated in research in La Marina, as we will see ahead, and the narratives I have encountered during my living in Cuba for two years, the Revolution has rather complicated and problematized that condition, creating alternative models from which Cubans may access different paths in a struggle for fighting those regimes of domination. Whether Cuban society is going to prioritize those alternatives woven from more than 50 years of Revolution within the present context of “economic actualization” remains inconclusive, as the combinations being offered run into a growing commodification of cultural values and institutions that constitute the very foundations of these alternative models. In that sense, they are today seeking “pescado” to exchange for the “pollo” they have been given, in absorbing this unidirectional commodification which also results in eroding the system of values that sustained society under Revolution. Nevertheless, the “accomplishments of the Revolution” have created opportunities for readdressing this logic, and re-signifying colonial signs. It is a failure not to recognize the existence and perseverance of those colonial signs in the Cuban society, and it is also a 235 failure not to recognize what more than 50 years of equality driven policies have done to the country and for relativizing colonial regimes of domination. In repositioning those failure points, Cubans might find a way to finally “eat” both “pollo and pescado” adding new grounds for fighting colonial regimes of domination, recognizing and dealing with their peripheral condition, and expanding the “accomplishments of the Revolution”. This at least creates an alternative status for Cuba under the pressure for “economic actualization” and the intensification of the capitalist relations in the country. The “economic actualization” allows for a new field of significations that, while producing “double consciousness” and feelings of loss, forces society to deal with its challenges in a way that, I will risk saying, no other American society is positioned to do presently. 236 Chapter 7 - The non-transculturation of the “Enciclopedia” The Lada was parked in front of La Lisa’s Municipal seat and the five of us were squashed inside together. Besides Barbara and I, as well as the tall black guy and his wife, a fifth companion, another distinctive black elder man, Tato, abacuá, babalao, writer, and journalist, would accompany us on this trip to Matanzas. Tato Quiñones has been an activist in the anti-racist movement in Cuba, and is a founding member of the “Confradía de la Negritud” [Black People’s Fraternity], a collective aimed at creating awareness about racial issues on the Island through the promotion of meetings and talks of intellectuals, journalists, and scholars with people from neighbourhoods of Havana, particularly in the neighbourhood of “La Ceiba”, where Tato was born. The goal of such talks and meetings is to reflect on the transformations in Cuba since the economic depression of the 90’s, otherwise known as the “special period”, addressing the results for the black population vis-à-vis the hypothesis that the Revolution had eliminated racism, which was present in Fidel’s speeches in the early years of the Revolution, in 1959 and 196269. Today the Confradía also issues a newsletter also called “La Ceiba”, a reference to both the neighbourhood and to the huge, baobab-like tree sacred to Cuban afro traditions. The ‘Confradía’ appears in 1998 […] the foundational document of the ‘Confradía’ that was issued in Mexico, there was no printer back then, there was a teletype, a roll for a papyrus. Then I read that, and I was in agreement with it and all it said, and then we gathered in ‘La Madriguera’, that is this place in Carlos Tercero, […] we gathered a group of people, including Gisela Arandia, Toamsito, Gerardo, and other elder companions, we gathered to debate about racial problems. At the time, in ICAIC70, I got to know the man who had founded the ‘Confradía’, Norberto Mesa Carbonell […] in a 69 Two of Fidel’s speeches mark this first moment of the Revolution in respect to the racial issue. The first, 1959, denominated “the first call to the racial issue”, exhorted the nation to fight racism, as perhaps the greatest challenge of the Revolution. The second, three years later, evaluates the accomplishments of the young Revolution, and includes racism as “virtually eliminated”. The social understanding of these speeches and the absence of policies that directly addressed the issue, other than those of a universal nature, was that racism was indeed eradicated. Racism converted into taboo, and with the growing soviet influence, into an anti-revolutionary conduct, especially during the period known as "quinquenio gris" [the gray quinquennium], when Cuba’s absorption of the soviet model, culturally, economically and politically, was at its peak. 70 The Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC) [Cuban Institute of Art and Cinema Industry] was founded in1959, only three months after the Revolution. http://www.encaribe.org/es/article/instituto-cubano-del-arte-e-industria-cinematograficos-icaic/1048, 9.7.15. 237 meeting at someone’s house I do not remember where Tomasito Rodríguez Robaina and I took the decision that we need to support the ‘Confradía de la Negritud, because it had been founded for years and Norberto doing what he could alone with very few people, and Tomasito and I supported it. […] Then immediately people, we could say the Cuban right wing, from this moment on started to say this was an unofficial movement (nothing further than unofficial am I, all my life). And a lot of people started to say we were dissidents […] We started to work and do things aiding this that transformed from a meetings of intellectuals into a community to discuss, debate, intellectuals from the academy, journalists, professors, who brought to the neighborhood of La Ceiba, my neighborhood, where I live, where there is a communitarian house, and where we gathered and made some street demonstrations, and this gradually gave the ‘Confradía’ a certain space, a certain legitimacy, and is what it has presently, though it is not recognized officially presently, it has a space in civil society, earned without compromise, neither with the Party nor with nothing but the same compromise with the Cuban Revolution […] because in the Cuban case, the Party did not lead the Revolution to power, if not all the contrary, the Revolution in power is what created the Party. […] So, what’s going on this instance? What happened in the 1990’s here in Cuba? How did these inequalities multiply? The have made themselves more evident and discrimination, exclusion which are happening in work centers, and how racism has appeared in Cuba with a really amazing force. That is, it shows that the hypothesis of the 1960’s was wrong, see what’s going on now, but not only racism, the 1990’s were devastating for the Cuban reality, I think that there isn’t a space in the Cuban reality that has not been, in some way, affected or devastated by this situation that happened in Cuba, this uncommon situation that has no parallel in the world. It is certain that when the Soviet Union eroded along with all Eastern Europe, everybody though Cuba would erode too, but Cuba didn’t, but the price we had to pay was very high, a high price in inequalities and losses on what was accomplished and, above all on the flourishing of social evils that we thought were definitely dead and that today are more alive than never, racism is one, prostitution is another, corruption, and I can keep on numbering them, creating bondages for the lack of hope, frustration it is the face of present Cuba, this price we have paid because we did not follow the fate of the Soviet Union [Translated by the author from the originalcviii interview with Tato Quiñones, granted to the anthropologist Bárbara Oliveira Souza, Havana, 29.05.14]71 Bárbara knew Tato from a talk he gave in a “diplomado”, a post-graduate course she was attending at the University of Havana72 called “Cuba: Genes, Culturas, y Racialidades” [Cuba: Genes, Cultures, and Racialities]. I would later talk with him about his connections with La Marina, through his membership in the abacuá secret society. In this first interview with Bárbara, Tato addressed important issues for the communitarian organization and identity in La Marina, such as the role of anti-racist collectives and their connection to neighbourhoods in Havana and Matanzas; the alleged association of these collectives with dissidence; the relationship of Cuban civil society with the Communist Party and the Revolution; the transformations generated by the racial agenda of the 71 I deeply thank both Bárbara and Tato for letting me use excerpts from this interview in this thesis. 72 Diplomado “Cuba: Genes, Culturas, y Racialidades” [Cuba, Genes and Racialities], at the University of Havana, 2014-2015. 238 “special period” in Cuba; and the effects of the dissolution of the socialist field to the emergence of anti-racist collectives in the Island. It is important to highlight the emergence of these anti-racist mobilizations, mainly in the late 1990’s, for the context of communitarian struggles of today, such as that of La Marina. These mobilizations were based on the affirmation of a black or afro-descendant identity, carried on by narratives connected to the racial dimension. They are present in the names of much of the collectives that tried to amalgamate these mobilizations, such as the “Confradía de la Negritud”, “Afrocubanas” [Afrocuban Women], “Red Barrial Afrodescendiente” [Afrodescendant Neighbourhood Network], “Unidad Alianza Racial” [Racial Alliance Unity], “Red de Mujeres Afrodescendientes Latinoamericanas y caribeñas - capitulo cubano” [Network of Latin-American and Caribbean Afrodescendant Women – Cuban Chapter], and the “Articulación Regional Afrodescendiente de las Americas y el Caribe (ARAAC)” [Regional Afrodescendant Articulation of the Americas and Caribbean]. They emerge within a diffused idea of “civil society” that is mediated by the Revolution and its institutions. They also occupy the role of “mediators” in between the State and local demands of the actual individuals and collectives, who identify either with an ethnic or a racial conscious – or both. It is important to note that in the universe where these mobilizations dwell, race and ethnicity are intrinsically connected. It is quite important to visualize both for their significance is quite different, particularly for the agendas of these “mediating mobilizations” and local struggles. Wade (1997) states that, particularly in the context of the Americas, racial identifications lie within the physical differences that “have converted into object of ideological manipulation in the course of the colonial occidental expansion” (Wade, 1997: 17). On the other hand, ethnic identifications are related to cultural differences, often connected to the sense of belonging to a place. Wade's contention that “racial difference is very specialized, the ethnic and racial identities are often imbricated” (Wade, 1997: 18) is based on his analysis of Colombia’s Chocó and Caribbean provinces, where black population in the country is significant. Although “mediating mobilizations” base their claims in racial identified agendas, the marks of racial difference Wade identifies in 239 Colombia as “carrying the history of occidental colonialism” are also very present in La Marina, mixed with the idea of an ethnic struggle connected to a sense of belonging to the neighbourhood. Within the spectre of the “mediating mobilizations” Souza (2015) organized categories according to their positioning around the State and its institutions. The anthropologist identifies three such categories in Cuba, “official civil society”, “recognized social anti-racist collectives”, and “anti-racist dissident civil society”, in which mobilizations, collectives, and projects that carry both universal and specific racial agendas operate. The “official civil society” is characterized by organizations that were fundamental for the Revolution in forming and diffusing its creed. They have a mixed nature, with national representation on the government pay roll, seats provided by the government, and resources facilitated through official institutions. However, their local articulation is voluntary and builds on the same creed that has fed the Revolution; their agenda is intrinsically connected with the governmental one. These organizations consist of the “Comitês de Defesa da Revolução (CDR)”73 [Committees for the Defence of the Revolution], which are situated in every neighbourhood of the Island, the “Federação de Mulheres de Cuba (FMC)”74 [Federation of Cuban Women], aiming at developing women equality policies and programs, and the Syndicates that are present in every “directing unit” of the state apparatus, from research institutes to state companies. The level of autonomy, according to the anthropologist, is minimal outside of the directives sustained by the State. In Souza’s assessment of the relation of these organizations to racial issues, it turned out that none of them held a systematic approach to the theme. The “recognized social anti-racist collectives” deal specifically with the situation of exclusion and racial inequality, and are composed of activists who identify with the Revolution, but also acknowledge barriers for the discussion of racial issues. They promote 73 The CDRs are organized by blocks, zones, municipalities, provinces, and nation. They gather in 133 thousand nucleuses, nearly 8 million citizens over 14 years old. http://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Comités_de_Defensa_de_la_Revolución, 5.5.15. 74 The FMC develops policies and programs oriented to achieve full exercise of women equality at all levels and social places. http://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Federación_de_Mujeres_Cubanas, 5.5.15. 240 awareness on the issue through mobilizations and gatherings, but are not sponsored by the State. They operate within the State’s sphere, though they try to claim spaces for their agenda in a double movement of approximation and detachment. The approximation is materialized on the demands for their recognition and legitimization by the State, the sponsoring of their activities and for the incorporation of racial issues in the agenda of State institutions and policies. But they also seek detachment from the State’s homogenizing orbit that most often aims to silence racial issues, seen as contra-revolutionary, tending to wreck the idealized “national unit”, and, as a direct consequence, the Revolution itself. This double movement of approximation and detachment is what I call “institutionalization”, in between an inexorable desire to introduce their agenda in the State’s sphere, which is perceived as a necessary goal in a State-controlled society, and the forceful retreat when the demands touch sensitive spots, not mature enough for public discussion, according to the State and their delegates. It represents an open rupture in relations with the “institutionalized” world, in between necessary or desired reciprocity bonds and abruptly or ad hoc non-reciprocity actions and signals. Here, apart from occasional support of the State in the form of publications and organization of meetings, the majority of the work done is voluntarily. The “Red Barrial Afrodescendiente”, the “Confradía de la Negritud”, the “Afrocubanas”, the “ARAAC”, as well as communitarian projects such as the “Projecto Alianza Igualdad Racial” [Project Racial Equality Alliance], or the “Projeto de Identidad y Barrio La Marina” [Project Identity and Neighbourhood La Marina], are among these “recognized social anti-racist collectives”. We will talk more about the project in La Marina in the following chapters, where the idea of “institutionalization” is key to the demands that the community is aggregating to their political identity struggle. On the other side of the spectrum, are the anti-racist collectives that have a much broader critique of the State, in opposition to the socialist regime. These organizations and mobilizations are under the category Souza (2015) denominates “anti-racist dissident civil society”. To be a dissident in Cuba is to run in opposition to the regime, often 241 connected to the aiding and abetting of the United States. The fact that they openly position themselves against the regime places them under the sign of dissidence, and apart from the “recognized social anti-racist collectives”, even though their agenda is concurrent with the latter categorization in many respects. Although they aim at overcoming racism, the agenda of these collectives is also connected to the dissolution of what they claim as unidirectional institutions that the Cuban government still holds, such as the monopoly of the press and the single-party system. Examples of these collectives are the “Comite de Integración Racial (CIR)”75 [Racial Integration Committee] and the “Movimiento de Integración Racial Juan Gualberto Gómez (MIR) [Racial Integration Movement Juan Gualberto Gómez]. Activities of such groups are not present in the narratives in La Marina, and I will not detain myself with a too thorough of consideration of their agendas and their relation to the Cuban government. However, to some extent, they play the role of Malcolm X, while the “recognized social anti-racist collectives” are a more the Martin Luther King type. They are seen as a constant threat, and since there is an absence of an organized racial agenda within the “official civil society”, or any specific policies under the umbrella of the State, the “recognized social anti-racist collectives” are the ones who the State turns to when push comes to shove. The reverse movement is also a permanent shadow to the “recognized social anti-racist collectives”. When the State feels safe in its control systems, or the consideration of racial issues hammers on sensitive spots like income or social status reallocation, or the more recrudescent groups allegedly pose the threat of the dissolution of the “nation’s unit”, the “recognized social anti-racist collectives” are marginalized to social places close to those of the “anti-racist dissident civil society”. In the Seminar “Origenes” [Origins], held in Matanzas, in October, last year, organized by the “Dirección Provincial de Cultura” [Provincial Directive of Culture], I could see, in a nutshell, how that reverse movement worked. The event gathered scholars and leaders from communitarian collectives and projects from all over the country, mainly 75 http://www.cir-integracion-racial-cuba.org/, 12.07.15. 242 those connected with the “Red de Educadores Populares [Popular Educators Network], a network coordinated by the “Centro Memorial Martin Luther King (CMMLK)”76 [Martin Luther King Memorial Centre], an organization sponsored by international agencies generally related to the Pentecostal Church in the United States and worldwide, recognized by the Cuban State. The idea of the “Red de Educadores Populares” is built around the concept of popular education, aiming at establishing a culture of participation in priority areas in the country, and to follow-up on capacity-building territorial processes as well as innovative social participation exercises to strengthen the capacities of articulation, coordination, and the development of popular protagonist77. The anti-racist agenda is championed within the “Red de Educadores Populares” by a collective of popular educators based in the Havana neighbourhoods of La Lisa and Pogolotti, which is called the “Red Barrial Afrodescendente” [Afrodescendant Neighbourhood Network], using the articulation spaces provided by the “Red de Educadores Populares” as a way to disseminate anti-racist agenda. The opening conference of the Seminar was delivered by Dr. Jesus Guanche, “Académico de Numero” [Academic of Number] of the Cuban National Science Academy, a distinguished scholar in the Cuban academic world. During his talk addressed to a diverse public on racial issues in the country, Dr. Guanche was quick to discuss the link between the use of the terminology “afrodescendiente” and “afrocubano” and the dissidents, based on the number of links generated by typing these terms on Google. As the audience listened, bamboozled by his comments, he kept on pushing his agenda, concluding that the abundance of links generated by the Google search is evidence that the terms were being used by the “enemy”, and that organizations who use the terms 76 The institution of the CMMLK as an authorized association in Cuba dates back to the meeting of Fidel and Malcolm X, when the Commander went to speak at the United Nations and was welcomed at Theresa Hotel in Harlem by the black antiracist movement, in 1961. Twenty years later, in 1984, under the leadership of Cuban Reverend Raul Suarez, the Council of Churches of Cuba (CCC) invited delegations of leaders from African American churches and Historic Peace Churches to visit Cuban denominations. This delegation was successful in opening up dialogue between church and state. In 1987, CMMLK was founded as a “macro-ecumenical organization of Christian inspiration, which from the Cuban people and its churches, prophetically contributes to the solidarity and conscious, organized, and critical popular participation, driven by a socialist option”. Translated by the author from the original in http://www.cmlk.org/quienes-somos-2, 1.6.15. 77 Referenced in http://www.cmlk.org/educacion-popular-2, 1.6.15. 243 were either “tontos o otra cosa” [naïve or otherwise]. Always addressing the audience from an authoritarian stand point, referring to his membership in the “Comissión Aponte”78, a collective of intellectuals based at the “Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas Cubanos (UNEAC)”79 [National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists], a government sponsored organization, as well as his role as Cuban representative to UNESCO’s Slave Route Project80, he concluded, addressing Vice-President Diáz Canel directly, that the matter at hand was being addressed by “Comissión Aponte”. After absorbing the impact of the scholar’s comments, academics and leaders of communitarian organizations present tried to make sense of the implications laid out by Dr. Guanche. Since the point of view of the most general science, all human beings, we are all afrodescendant, because the term involves all humanity and it is not circumscribed to only part of it. Our assumption is inclusive, anti-racist, anti-discriminatory, and is the assumption which is less employed by people who obviously claim for rights. There it is employed with a very particular combination, which substitutes the term ‘negro’ or ‘negra’ in the United States, which are the promoters of their characterization of global influence. The previous term [negro] acquires a depletory connotation, and soon the term [afrodescendant] acquires a positive, dignifying connotation, and sets a human grouping apart. It has also been interpreted as a form of racism in the contrary direction, as a rejection of the cultural collection of this country [Cuba]. […] And they are the ones who think themselves capable of giving classes about democracy and anti-racism, above all inside the Cuban territory, where they insist they are doing it on their own, without no advice whatsoever, without problems. We know perfectly who are these Cuban intellectuals, who they are connect to, and to whose motivations they respond. This previous assumption, conscious or non-conscious, denies, neutralizes, silences, or substitutes the national denominations, and the 78 The “Comissión Aponte” [Aponte Commission] is named after the leader of the 1912 conspiracy, José Antonio Aponte. It is a heir to the UNEAC Commission for the Fight against Racism and Discrimination that was created following an agreement in the VII UNEAC Congress in 2008 whereby Color Cubano [Cuban Color] would cease to exist and its work in the area of race in Cuba subsumed in the work of this commission. This commission is headed by Heriberto Feraudy Espino, a former diplomat and researcher, and integrated into UNEAC's working structure. http://www.afrocubaweb.com/uneaccomissionracism.htm, 2.6.15. 79 The “Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC)” [Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba] is a social, cultural and professional organization, non-governmental, with consultee status II in the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, with legal capacity, which gathers voluntarily Cuban writes and artists, according to a principle of selectiveness (based on the artistic curricula). It was founded in Agust 22nd, 1961, by the National Poet Nicolás Guillén. Translated by the author from the original in http://www.min.cult.cu/loader.php?sec=instituciones&cont=uneac, 2.6.15. 80 The Slave Route Project, launched in Ouidah, Benin, in 1994, has three objectives, namely to: contribute to a better understanding of the causes, forms of operation, issues and consequences of slavery in the world (Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Middle East and Asia); highlight the global transformations and cultural interactions that have resulted from this history; and contribute to a culture of peace by promoting reflection on cultural pluralism, intercultural dialogue and the construction of new identities and citizenships. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/dialogue/the-slave-route/, 2.6.15. 244 recognition of the formation of the historically new national states. Brazilian for Afro-Brazilian, Uruguayan for Afro-Uruguayan, for instance, Cuban for Afro-Cuban, Dominican for Afro-Dominican, that is a segregation discourse in a regional context that is aiming at integration [Translated by the author from the originalcix talk by Dr. Jesús Guanche at the Seminar Origenes, Matanzas, October 2014] The connection between racial issues and dissidence arrives at a dead end for “recognized social anti-racist collectives” and their demands for “institutionalization”. It is a paralysing mechanism to suffocate their agenda and constitutes a reverse movement that stands as a barrier for addressing racial issues in the country, and for collective mobilization around the issue. It takes form in public reprimands such as those perpetrated by Dr. Guanche, and in the lack of official support for their activities, since they are not authorized by the State to receive international funds until they resolve to disband, as happened with the “Color Cubano” and the “Magin”81. There are other forms of organization of black societies in Cuba, forged under historic traditions of resistance to the colonial rule and the systematically subduing of blacks in the country that has reached the present day. They are connected with the racial debate, but operate in ways that goes beneath the State's radar. Differently from the categories described by Souza (2015), their identity is multi-situated in racial identification, related to the physical marks of the black predominance of its members, and in ethnic identification, related to their connection to their base territory. They do not seek to occupy the role of the latter “mediating mobilizations”, because they are deeply rooted within their own locality as platforms for communitarian organization. Their organization reaches the universe of the “mediating mobilizations”, regardless, as they are connected to a growing racial consciousness through the experiences brought to the 81 The “Associación de Mujeres Comunicadoras (Magin)” [Association of Women Communicators] was created in March 1993 after the First Ibero-American Women and Communication Conference was held in Havana. The Association identified the need to work for gender awareness in the media. Magin was “deactivated,” in 1996, during the special period, after being denied approval of its application for registration. The main argument brandished by those who made that decision was related to the so-called Track II of the 1992 U.S. Torricelli Act, which promoted people-to-people contact and academic, cultural and civil society exchange as a way of encouraging changes to Cuba’s political system. In just three years, Magin organized 50 workshops on different issues and worked on projects that included a publishing collection, a quarterly magazine, a press bureau to produce informational materials with a gender-based approach, and training workshops. http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/02/women-journalists-in-cuba-revive-transgressive-group/, 09.07.15. 245 community by these “mediators”, but also being themselves the collective “mediators” seek to support their own agenda. Among the several black mutual aid and help societies that have been organized since the colonial period in Cuba, the “sociedad secreta abacuá” [abacuá secret society] and the “cabildos” stand as long lasting organizations rooted deeply in the history and traditions of the African enslaved brought to the country and their descendants. Along with the cultural manifestations, arisen from the communitarian organizational locus, they are also the foundational organization for the current struggle in La Marina. The abacuá secret society is a fraternity of black (and later also white) men who resisted the colonial social order, questioning the social injustices, colonial control, euro-centrism, and the social atomization of the poor. They, according to Walterio Carbonell (1961), “functioned as political organizations with an objective to fight slavery [...] they acted as clandestine political organizations”. These organizations started in early 1800’s (Quiñones, 2014), following the expansion of the sugarcane plantations that operated on African enslaved manpower. They are one of several black organizations, such as “cabildos” and other black societies that promoted the communal collection of funds for burials, marriages and freeing their enslaved members, as well as organizing help for their elders as needed. They were also important for the maintenance of cultural practices related to African traditions in the Island, as well as for the political organization of the black people. A singular feature is that these organizations are still present both in the imagery and as locus for collective mobilization, either for mutual aid and help or around the discussion of racial and ethnic related issues. As we will discuss later in this chapter, colonial rule instituted “cabildos” as a means to divide the enslaved according to what the colonizer understood to be their “nations” in Africa. Colonial authority would not allow “criollos”, enslaved or free black and mixed born in the Island, to be a part of “cabildos”, which had much to do with the idea of “whitening” the population that should not be in contact with such “primitive”, “salvage” African traditions. The idea of the nation in Cuba is directly connected to the “whitening” of the population, much like in Brazil, Colombia, or even in Canada, with the 246 enfranchisement policies82. That is why, in the absence of an imposed or authorized form of organization like that of the “cabildos”, the “criollos”, both enslaved and free, began to constitute fraternities, such as the “abacuá” secret society, which gathered workers in the ports, tobacco factories, and butchers, among other sectors. […] they indeed had since their beginning the same mutualistic aims of the cabildos, but their goals transcended those of the latter, since they accomplished to become true gremial fraternities even before the abolition of slavery, which gathered workers in ports, tobacco factories, butchers, among other labour sectors [Translated by the author from the originalcx] (Quiñones, 2014: 72). Its rituals and practices are referenced in those of the ethnicity mix that the colonizer denominated as “carabali”, African enslaved that hail from the Southeast of Nigeria, a territory known as “Old Calabar”. Those rituals and practices are based on the legend of Sikán, a princess who was the daughter of King Iyamba, of the Efó nation, and the finding of the Supernatural Phish, “Tanze”, sent to the Efó nation by Abasi, supreme God, creator of all for almost all the ethnicities of the “Old Calabar”, and for the members of the abacuá secret society in Cuba. In the legend, reference here from oral testimony of Fernando Valdéz Divino (in Quiñones, 2014: 56-63), “Ecueñón”83 of the abacuá potency “Ecue Muñanga Efó”, are based the society’s cannons, generally woven from Sikán’s revealing to other nations the secret of the Phish and the efforts of kings to make peace. The legend also reveals the foundation for the premises on which abacuá members conduct themselves. The idea was of a fraternity of men, for Sikán was the one to reveal the secret of “Tanze” to her husband, a prince of the rival Efí nation. She would be the only woman to be sworn to the abacuá. The idea of agreement and peace in the “Tratados”84 [Treaties] over the leopard skin between the Efó, the Efí, the Orú, and the Efori nations, which put an end to the wars among them. The idea of secrecy, related to the condemnation of Sikán to death for revealing the secret of the Phish. The idea of the 82 Accoriding to Furniss (2011 [1992]: 23) “officials encouraged the enfranchisement of Indians, a process through which they [Native Peoples] voluntarily gave up their Indian status and agreed to take up European economic practices, dress, and values. The enfranchisement program, quite literally, was devised for the purpose of eradicating Indians from Canadian society”. 83 The one who holds the function of killing animals in the Abacuá rituals. 84 In the “Tratados” or “libretas” are written the proverbs and sentences that establish a code of conduct for the members of the abacuá society. They are written in “Brícamo”, abacuá lenguage, in which predominate the “Efik” voices. (Chapeaux, 1967). 247 “Voz” [Voice] of the Phish, spoken through collective trance, a fundamental part of the abacuá ritual. The idea of sharing the “Fundamentos”85 [Fundaments] for the accomplishment of the trance, making reference to the sorcery that was undertaken in order to recuperate the “Voz” of the Phish. The idea of fusion of religions in the collective search for the voice of “Tanze” that joined the Efó, the Efí, the Orú, and the Efori nations, which is also represented by the worshiping of the goat as the animal who ate all the seven herbs necessary for the accomplishment of the sorcery, and gave its blood for the ritual which made it possible for the “Voz” be heard again in the abacuá fraternity. In religiosity, the reciprocal influences between cultures of distinct African ethnicities that nurtured us during the slave trade, and between these and that of the dominant culture, emerged the ‘cultos sincréticos cubanos’ [Cuban syncretic cults], popular religions, among which the ‘Regla de Ocha’ [Ocha’s Rule] – ‘Ifá’ or ‘Santería’, of an Yoruban origin, that of ‘Palo’ or ‘Palo Monte’, Bantu rooted, and the ‘abacuá’ or ‘ñañigas’ associations – sort of secret societies, fraternities for mutual aid and help, exclusive for men, that live for more than a 100 years in the city-ports of Havana, Matanzas, and Cárdenas, of a clear ‘carabalí’ origin, as it came to be called the group of ethnicities who dealt the present Southeast of the Federative Republic of Nigeria, territory known as the ‘Old Calabar’, according to the administrative division imposed at that time by English colonialism. The ‘ñáñaguismo’ constitutes a singular ethnographic and anthropological phenomenon that, outside Africa, can only be observed in Cuba [Translated by the author from the originalcxi] (Quiñones, 2014: 68). The members of the abacuá society in Cuba are called “ñáñigos”, and the tradition as such is held as a “singular ethnographic and anthropological phenomenon, which outside Africa can only be found in Cuba” (Quiñones, 2014: 68). The abacuá society is organized in several “potencias” [potencies], which constitute a whole in itself, defined by a set of sacred objects and brave, virile, potent men, presided by a “Plaza”86 cxii, the director of the potency (Martínez; Zayas, 2011). It is characterized by its self-sufficiency 85 The “fundamentos” are drums that are used to invoke the “Voz” of Tanze. The main drum is called “Ekue” and is the voice of the phish. Other auxiliary drums constitute the “fundamentos”. “Mpego”, which substitutes the “Ekue”, when it is no fragallado, and is known as the drum of order, which opens and closes the ceremonies. “Ekueñón”, which represents the “Ekue” drummer at the time of the sacrifice of the “Mbori” [chicken], its head being placed on the drum. “Nkrícamo”, which represents the younger son of “Ekue”, and its function is to invoke the spirits. “Sese Eribó” has the structure is of a drum, but it is not played. It represents the holy sacrament and it is used as a crown at the moment of the initiation of the “índisseme”, the candidate of membership in the potency. “Brakinauke” represents “Ekue”, and it is played when a member of the society dies (Martínez; Zayas, 2011: 32). 86 “The abacuá created in Cuba the ‘plaza’ or the dignitary function of ‘Abasi’, Supreme God to the ‘Ibibios’ and ‘Efik’. ‘This honorific title – Lydia Cabrera argues [(Cabrera, 1998: 18)] – is granted to some ‘obonekues’ for their personal merits and services rendered to the Potency and has never existed in Calabar” (Quiñones, 2014: 94). 248 and internal strength, the union among its members, and the commitment to its laws, which do not bind them to any other institution. Miller (2011) stated that members of the abacuá society are known in Cuba as the “African masons”. The author traces a parallel between abacuá potencies and the Masonic lodges, identifying relative autonomy in a larger hierarchal organization. That line of comparison does not do any justice to the uniqueness and complexity of the abacuá society. Quiñones (2014) describes the effort of many abacuá “Plazas” before and after the Revolution to unify the potencies. After a history of dissent both provoked by members of the distinct potencies and by non-recognition by official authorities, the “Organizacíon de Unidad Abacuá” was finally recognized in 1996. Nevertheless, the self-sufficiency of the potencies is a fundament of the society’s organization. Kimbo, last year, talking to Tato about the newer proclamations of the Organization said: “no one touches my ‘juego’ [game]. Here in Matanzas we do it as it was told by my elders”. Kimbo’s statement also reveals another characteristic of the society that is linked to only three cities in Cuba, Havana, Matanzas, and Cárdenas. The “juego” is directed by each “Plaza” of the potency, and their auxiliary allegiance lies within the other potencies of their own city. One could even say that the “Organizacíon de Unidad Abacuá” approximates more with the “recognized social anti-racist collectives”, for their role as “mediators”, but their allegiance lies with the abacuá potencies, rather than in a racial conscious. Also, the reciprocal ties the “Organizacíon de Unidad Abacuá” maintains with the State are quite different than those of the “recognized social anti-racist collectives”, their members often occupying functions in government, and their society being referred to “unofficially as a national symbol of Cuba, due to the participation of its members in the development of Cuban music, arts, and identity” (Miller, 2011). That “unofficial” recognition has not stop prejudice, especially in the neighbourhoods, towards “ñáñigos”. Though the “plantes”, abacuá ceremonies, are not clandestine anymore, they still need to be reported to the police beforehand, a feature that finds no equal among traditions and religions in Cuba. Most of the historical stereotypes, as conflictive, outlaw, salvage, 249 witchcraft, and even their latter clandestine nature (which leads to legitimizing repression) are still present. Do not forget that in my case the investigation that I made about the ‘abacuá’, all the information that I found, that which I used in my work and other I have in archive, I found them in police records, in the police chronic in newspapers, and in the judicial sentences. In the judicial system, that is where the information is, it is not in another part, because this is part of the daily life, the no-existence, the open social denial, but there is information that lies in the memory of the people and, in the case of blacks in Cuba, at least [Translated by the author from the originalcxiii interview with Tato Quiñones, Altos, Playa, La Habana, September, 2014]. The “juego” refers to the abacuá ceremonies called “plantes” that have private and public functions. Ortiz (1985: 307) relates the “juego” with the public dances of the colonial period, such as royal parties or carnivals, where performances were made in the streets. These performances were generally called “juegos” in the colony and later the term was applied to the abacuá public feasts as “juegos” as well. In the private functions, only the initiated can participate, and revealing secrets is strictly prohibited. In the public functions, members and non-members can participate. Quiñones (2104: 73) says they constitute “authentic cultural manifestations”, where members fill the streets with dance, singing, and playing. Their dress is colourful and exquisite, and their evolution mixes moments of profound exhilaration with sinister and lugubrious tones. The character of the “íreme”87 singles out in the midst of the evolution of the “plante”, with connotations of a devil-like figure, the “diablitos”, in the popular imagery, since colonial times. Quiñones describes them as an […] anthropomorphic figure with the head covered by a pointed, rustic fabric hood, and without no other facial details than a couple of eyes woven or sewed to the hood. Their dressing is widely colorful and contains carefully made drawings; behind the head, a circular hat, in which there could be found emblematic designs, also drawn in the neck, knees, arms, and feet, made out of al frayed rope garlands; attached to the waist, along with several metal bells that cling while moving, dancing and agitating. In the hands, a piece of sugarcane and a branch of ‘escoba amarga’ [bitter brush] [Translated by the author from the originalcxiv] (Quiñones, 2104: 73). 87 There are several types of “íremes” that appear in the diverse abacuá celebrations, both private and public, always representing the spirit of an ancestor. The “Íreme Eribangandó”, during some initiation rituals; the “Íreme Encanima”, who has a purifying role in public functions; the “Íreme Aberiñán”, who is responsible for killing the goat, during the celebration of the Baroco, ritual of passage for the “Obonecues”, early initiated; and the “Íreme Anamanguín”, who is revealed during the burial rites (Quiñones, 2014: 75). 250 According to Ortiz (1950) this imagery was related to the appearance of the “íremes” in public processions in Cuba, such as Corpus Christi. The anthropomorphic image of the “íreme” connected people with “devils”, masked individuals, often men, that took part of such ceremonies in Spain. Also in Cuba, as affirms Cepero Bonilla (1971: 29), “religion, the form that seems to be more disconnected with material interests, was an efficient supporter of the slavery regime”cxv. Escalona (2008) highlights the prejudice behind using the name “diablitos” for the “íremes” and other blacks dressed in “African manner or using masks”. For the historian, considering that the Catholic Church was at the heart of social organization in the colony, it is only “logic that these figures would be identified with the satanic and diabolic, because from their appearance, to their shining odd clothes, to their imitation and singing, dancing and contortionism, the popular imagery conceived them as exponents of witchcraft and diabolic” (Escalona: 2008: 34). This prejudiced image is still associated with the “abacuá” “plantes” presently, adding to the stereotype constructed around the society that stood out from the Revolution, and is represented in the images of the “plantes” as conflictive, savage, diabolic, and related to witchcraft and sorcery. It is not uncommon to hear in Cuba that “ñañigos” are outlaws and troublemakers and parents tell their children, in the midst of jokes and reprimands, that if they do not behave the “ñañigo” will come and take them. During the long years I worked at the port of Havana, millions of pesos in merchandise of all kinds passed through my hands, before and after the Revolution, and never in my life have I been in a police station. More than fifty years working as a stevedore and seventy something sworn ábacuá’ with an impeccable conduct in society and, nevertheless, there are a lot of people who call me delinquent and bandit. [Translated by the author from the originalcxvi] (Quiñones, 2014: 44) This clandestine nature of the abacuá society and its repression by official authorities contributed to the potencies’ self-sufficiency, adding to the stereotypes society has cultivated about the “ñañiguismo”, though never erasing the characteristics of mutualism and fraternity among its members. Both the repression and the clandestine nature of the society were connected to the racial identification of the fraternity as black. This repression and the clandestine nature has also allowed for the existence of white abacuá potencies, beginning in Havana in the second half of the 1800’s. According to 251 Quiñones (2014), young white men back then wanted to be sworn acabuá for the status its clandestine nature and the repression by authorities gave members of the society in the streets. Mostly, the potencies would not allow for white men to be sworn to their houses. Several white potencies continued to be erected in Havana and later in Matanzas. The acabuá “Plazas” saw that as inevitably contradictory to the society’s cannons and to their objective, which, beyond mutual aid and help, had always been related to a political struggle to fight colonial rule, and secrecy was a key element. Secrecy allowed for the preservation of their traditions and codes, which were the source of their organization for the promotion of their struggle. The fraternities were essential for the organization of workers, particularly in the ports, and constituted a form of resistance to the colonial rule and the racialized relations since the colony, but also after the Revolution. But the ‘abacuá’ associations, which since the second part of the Nineteenth century were officially prohibited by Spanish authorities, always had to celebrate their fraternizations and ritual ceremonies in a veiled manner, clandestine (Quiñones, 2014: 72). […] the fusion between ‘abacuá’ ‘juegos’ and syndicates, a growing tendency in the first half of the Nineteenth century, as one of the traits of their popular identity, which arose between the stevedores and construction workers. [Translated by the author from the originalcxvii] (Quiñones, 2014: 16) Many of the “Plazas” saw contradictions in swearing white men, identified as the colonizer, regardless of their Cuban origin or their class position. These contradictions were also connected with the political role the abacuá society played in organizing enslaved, “horros” [freed enslaved], and later workers in jobs that required great physical strength, such as the ports or construction, or combined strength and specific skills, as the tobacco industry. All in all, the jobs relegated to black men were seen in society as being of a lesser value. That allowed for the concentration of black men around those activities and the proliferation of the abacuá society amongst them. The traditions and codes of the abacuá society became part of the practices of organization. Their affiliation to the abacuá society was a port of entry for working in such activities. A practice that remains to the day, according to Valentin Olivera, Chief of the Stevedores of the port of Matanzas. Yes, Valentín Olivera, I am Chief of Stevedores here at the port, the religious stevedores, we seek each other. I am Kimbo’s brother and tell him come work with me, so I can help him. Any “hermano” [brother] of mine who’s jobless, I bring him here. Tradition is maintained like that. Yes, here and there in the port of Matanzas tradition is maintained like that, since almost all the 252 “capataces” [foremen], the Chief of Brigade, are all black. But now if I am Kimbo’s brother and I tell him come, and Kimbo is my brother, my cousin. The family we seek each other, do you understand me? And that is how family remains. […] Well, yes, because here all the stevedores are almost all from La Marina and Versailles. That is the way it is, the call for workers comes and almost all are low-level people, who are not graduated, to work at the port they come. [Translated by the author from the originalcxviii dialog with Valentín Olivera, Chief of Stevedores, Port of Matanzas, Matanzas, February, 2015]. The “hermanos” [brothers] who need work can always find jobs at the port through their connections with the other abacuá members already employed there. The idea of family is what drives cohesion amongst members of the society, strengthened by their shared labour activities. Considering the invisibility of the social positioning they are relegated to, their black presumption, their class unit around their labour activities, and the idea of a fraternity that constitutes a family of shared codes and traditions, one could see how problematic it was for the introduction of white men into the abacuá society. […] The religious organizations of Africans in Cuba were not only instruments for the conservation and transmission of their cultures; they additionally functioned as political organizations to fight slavery. The clandestine nature hid their true political role. [Translated by the author from the originalcxix (Quiñones, 2014: 108). The history of the inclusion of whites in the abacuá society relates to the “whitening” policies that the colonial rule undertook, but from a perspective that involved resistance rather than just accommodation. The black adaptation identified by Wade (1997) in the context of the Colombian racial order can be a parameter for analyzing the intentional transition of the abacuá society for the inclusion of whites. Wade claims that “black adaptation” in Colombia happens through the adoption of values and norms determined by the dominators, a process that grants the “adapted” a more inclusive participation in the national prestige and status hierarchies. It is also a process developed in the midst of the tension between accommodating the white world’s customs and the protecting themselves from the repulsion generated by the non-black world. The establishment of white potencies generated many bloody disputes that have reverberated until the present day, and the acceptance of white men in historically black potencies is a regulated reality today. There are some houses that are open, others, which permit a certain number of white men to be part of the potency, and others that establish 253 quotas. There are still some potencies both in Havana and Matanzas that do not allow whites to become members. Following Wade’s ideas, it is not simply a matter of ethnic identity that negotiates between accommodating and entrenchment, because the alternatives are “strongly structured, especially by economic and political processes which circumscribe them and truly constitute the election parameters”. [Translated by the author from the original] (Wade, 1997: 37). Presently […] almost all ‘juegos’ are mixed, whether they were originally founded by whites or blacks. [..] Form what I know, there are presently three ‘juegos’ that do not swear whites, they are: Ekerewá Momí, from the neighborhoods of Jesus Maria, Orú Abakuá Endure, from Guanabacoa, and Efori Buma, from the neighborhood of Atarés, which have the tradition to iniciate only one white man, and do not swear another until this one dies [Translated by the author from the originalcxx] (Quiñones, 2014: 116). The role of the abacuá society is in entrenching traditions, cultural practices, and political organization, being the locus for engendering strategies of resistance to the social order that has insisted in pushing them away. A rather foggier form of resistance was woven by the incorporation of whites and the emergence of white potencies, strongly connected to the economic and political process of 19th century Cuba, catalyzed like no other by Andrés Petit, “el Caballero de Color” [the Colored Knight]. In the midst of a racialized, slavery-oriented society, Petit skilfully seized the opportunity to incorporate African traditions into the white man’s world. He was of mixed Haitian descent, as well as abacuá, mayombero [priest of the Palo Monte Rule88], and tertiary of the Catholic Order of Santo Domingo89, he spoke over seven languages and was received by no less than the Pope himself, who would have told him to adopt the crucifix as a symbol of his religion, the “Regla Quimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje” [Quimbisa Rule of Saint Christ of Good Travel], materializing the fusion not only between African traditions and the Catholic creed, but also promoting an encounter between different African traditions such as the carabalí-oriented abacuá society, and the “Regla de Palo Monte” [Palo Monte Rule], originated from Bantú traditions. By what Ortiz (1996 [1954]) called “refoma religiosa” [religious reform], Petit led the way to the inclusion of whites in 88 For more on “Regla de Palo Monte” see (Cabrera, 2009). 89 Catholic religious order founded by Santo Domingo, in 1216. It professes individual and communitarian poverty. The tertiaries are members of the Order who do not live in monasteries. 254 the abacuá society, re-established the basis of the “Regla de Palo Monte” in the “Regla Quimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje”, and made ground for the introduction of values and norms of marginalized black and mixed groups into the mainstream of 19th century Cuba, effervescent with nationalism, independence, and abolitionism. Until the point that, as Quiñones (2014) summarizes, what was a “cosa de negros” [black thing], became a “cosa de cubanos” [Cuban thing]. Andrés Petit saw much further than his ‘Ecobios de Bococó’. He understood that the white race dominated here back then, and that negotiation with them was needed so that institutions could be authorized and persevere (Quiñones, 2014: 114). What I can affirm along with Fernando Ortiz is that the ‘Reform’ initiated by Isué de Bacocó Efó [Andrés Petit] contributed somewhat to the integration of the Cuban nation, while congregating blacks, whites, and mixed under the same creed, rites, interests, and solidarities, with which the ñáñiguismo’’, which until then was only ‘cosa de negros’ [black thing] became what since then is: ‘cosa de cubanos’ [Cuban thing] [Translated by the author from the originalcxxi] (Quiñones, 2014: 121) It is quite curious that the idea of the “Cuban thing” which abacuá society became differs disturbingly from the idea of “Cubanía” or “Cubanidad”, discussed in the previous chapter. While the abacuá re-signified Eurocentric signs in order to create a social place for African traditions within broader Cuban society, the latter still seeks to re-signify African traditions within a context that re-affirms Eurocentric signs, robbing its foundations of significance. The only way this “Cuban thing” was able to endure to the present day was because it remained in the shadows, away from the stigmatization society pushed on “mediating mobilizations”. In that sense they moved away from Wade’s “black adaptation”, discouraged their own accommodation, and engendered real life strategies of resistance. These strategies of resistance are embedded with the possibility of integrating new narratives into the previous belief system. This is an ability Criukshank (1998: 8) identified in regard to the Yukon peoples in Northern Canada who “had no difficulty integrating the new narratives into their own belief system”. Missionaries, on the other hand, “were uninterested in spiritual traditions that guided people living in the Yukon, except when they identified practices they wished to change”. Missionaries were committed to a single truth that guided them through this contact and imposed its discipline on those in their 255 path. These are different standpoints of a shared reality like “Cubanía” and “Cosa de Cubanos”. Another “Cuban thing” developed since the colonial times through fusion between afro traditions and Catholic signs are the “cabildos”. I remember speaking with Tato at his house one afternoon in September last year, eager to validate my premature findings in La Marina related to the presence of “cabildos” in Matanzas. I was struck by the nature of the processes that led to the institution of these organizations, suggesting distinct strategies of the colonizer in Cuba towards organizing the several ethnic groups of African enslaved brought to the Island, allowing for singular spaces of resistance in the present, such as the preservation of languages, cultural practices, and social organization connected to ethnic origins and consciousness. My perspective was informed by colonial strategies of “divide and conquer” in Brazil and the United States that suggested a barbaric separation of ethnic groups and families, aimed at conquering the negro, breaking him in his body, mind and soul, and alienating him from his culture so that he could be tamed for his work as a slave. The strategy of grouping together in “cabildos”, specific “nations” or ethnicities, according to their African origin more or less, suggested to me that it was the root of the profusion of African references I could see, particularly in La Marina, but in Matanzas and Havana as well, and their identification with a specific ethnicity. In Brazil such a thing is reserved, for instance, to places of cult significance, such as the “terreiros” [a terrain where the temple house is, the divinities are settled, and the sacred herbs are planted]. I had never heard anything in Yoruba like I did on June 23rd last year, as 400 people were singing and cutting across streets of the neighbourhood, following the effigy of San Juan. That made an impact on me that shook me off balance. It was Tato who brought me back to my center. The will of the other, in first place, to avoid mixture of different Africa nationalities […] the ‘congos’ there, the ‘lucumís’ here, the ‘carabalís’ there, you would have a possibility to maintain then divide and avoid union, communication and potential conspiring, the potential rebellion, the potential insurrection. On the other hand, the Portuguese as the Spanish always had the will to permit the sub existence of the African culture, not to end the culture of the African negro, as happened in the United States, for instance, with some Saxons and in all the islands of the Caribbean which were colonized by Saxons or French. In Jamaica there is not an evidence of the African culture. The Rastafari had to reinvent the coming back to Africa, because it wasn’t there, as it wasn’t in 256 Martinique. Now, yes it was in Santo Domingo, yes it was in Cuba, it is in Brazil, where there were also ‘cabildos de nación’ [Translated by the author from the originalcxxii dialogue with Tato Quiñones, September 2014]. The conversation with Tato was like a cold shower on my premature inferences. By then, I was already acquainted with his nickname, “La Enciclopedia” [the Encyclopaedia], which seemed to me quite accurate, considering the amount of knowledge stored in the “babalao's” mind and writings, but particularly in the mind, which follows, as he often said, his oral African tradition. Tato saw no singularity in the historical processes that shaped the organization of the “cabildos” in Cuba, let alone Matanzas. He connected them, rather, with other “cabildos” and associations of African enslaved throughout the Americas. It is an idea shared by Wade (1997: 125), stating that “in Iberian slave societies, negros, slaves, and freed men were authorized by the colonial regime to create their own associations, generally organized, at least by name, based on their ethnic origin” [Translated by the author from the originalcxxiii]. The anthropologist made reference to the several forms of cults of African deities as organizations similar to “cabildos” in Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Cuba. He notes that in Brazil and Cuba the basic system of the “cabildos” was persevered and developed, suggesting that it had to do with the continued importation of enslaved until the second half of the 19th century. The only “cabildo” Wade identified functioning in Colombia was the “Cabildo Lumbalú”, in the Palenque of San Basilio, and the references in Brazil were connected to “candomblé” [denomination for the cult to an amalgam of African traditions brought to the country by the enslaved who hailed from the continent], and their associations with names and cities in Africa. In Cuba, the author relates the organization of the “cabildos” with “several Afro-American associations”, though he does not develop on the materialization of those groups. Although I respected my “encyclopaedic source”, it bothered me that the inferences I was getting from the cultural manifestations and social organization related to “cabildos” in La Marina never did match perfectly with the idea of a homogenized process of “divide and reign”, as Wade puts it. However, the representations of the “cabildos” and “candomblés” as places where African traditions endured and were re-signified to resist 257 up to the present day was almost a perfect match. The “candomblés” Wade mentions are territorially and geographically referred to as “casas” [houses] and “terreiros”, and their adepts acknowledge themselves as a people with an ethnic origin. For Evaristo (2010), following the Glissant’s (1996) idea of the “naked emigrant”, the African enslaved having lost their physical territory, arrives at the Diaspora seeking a re-territorialization in the “terreiro”. It is where the emigrant will find a place for the transmission and preservation of their culture. Muniz Sodré (1988) recognizes the “terreiros” as a “território político-mítico-religioso” [religious-mythic-political territory] where the individual will recreate their sense of belonging in a collectivity. For the author, several cultural manifestations like the “afoxés”, “congadas”, “maracatus”, “folias”, and groups of samba can be recognized as a development of the “terreiros”. The space of the ‘terreiro’ will be the place of re-territorialisation of a fragmented culture, of an exile culture. It is there the individual will revive, he will try to remake his family, and his clan, which as in Africa, are composed independently from blood ties. In the space of the ‘terreiro’, the individual will seek the sense of belonging to a collective and will ritualistically come together with his nation. [Translated by the author from the originalcxxiv] (Muniz Sodré, 1988: 50). It is an idea of a people that grows from an ethnic conscious, collectively reorganized into an ethnic identification, and materialized around a “religious-mythic-political territory”. It is that identity, according to Almeida (2008: 30) which “leads people to gather around common collective expressions and declare their belonging to a people or a group, to affirm a specific territoriality”. Furthermore, the anthropologist recognizes that by affirming a specific territoriality these peoples demand their recognition by the State, confronting the “official pretensions of a juridical homogenization of the category ‘people’, since the colonial period” (Almeida, 2008: 50). That idea of “people” is thereby present in relation to the historical and present processes that inform “cabildos” and “candomblés” alike. The singularity I was seeking emerged, nevertheless, not in the broad picture (structure, endurance of traditions, ethnic conscious and identification) as my premature conclusions on the matter suggested, but in the particularities of the process, which had to do not only with the “divide and reign” strategy used throughout the Americas, but also 258 with the ways it was implemented. In the case of Cuba, it emerged with the geography of the Island and where the African enslaved were placed. This has made all the difference for the way organizations based in African traditions have been shaped, the cultural manifestations which were allowed to exist and transform, and the political processes that emerged from these social spaces. Matanzas, being the port through where most of the African enslaved arrived to the Island and where sugarcane production found its most developed form in Cuba, offered a distinct setting for the development of the “cabildos”. The stage for these articulations was set in La Marina, as it was the neighbourhood that housed most of the “bozales”, the enslaved Africans who arrived on the slave ships that boarded Matanzas. From river San Juan to river Yumuri a number of “barracones” [temporary slave houses] were built to host the enslaved before they were sent to the plantations. There were plantations everywhere in the Island, but they were concentrated in the “llanura” [coastlands] Havana-Matanzas, in the “Africa Chiquita” [Little Africa], as “babalao” Obeche, from the neighbourhood of Simpson, Matanzas, refers to, and sugarcane production corresponded to more than 80% of the total the country production. The coastlands stretched through no more than 120 kilometres, in a fringe of 79 kilometers that oversaw production innovations and investment that overran the sugarcane industry of Brazil, the former leading export country then. 259 Figure 13 - “Llanura” [Coastlands] Havana-Matanzas, Cuba. Source: http://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Archivo:Llanura_Hab-Mtzas1.JPG Date: 13.07.15 That kind of concentration in such a relatively small territory produced not only prime sugar and derivatives, but a distinct form of organization based on African traditions brought to the Island and condensed in the “llanura”. “Cabildos”, according to Castañeda (2002) are “ethnic based groups, for people of both sexes who belong to a common African nation, who congregated for religious, mutualistic, and amusement activities, being dependent of the civil authority” [Translated by the author from the originalcxxv] (Castañeda, 2002: 22). Originated in Cuba in Havana, the “cabildos” were founded as a hierarchical structure of social control, and according to Fernando Ortiz, were imported from an institution of the Spanish city of Servilla. Nonetheless, in the black neighbourhoods of Matanzas, the “cabildos” re-structured themselves to resist the continuous social transformations that attempted to subdue them. In the city, the “cabildos” were traced back to 1814 (Escalona, 2008), or 1816 (Castañeda, 2002), which were either independent or from the Five Congo Nations. The 260 independent were connected to the ethnicities lucumí, macuá, iyessá, but they also had other denominations, such as French, Cape Verdian, “criollos” [creole]. They are composed of “a ‘capataz’ [foreman], a king or president, three vice-presidents, three matrons, a secretary, a treasurer, two vice-treasures, three vocals, and between no less than 70 and no more than 350 members” [Translated by the author from the originalcxxvi] (Castañeda, 2002: 35). It is possible that there is a singularity in the “cabildos” of Matanzas that conferred strength to this continuous resistance. Colonial rule organized “cabildos” by ethnicity with the objective to accomplish the “division and control of the black and mixed population of the Island in order to impede integration amongst themselves and with a largely sympathetic white majority. Postpone the inevitable multiethnic integration and the logical result; the development of the ‘cubanidad’ [cubanity]” [Translated by the author from the originalcxxvii] (Castañeda, 2002: 32). The Spanish colonizer’s strategy is intriguing when compared with the control strategy exercised by his Portuguese counterpart in Brazil. In Brazil ethnicities were intentionally separated in order to control potential gatherings of African nations and to avoid organized insurrections. According to Mary Karasch (1987), Africans in Court were abundant, but belonged to diverse ethnic groups, often with rivalries amongst themselves. The author considers the ethnic diversity of the enslaved in Rio de Janeiro to be one of the “most important reasons for the absence of slave insurrections in Rio” [Translated by the author from the originalcxxviii] (Karasch, 1987: 47). Truly, mixing ethnicities compromised the chances of a unified uprising and was a factor that the colonizers always counted on in order to avoid the worst. The old motto “divide and conquer”. “A governor of Rio, in 1725, attributed the lack of such an uprising to the African “Tower of Babel”, and the Count of Arcos used the ethnic division in the Bahia he governed between 1810 and 1818 as a slave control measure” [Translated by the author from the originalcxxix] (Reis, 1995/1996: 24). The structure of the “cabildos” in Matanzas also differs from the strategy espoused by Willy Lynch of “divide and conquer” (Hassan-el, 1999). The atrocious farmer purported 261 a method that he would broadly share with other businessmen in order to break the enslaved. He argued for the division of the enslaved not only by ethnicity, but also by intelligence, size, sex, size of the farms, and their social status. He applied his method in his farms in the Occidental Indies and his ideas were the basis for the plantations in the South of the United States (Hassan-el, 1999). It is noticeable that Brazil and United States’ size influenced in the possibilities of placing different ethnicities in several colonial economic centres. Sugarcane production in Cuba was concentrated in the provinces of La Habana, Matanzas and Cárdenas, no more than 120 kilometres distance from each other. Also, the connection between the ports in the three cities responsible for the great part of Cuban exports of sugar, Mantanzas being the main port of entry for the enslaved, allowed for a unique setting that congregated a concentration of enslaved, production and commerce. It is a setting that intensifies the notion in Bastide (1971: 99) apud Wade (1997: 126) that there was more activity of ‘cabildo’ in the cities than in the rural areas because of the concentration of slaves there, and particularly in the port cities such as Montevideo, Lima, Buenos Aires, and Cartagena, where large quantities of ‘bozales’, or slaves born in Africa, arrived [Translated by the author from the originalcxxx] It is certain that there were irregularities in the forced settlement and integration of African enslaved, due to the slave trade conditions. As Reyes90 argues, “they were brought in different turns, depending on the black trade variations, and were grouped in lots of urban and rural slaves, independently from their ethnic origin” [Translated by the author from the originalcxxxi]. The author also derives from this fact other “transculturation” processes, through which modes of doing were imbricated, based on traditions of the distinct African ethnicities that arrived there. Ortiz (1963) was the first to use the terminology “transculturation”, referring to the recognition of the cultural traits that give birth to a new culture in Cuba, the amalgam that he described as “cubanidad” [cubanity]. In close contact with the functionalist anthropological theory, Ortiz aimed at finding the basic structure; a translation of the 90 Reyes, Andrés Rodríguez. Religiones de origen africano y turismo en Matanzas, Cuba. http://www.archivocubano.org/religiones_turismo.html, acesso em 13/10/14. 262 culture of a society (societies) into his own, by comparison with other “known” societies. Following the functionalist line of thought, transculturation implies that social structural continuity is dynamic for the units of a society to change, but not their institutionalized relationships. “Social structure therefore has to be described by the institutions which define the proper or expected conduct of persons in their various relationships” (Radcliffe-Brown, 1958, 169). These institutions emerge from the mixing pot of previous cultural traits which developed into “cubanity”. Malinowski prefaced Ortiz most famous book the “Contrapunteo del Tabacco y el Azucar”, in which he highlighted the idea that transition between cultures, which characterizes transculturation, is a process towards achieving a whole new different result; a new culture. This new culture also relates to the idea of civilization by implying, if not an evolutionary perspective, then a developmental, progress-oriented one, making reference to a functional determinism and absolute relativism. The concept of evolution is substituted by progress (Evans-Pritchard, 1950). All cultural change or, as we will address it from now on, all transculturation, is a process in which often something is given in exchange for what is received; it is a ‘toma y daca’, as the Castilians say. It is a process in which both parts of the equation are modified. A process in which a new reality emerges, composed and complex; a reality that is not a mere mechanic agglomerate of characters, not even a mosaic, if not a new, original, and independent phenomena. In order to describe such a process, the word of Latin origins transculturation offers a terminology that does not contain the implication of a certain culture to which has to bend the other, if not a transition between cultures, both active, both contributing and supporting, both cooperating in the development of a new reality of civilization. [Translated by the author from the originalcxxxii] (Malinowski in Ortiz, 1963, 3-4). For Reyes, because it was impossible to make direct reference to the places where each tradition was connected, as it is the case with the connection between the “orishas” in Cuba and their respective territories in Africa, the cults to different “orishas” practiced within the space of the “cabildos” were amalgamated in the “Regla de Ocha” or “santería”. Contributed to this transculturation, according to Reyes, the nonexistence of a “theological body, systematized in scriptures or sacred books,” 91 and the lack of institutionalization, since African the inheritance of African traditions has its basis in oral history by means of their legends and myths. It is also worth noting the process of 91 Reyes, Andrés Rodríguez . Religiones de origen africano y turismo en Matanzas, Cuba. http://www.archivocubano.org/religiones_turismo.html, 13.10.14. 263 integration to other systems of belief, such as the ones of a European, Aborigine, Asian, and French-Haitian origin. That way, ‘santería’ in Havana and in some localities in the province of Matanzas, has a tendency to conserve the Yoruban traits, while East of the Island, in Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo, for instance, it is possible to see how the cults respond fundamentally to the influence of creeds from Congo, and the Yoruba, always manifested in the typical Afrocuban creed, faints to give preponderance to the mentioned traits from Congo and other cultures from Occidental Africa, allowing for the encounter with voodoo influences, brought by slaves from Haiti. [Translated by the author from the originalcxxxiii] (Lachatañeré, 2011: 140). Like other countries in the Americas, numerous ethnicities from Africa arrived during different periods, at certain times part of the “divide and conquer strategy”, as the colonizer sought to magnify differences in order to break solidarity bonds. Setting ethnicities apart and mixing rival ethnicities became routine among colonizers. But the geographical and economic factors forced a concentration of a large quantity of enslaved in the diminutive territory of the “llanura”. That coaxed the colonizer towards a variation of the “divide and conquer” strategy, grouping enslaved from distinct “nations” (that the colonizer understood different enslaved came from, which did not always coincide with the existing ethnicities) under the structure of “cabildos”. My argument is that the level of segmentation of the enslaved could not came down to such detailing as it did in Brazil and the United States, because in Cuba they did not have the space the latter had to allocate the enslaved in different parts of the colony; the concentration of all activities of the sugar industry into the three city-ports required a different form of specialization of the enslaved and, thus, control; the number of enslaved in rural of semi-rural areas was much larger than in Brazil or the United States, imposing the necessity of a coordinated strategy of control, rather than the atomized structure of the plantations in the continental countries, and regardless of the connections landlords had among themselves. The narratives about the “cabildos” today in Matanzas dispute “the impossibility of direct reference to where the tradition was previously settled”. Although no specific reference to a direct ethnic origin of its members can be traced, the names of the “cabildos” are references to their “nation’s” origin, which is expressed in the ethnic 264 consciousness of their members. This was strikingly present in the correlation made in the investigations undertaken by the project “Identidad y Barrio La Marina” in partnership with the “Ilé Egbe Ogbon Ifá”, another communitarian project leaded by “babalao” Obeche and his wife, Giusette Leon García, in the neighbourhood of Simpson, Matanzas. In the Figure 14 below, the “Cabildo de Santa Teresa”, which is the only one functioning in La Marina, is connected to the “Oyo” region of Nigeria, part of “Yorubaland”, the territory in which Yoruba traditions are still followed presently. Other “cabildos”, in the neighbourhood of Simpson, are connected to other Yoruban “nations”, such as the “Cabildo Ogun” with “Ijesha”; and the “Cabildo Olukun” with “Egbado”. The “Cabildo Espíritu Santo” connects their origin to the reign of Dahomey in the present day Benin; the “abacuá” “Templo Uriabon Efik”, with the “Old Calabar” and the Nigerian “Efik” “nation”, and the Ilé Ȩgbȩ Ǫgbǫn Ifá, a temple house, run by “babalao” Obeche, with the Nigerian región of Ifá. Babalao Obeche is identified in Cuba as white, his wife, who also leads the temple house, has blondish hair, so their phenotypes and bloodline are probably not related to the Nigerian “Ifá” “nation”, nevertheless they ran a recognized temple house in the neighbourhood and their members see themselves as afrodescendant, as they are direct bearers of the traditions connected the “Rule of Ifá”. 265 Figure 14 – Correlation of cabildos, temple houses, and abacuá potencies in La Marina and Simpson with territories of Nigerian nations in the “Yorubaland” Source: (Barredo; García, 2015) Date: 2015 These narratives also dispute the concept of transculturation, key to the works of anthropologist Fernando Ortiz who is regarded as the founding father of the discipline in Cuba. Ortiz aims at challenging biological views on race and evolutionary concepts of acculturation by introducing the idea of transculturation, which would recognize the cultural traits that inform a new culture produced by the syncretic fusion of the latter that was allowed by “cultural mixing” and by breaking out with original ethnic bonds. 266 Transculturation is, according to Ortiz, a process that leads to the formation of the Cuban ethnos, base for the cultural amalgam that produced the nation, summarized in the abstract term “Cubanidad” [Cubanity]. To his mind [Ortiz], anthropological science should contribute to the positive assimilation of the cultural mixings and to the overcome of the ethnic alienations, in virtue of creating comprehension and recovering those essences of ‘cubanity’ of substantive value, in which it could be recognized the ontological root of all its origins [Translated by the author from the originalcxxxiv] (Portuondo 1999, 2). It represents a paradox, nevertheless, that ‘cubanity’ presupposes a process of acculturation. In Ortiz’s works, the African culture adjusts, accommodating to the Euro-Occidental one. Cultural mixing would be the process within transculturation (a process in itself) by which accommodation would play its role. Resistance is only recognized in the anthropologist’s thought when exercised by whites, bearers of the Euro-Occidental culture. Ortiz highlights African culture having to give in to the Eurocentric establishment. The materialization of this process of accommodation is the “mulato” [mixed], who bear the tamed cultural traits of the negro, who cannot exercise their traditions in full, as they were forced to accommodate to the Euro-Occidental culture. In Cuba, blacks had to abstain from, accepting by means of grace or force, the distinct position that the subduing relegated them in the social stratification that exploited them. But the mixed suffered more; he suffered the centrifuge pressure of two worlds, of the future that still did not accept him and of the past that already did not recognize him. And the mixed soul endured the life of the not adapted. He had to manifest before the world as black, without being black; or as white, without being white, nonetheless. In both positions, his emotional expression brought about obstacles […], one of the most resisting obstacles […] should have been the depreciative resistance of whites, following partially the ancestral ethnic discrimination, reinforced by economic privilege [Translated by the author from the originalcxxxv] (Ortiz, 1949, XXXII-XXXIII). Mixing results in transculturation, which bears the gene of the new culture, inevitably connected with the creation of a new cultural phenomenon, the “neoculturación” [neoculturation], in Ortiz’s terms. It is when the “mulato” becomes Cuban, and their cultural traits come out with their original ethnicity being incorporated in the Cuban ethos. Although recognizing their original ethnicity, Ortiz reduces them to cultural traits, which are forcibly readapted, readjusted by the syncretic transculturation. 267 The social positioning for blacks also remains uncertain, in between the possibility of transculturation into “mulatos” and the alienation of their ethnic roots. In Africa, ‘Eleggua’ is the erotic god, but in Cuba they seem to have forgotten this character. Maybe because his fertilization ritualism has already lost its social function, considering the economic life regimen that the African negro had to adjust to, so different from there […] In Cuba he had to avoid the copular pantomime, as well as the judicial rites, the circumcision, the human sacrifice and other elements of religious and social ritualistic, which could not amalgamate in the Cuban society system. A necessary and simultaneous process of ‘desculturación’ [decculturation] or the abandonment of certain elements of the Afro-Occidental or black cultures and acculturation or the accommodation of certain commands of Euro-Occidental white cultures, in order to accomplish by syncretism the transculturation, the process of transition, re-adaptation or readjusting to another culture, the Cuban of ‘mulata’ [mixed], of a new creation [Translated by the author from the originalcxxxvi] (Ortiz, 1945-46, 222-225). Despite those processes identified as transculturation, the social structure conformed by the “cabildos”, the socio-economic conditions allowed by the sugarcane industry and the slave regiment, and the massive presence of blacks interacting in a geographic space informed by the port, singular spaces of resistance, based in African ethnicities' traditions developed on the banks of the river Yumuri and San Juan, in Matanzas. If we cannot identify them preserved in their African origin, their resilience allowed for the maintenance of the “cabildos” of Matanzas in spaces of “resistance of the dominated against the impositions of the dominating culture”; and the exercise of African-originated traditions, such as fund raising to “liberate members who remained in captive, as well as for the aid to the more helpless” [Translated by the author from the originalcxxxvii] (Castañeda, 2002: 33). The present representations of “cabildos” in the neighborhoods of La Marina and Simpson in Matanzas also challenge Oritz's concept of transculturation which is broadly used by Cuban anthropologists, sociologists, historians, musicologists, and linguists, as well as folklorists contemporaneously (Reyes, 1999), (Guanche, 2009), (Noy; Diéguez, 2009), (Barreiro, 2010), González (2007), (Betancourt, 2007), (Iglesias, 2007). The traditional identity which is the basis for present struggles is informed by the ethnic consciousness which is connected to a specific territory, traditions, language, communication, symbols, and modes of being. It makes direct reference to an African ethnicity which is materialized in the territory of the “cabildo” within the neighborhood. It 268 is a process that does not deny their belonging to the Cuban nation; it otherwise claims its place amongst “Cubanity”, because it is a “Cuban thing”. As Reyes points out, that ethnic consciousness is not necessarily supported by a theological body or systematized in writings of sacred books, and integrates other systems of belief of European, aborigine, Asian, and French-Haitian origin. Furthermore, “cabildos” and other social organizations founded in African traditions in the Island, such as the “abacuá” secret society in La Marina and Simpson, reflect resilience rather than transculturation. Miller (2003) detailed the concept of resilience from the cases he worked on regarding processes of recognition by the State of both American and Canadian indigenous peoples. The anthropologist critiques the “undervaluation of the emotional content of ethnic identity, the overemphasis on the influence of materialism on human affairs, and to the fact that ethnonationalist movements […] are mass phenomena, rather than simply driven by the elite” (Miller, 2003: 6). It is resilience that allows these communities to address their traditions as a way to mobilize collective organization. If they were “transculturated” they would not have anywhere to draw from other than ‘cubanity’ itself. Transculturation in the form of ‘cubanity’ represents the imposition of an idea of a nation that does not recognize the emotional content of ethnic identity, their ties, affiliations, and the presence of their narratives to significations within the neighborhood. “These identities are reflected in personal narratives of prior importance of their society […] these narratives can be understood as responses, counter-narratives, to the imposed category” (Miller, 2003: 6). In less than 500 meters the most diverse African rooted cultures are concentrated, which occupy the neighbourhoods of Simpson and La Marina. […] they developed and conserved the memories of those individuals whose auxiliary aptitudes guaranteed an amelioration of their lives. Before difficulties in their daily lives, they invoke their ancestors who solved similar problems like those faced presently. In the intuitive scenario of an incipient nation, the inhabitant develops in his community re-founded ritual formulas whose reiteration creates common significations, modes of communication, distinct language, space, territorial, and identity sense, elements which contribute to establish cultural communitarian basis from the magic-religious praxis [Translated by the author from the originalcxxxviii] (Barredo; García, 2015) Therefore, the fact that tradition endures and incorporates other elements does not presuppose an acculturation or accommodation, but rather the resilience engendered 269 from processes of resistance. The lack of institutionalization is a banner of the present struggles communities are dealing with and not an intrinsic condition of their accommodation to the establishment. Resilience challenges the common sense around accommodation to a Eurocentric establishment, allegedly produced by the transculturation that conformed an amorphous Cubanity, robbed of its ethnic consciousness and identity. 270 Chapter 8 - Bendita Sea La Marina On the way to picking up all of our companions on that trip to Matanzas, Barbara was giving me her impressions on her first meeting with Kimbo, a couple of months before. She went to Matanzas because she realized her research about anti-racist movements in Cuba could not be based only in Havana. Among the several activists, political persons, museologists and government spoke-people she met on her trip, she came by Kimbo, having been previously advised by Maritza, the she-half of the black couple that was accompanying us to Matanzas. Maritza López McBean is the director of the “Casa Comunitaria Paulo Freire” [Community House Paulo Freire], in reference to the worldwide-known Brazilian pedagogue, who framed the cannons of “popular education”92. Maritza came to know Freire and popular education through a network called “Red de Educadores Populares”, organized under the coordination of the Centro Memorial Martin Luther King (CMMLK) [Memorial Center Martin Luther King], a non-governmental organization, one of the few associations in Cuba authorized to receive international funds and administer them directly. Later, as governmental employee of the “Consejo Popular da Municipalidad de La Lisa” [Municipality of La Lisa’s Popular Council], in Havana, she started working with “popular education”, adding a racial content, through the “Red Barrial Afrodescendiente” [Afrodescendant Neighbourhood Network], in a neighbourhood of the municipality of La Lisa, called Balcón Arimao, where she established along with the community the “Casa Comunitaria Paulo Freire”. The “Red Barrial Afrodescendiente” aims at establishing a communitarian dialogue between popular education and racial 92 Freire has direct influence both theoretically and methodologically on the education field in Brazil and widely across the continent. The base of popular education is in the recognition of popular culture as a fundamental element for the emancipation of the working class, oppressed by the ruling elite. From knowledge, often disregarded, produced within popular culture spaces, the pedagogue aims at re-structuring the basis of education as a political tool rather than mere transmission of knowledge. For references see: (Freire, 2003, 1992, 2000, 1987). 271 issues, through workshops, projects, and capacity-building initiatives in the neighbourhoods of La Lisa and Pogolotti, in Havana. In La Lisa, the network functions within the space of the “Casa Comunitaria Paulo Freire”. I will make a pause here to explain a little bit about the administrative divisions in Cuba, so the reader will not go on like I did for a quite some time without being situated in the country’s administrative but also colonial and idiosyncratic images about the collectivity. Administratively, Cuba is divided in “províncias” [provinces], “municípios” [municipalities], “Consejos Populares” [Popular Councils], and “barrios” [neighbourhoods]; the barrios may be divided in “repartos” [referring to residential areas] and “zonas” [often insalubrious parts of the neighbourhood]. Nonetheless, what works for government in addressing public policies for the population stops at the Popular Councils. Neighbourhoods are reminiscences from a period that ended with the political-administrative reform of 198693cxxxix, following the changes introduced by the Third Congress of the Cuban Communist Party that year. However, people still refer to their localities by the names of their neighbourhoods that may have a diffuse origin like Balcón Arimao, about which it is though that Arimao came from an indigenous people not fully investigated, and Balcón [terrace] because it was the higher part of the neighbourhood. In other cases, such as La Marina, the neighbourhood’s name is a direct reference to “colonial neighbourhoods” that existed throughout the colony, on into the republican period, and during some years of the Revolution. In Havana, famous neighbourhoods as “Jesus Maria” are still a reference for people, although the locality falls under the Popular Council of Central Havana today. In other cases, as in the colonial neighbourhood of “Regla”, the locality has grown to be considered a municipality. In Matanzas, some colonial neighbourhoods have endured political-administrative reform, such as “Pueblo Nuevo” or “Versailles”. In the case of La 93 “In 1986, the III Congress of the PCC [Communist Party of Cuba] recommended the constitution of a new element in the Cuban government system. This recommendation was accepted and initiated by the ‘Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular’ [National Assembly of the Popular Power] through the Law 56, of July 4th, 1986” (Brigos, 2000). 272 Marina, the neighbourhood has vanished within the new terminology adopted for the locality, “Matanzas-Este”. The administrative divide may appear to be just another common feature in the dealings of the Revolution, but it constitutes a fundamental stone for understanding collective mobilizations in Cuba for they are intrinsically connected to it. There are several colonial neighbourhoods in Matanzas, there is San Sebastián, the neighbourhood of the Theater [Sauto], the neighbourhood of Simpson, La Marina, Bachicha, the neighbourhood of Cárcel, which is this one here, the neighbourhood of San Severino, the neighbourhood of Ángel, and the neighbourhood of San Juan. These neighbourhoods of the city, they appeared after a political-administrative divide in the first half of the XIX century in Cuba. That is, until 1873, these neighbourhoods were known, but they were not exactly official. Matanzas was divided in administrative sectors, but these neighbourhoods were not legal. It is after 1873, with the new political-administrative divide that it is established in Cuba the division of the country in 6 provinces and the cities in neighbourhoods and districts. So, the districts in Matanzas were Pueblo Nuevo, Versailles, and Calzada de Buitravo, which was Playa, and inside those districts, neighbourhoods were established. So, after 1873, each neighbourhood had its administrator and each administrator was represented in the government. [Translated by the author from the originalcxl interview with Leonel Orozco, City’s Conserver, Matanzas, February 28th, 2015]. Following the changes introduced by the Revolution, the political-administrative divide in Cuba ceased to consider the colonial neighbourhoods, as it is the case with La Marina. This inclusively led to changes in the census that ceased to use colonial neighbourhoods as reference. Today the limits of La Marina are encapsulated in the “Consejo Popular Matanzas Este”. The information below was provided by the Popular Council, from a demand made by the managing group of the “Proyecto Identidad y Barrio La Marina”, this year. The area of the Popular Council Matanzas Este consists in 7.2 Km2 of Matanzas’s downtown area. Its limits are drawn North by the River San Juan, South by the Yumurí River, East by the Popular Council Matanzas Oeste [West Matanzas] and West by the Popular Council of Playa. The Popular Council was constituted in June 13th, 2010 and it has a total of 2846 inhabitants. There are 19 blocks of the “Federación de Mujeres Cubanas” (FMC)94 [Federation of Cuban Women], 17 zones of the “Comités de Defensa 94 Mass organization that develops policies and programs aimed at achieving equality for women at all levels of society. http://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Federación_de_Mujeres_Cubanas, 5.5.15. 273 de la Revolución” (CDR)95 [Committees for the Defense of the Revolution], totalizing 239 CDR, 12 zone-nucleus of the “Partido Comunista Cubano (PCC)” [Cuban Communist Party] and y 12 “Asociación de Combatientes de la Revolución Cubana (ACRC)”96 [Associations of Cuban Revolution Veterans]. Several monuments of historic value are erected within the Popular Council, such as the “Teatro Sauto Monumento Nacional” [National Monument Sauto Theater], the Firefighter’s Headquarters, the building of the Customs of Matanzas, the Liberty’s Square, and the Pharmacy Museum. There are several centers of service [government facilities] in the Popular Council. The Velasco Hotel, four theaters, three libraries, 21 “tiendas de divisa” [government stores where one can buy products, sold in CUC, such as clothing or cleaning products that are not found in regular local currency stores], three artisan workshops, one movie-theater, sixteen family physician offices, one dentist office, five pharmacies, one paediatric hospital, one traditional medicine pharmacy, four primary schools, two special schools, one basic education school, one “Pre urbano” [a preparatory school for superior education], one school of domestic economics, one language school, one school of art, two kindergartens, 27 local currency stores, two bakeries, one fruit and vegetables store, one hamburger store, one ice cream factory, one veterinary, two coffee-shops specialized in omelettes and biscuits. It is quite bewildering the precision of the data at hand, provided by the “Consejo Popular”, especially when compared to virtually inexistent data available about La Marina, which lies within the “Consejo Popular”. For now it is important to let the reader know that the boundaries are as fluid as the belongings of the inhabitants that dwell in and through them. 95 Presently this collective is organized at blocks, zones, municipalities, provinces and the nation. It gathers around its 133 000 nucleus almost eight million Cuban citizens above 14 years old, without distinction of race, sex, age, or religion. http://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Comités_de_Defensa_de_la_Revolución, 5.5.15. 96 Social organization, self-financed and integrated freely by veterans. The main objective of this organization is to provide unconditional support to the defense of the Revolution and the accomplishments of socialism in all areas, to which it congregates distinct generations of veterans. http://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Asociación_de_Combatientes_de_la_Revolución_Cubana, 5.5.15. 274 In-between those boundaries, Maritza worked out her role as a popular educator at the municipality of La Lisa, focusing on her neighbourhood, Balcón Arimao. Through the Afrodecendant Neighbourhood Network, she met Kimbo. He joined the Network in the midst of the “Proyecto Socio-Cultural” [Sociocultural Project]. The project introduced an idea of communitarian participation in La Marina through popular education. The project fed into the “proceso de intervención” [intervention process] that “Centro Kairós”, a branch of the CMMLK in Matanzas, had developed, since 1994, in partnership with “the Government, the Party, neighbours, technical-scientific oriented institutions, Pentecostal agents, NGOs, who initiated the project ‘Mejorando la Calidad de Vida en el Barrio de La Marina’ [Improving Quality of Life in the Neighbourhood of La Marina]” [Translated by the author from the originalcxli] (Daniel, 2007: 129). The earlier intervention process concentrated in the “reconstruction of some parts of the neighbourhood and social places, without being able to focus on psych-social and cultural aspects of the neighbourhood” [Translated by the author from the originalcxlii] (Daniel, 2004: 130). Starting in 1999, the idea of the “Proyecto Socio Cultural” was to work with participatory technics in order to promote a “movement of neighbourhood transformation” (Daniel, 2007: 130), through the involvement of several local institutions, mostly governmental, with communitarian leaders, in order to address neighbourhood’s problems regarding the valorization of culture, sport and leisure activities; alternatives for economic income, and a follow-up on the amelioration of the condition of the houses and other communitarian sites in the neighbourhood that had started in the previous intervention process. By 2001, Kimbo got involved with the “Proyecto Socio-Cultural”, following his moving to the neighbourhood from another across the river San Juan, “Pueblo Nuevo” [New People]. He soon became part of the “Grupo Gestor”, a collective from the neighbourhood who coordinated the activities of the project. He himself embodied some of the images about the neighbourhood the project was trying to change, being 275 black, a “jinetero”97, coming from a past of conflict with the law, having to live “alquilado” [on a rented residence]98, and poor. By addressing issues arisen by the community related to how the city perceived the neighbourhood, its culture and traditions, as well as its black majoritarian composition, the project inevitably came about the realities of people like Kimbo. Well, my name is Raúl Dominguez Valdéz, and people call me Kimbo. I live in the neighbourhood of La Marina. I am a popular educator from the Memorial Center Martin Luther King and coordinator of the project La Marina [Socio Cultural] […] in the year of 1999. Casually, I enter in this project because of a baseball game, because before the project, I was a ‘jinetero’, I dedicated to the ‘jineterismo’ because I lived in a place that was rented. I spent my time in the Liberty’s square, hunting tourists, the foreigners, in order to pay my rent and so I could survive. The foreigners, I took them to restaurants and hostels so they could give me a tip and with this tip I survived. So I was at this when people from the neighbourhood call me to play short stop, and since I entered the team they told me I was captain of the team and that I had the key to the neighbourhood and that is how I started in the project. I went to the meetings, but what I liked was baseball, but as captain of the team I had to go. I participated in workshops of gender, family, popular education, and about conflicts. After we did a participatory workshop with the neighbourhood where we did a diagnosis of the neighbourhood, of what they wanted. The neighbourhood wanted to recover its traditions, wanted to change its image, because it was a neighbourhood that had always had bad reputation, a marginal neighbourhood, where there was prostitution, gambling, a lot of ‘guapería’ [violence], a lot of stabbing, a lot of problems. [Translated by the author from the originalcxliii dialogue with Kimbo, La Marina, Matanzas, September, 2014] When Barbara interviewed him in May last year, Kimbo was rather disappointed with the situation in which the community was left after everyone took their part in the 97 The expression. “jinetero” relates to its female counterpart, “jinetera”, which is used to address prostitutes in Cuba. “Jinetero”, is most commonly used to qualify men who hustle around a wider variety of services to tourists, such as finding restaurants, hotels, where to buy cigars for a cheaper deal, or how to move around Cuban cities. As tourism in Cuba is unfortunately very sexualized, the one who agencies such services to tourists, a “jinetero”, can also be identified as a “pimp”, but it is not a direct connection. 98 As discussed on the previous chapter, though never having achieved full coverage, the provision of houses for the population at large has been a permanent issue regarding public policies in Cuba after the Revolution. Thus, having to live “alquilado” is a condition that is associated with poverty. Another sign associated with this condition is mobility. As economic opportunities, mainly around tourism, where one can access “divisa”, are often concentrated in the main centers, such as Havana or Matanzas, many Cubans from different parts of the country flock to those cities. Without being authorized permanent residence on those locations, they often need to rent a place to live (often also paid on “divisa”), under precarious conditions. This condition is frequently associated with people who came from the oriental provinces of the country. Yet another aspect of the economic opportunities related to tourism, available to certain segments of the Cuban society, is who owns the houses that are being rented. Many people who owned property before the Revolution and stayed in the country preserved their houses. Today, they are able to rent part of their property to tourists and immigrants from other parts of the country, and access the world of the “divisa”. 276 spoils of the project. His sentiment was partially related to being ousted from candidacy to running the Communitarian House “Nelson Barreras”99. The Communitarian House was a direct result from the project and from the communitarian mobilization around it. Local authorities claimed his insubordinate ways and lack of “intelligence” were not fit to address the “institucionalidad”, referring to the body of institutions and authorities that compose government and connected structures. The Communitarian House was placed under the Municipal Direction of Culture, and a “promotor cultural”100 [cultural agent] was called from outside the neighbourhood to manage it. In some of the early interviews, Kimbo’s narratives suffered from, particularly concerning his role as a sole carrier of communitarian organization and his conflictive status with governmental institutions, what Dunn (2007) apud Muehlmann (2014) have denominated “pufferfish” syndrome. That was very clear in his inflating his role as the only one who fought with government for community’s amelioration. That was also in his narratives about his assertiveness towards community organization, often times depreciating the role of other community members. Along with Dunn and Muehlmann, I think these early narratives were aimed at testing my loyalty and ability and to connect to the communitarian issue, rather than a rehearsal aiming at veiling a more object “self”. It carries the content of affirmation (and the need to), but it also tells you a lot about real relationships both within the sign of institutionalization discussed previously and within the neighbourhood and how they solve internal disputes. 99 Nelson Barreras was a journalist born in Matanzas who died while covering the work of Cuban physicians in Bolivia, in 2006. Nelson’s involvement with the neighbourhood relates to the communitarian newspaper “Pon-Pon”. Stimulating community members to write articles about the realities they encountered in the neighbourhood, the journalist initiative is often remembered in the member’s narratives. At least three of the present managing group members contributed to the “Pon-Pon”. 100 “[The cultural promoter] is the who promotes and organizers the participation of the population from their own spiritual development. He is an agent of change who makes the potentialities of the community dynamic from the identification of their sociocultural reality. It does so for the promotion of art and culture, whose main base is the connection between the promoter with the local cultural institutions network, which favour the enrichment of the personality, the development of the citizens for styles of life qualitatively superior, capable of critically enjoying, appreciating, valuing, and judging the cultural universe as well as incorporating new knowledge in their daily lives” [Translated by the author from the original in www.ecured.cu/index.php/Promotor_cultural, 23.07.15. 277 The phenomenon whereby people simultaneously become defensive during an interview and inflate their own role is what Elizabeth Dunn (2007) has called ‘pufferfish’ syndrome. In some research contexts this has been identified as a distinct impediment because it is thought to make it more difficult to see beyond the posturing to the interviewee’s actual role. The very notion that one should work around the effect on an interview, however, assumes that in other circumstances there is a baseline sense of self-worth that represents a more object ‘self’ and that is what the researcher should be attempting to access (Muehlmann: 2014, 81). The way that he describes his relationship with government and community were quite accurate depictions of the relationships described in other narratives both from members of the neighbourhood and government officials. Our conversations, soon after he was satisfied with my allegiance, developed into more dialogue-like (Cruikshank, 1998) narratives, which positioned me at times to be able to address issues from a different perspective, at times avoiding concentration on “pufferfish”-like narratives. Both types of discourse present in Kimbo’s narratives were, nonetheless, important for addressing communitarian issues. It was also interesting to see how other community members reacted to his “pufferfish” moments, when I became just part of the crowd and not someone he was necessarily trying to impress. He used these “pufferfish” moments to try to motivate community, which at times had a demobilizing effect, as we shall see later on. “Ethnographies always begin as conversations between anthropologists and our host, who are also in conversation with each other. If we are fortunate some of these conversations take unexpected turns, develop into genuine dialogues, and continue over many years. Dialogues open the possibility that we may learn something about the process of communication, about how the words are used to construct meaningful accounts of life experience. In this way they differ fundamentally from structured interviews, where one of the participants claims right to both pose the questions and interpret the responses. (Cruikshank, 1998: 25). Kimbo was ruled out because he did not have higher education, and Regla, another communitarian leader who participated in the “Grupo Gestor”, and holds a psychology degree, was hired to clean the House. That diverted the original idea community had about the Communitarian House, since control of the place would be done by the government, the activities would be managed by someone who was not from the community, and the only direct participation community would have in the house was from the “cleaner’s” position. Though the activities in the house were actually managed by Regla, the position that she was placed reinforced the same 278 subaltern and asymmetric relations the neighbourhood resisted throughout the years of its existence, frustrating expectations about autonomy and participation previously incentivised by the project. It also highlighted a divide under the sign of “institutionalization”, between those who can and how they can access government and their institutions. It eventually placed Kimbo and Regla, both coming out of the same process connected to the “Proyecto Socio Cultural”, on opposite sides. “Con maña sí, con fuerza no” [knack it, don’t force it], the Congo proverb reverberates in the narratives of the community members, who addressed their perception of leaders within their neighbourhood and their role regarding their ability to mediate neighbourhood’s claims and aspirations with the local and provincial government. Nevertheless, “hay que ponerse de pinga” [complain vigorously], when (as often as almost every time) the situation does not promise to resolve. In between these extremes, but from different standpoints, both Kimbo and Regla followed the path of re-structuring their communitarian actions after project resumed. Regla rose up to finally occupy the function of Director of the Communitarian House, though still sharing responsibility with the outsider cultural promoter. Kimbo gathered new partnerships and community members, using the installed structure of the project’s managing group to address the identitary racial and ethnic issues that could not be fully discussed under the previous framework. Both movements are related with their past insertion in the “Proyecto Socio Cultural” and characterize their action presently. Kimbo’s disappointment was connected with other expectations the inhabitants had towards the project and could not be delivered. The “Proyecto Socio Cultural” suffered from the same disease development projects in Periperi experimented. It catalyzed a huge amount of demands that were repressed after years of neglect by authorities and local society and did not have the structure, the resources, or the means to address them. Three types of sentiment were present in the narratives I heard from community members about the project. There is a general disbelief in communitarian projects; there is a specific 279 complaint about the role government institutions played in the project, namely the Municipal and Provincial Directions of Culture; and references about the activities developed by the project are generally good. I will address those sentiments from last to first. In the narratives the most pronounced result is the documentary “Bendita Sea La Marina” [God Bless La Marina]101. The 35-minute documentary was filmed I 2009, according to the narratives, by members of the “Grupo Gestor”, after being taught filming and production technics, accompanied by “Producciones Caminos” [Camino Productions], under the supervision of the “Centro Kairós”, and with the support of the CMMLK and Oxfam102. Many hours of takes were made from interviews with locals, public authorities, intellectuals, community leaders, and specialists about the history of the neighbourhood, its traditions, and present realities. The name of the documentary was taken from the interview with Yolanda Boada Dalcourt, mother of Martha Beatriz Williams Boada, the neighbourhood’s representative to the FMC at the time. The elderly woman sighed and let out “Bendita Sea La Marina”, embodying numerous expectations community had about the transformations long awaited for the neighbourhood, and also connected to their sentiment of belonging to that place that has been home, in the face of continuous challenges, to a dispossessed population. It also fit perfectly, by the way, with the Christian-oriented supervision of “Centro Kairós”. The documentary starts with images from the neighbourhood, played along with “Las Alturas de Simpson”103 [The Heights of Simpson] on the background. It continues 101 Proyecto Socio Cultural La Marina. Bendita Sea La Marina. Documentary. 35 minutes. Matanzas: Camino Productions, 2009. 102 Oxfam International was formed in 1995 by a group of independent non-governmental organizations. Their aim was to work together for greater impact on the international stage to reduce poverty and injustice. The name “Oxfam” comes from the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, founded in Britain in 1942. https://www.oxfam.org/en/countries/history-oxfam-international, 28.07.15. 103 “In 1952, a group of young musicians were sitting in the “El Gallo” bar in Matanzas City, listening to Cuban guitarist Arsenio Rodriguez on the juke box and slapping out the rhythms on the bar. […] They took the name ‘Guaguanco Matancero’, after the Afro-Cuban ‘guaguanco’ rhythm popular in Matanzas. From the beginning the group had a dual repertoire of religious and secular material, which they performed at first in the city’s toughest neighbourhoods, Simpson and La Marina. Over the years the Muñequitos earned a reputation as Cuba’s keepers of rumba, a percussive secular music that is rooted in the Congo/Angola region but sung in Spanish. Rumba is a highly competitive style that was originally performed in the streets. Unlike Afro-Cuban religious music, rumba is used to tell stories about everyday 280 with several testimonies about the neighbourhood, highlighting its afrodescendence, the connection with the sugarcane industry and the port, and its conflictive past related to being a place for gambling, bars, and prostitution, during the republican period. From that take, it moves on to prejudiced ideas nameless people from the city expressed in the present about the neighbourhood that generally match the conflictive past of the previous testimonies. It creates the perfect setting for the other two-thirds of the documentary related to how the project helped the community to overcome that reality. At that point, community’s voice is ousted and becomes material for conclusions on the intervention the project undertook in the neighbourhood, highlighting the roles of government institutions and “Centro Kairós”, played with classic music on the background. General positive impressions present in the narratives about the documentary express that, though unevenly and imperfectly edited, the documentary connected with the neighbourhood placing a camera and microphone in their hands, and stimulating community to talk about their realities. They recognize in the narratives the shortcomings in the documentary’s edition, but they highlight its importance to vocalize neighbourhood’s way of life and traditions. Recovering traditions was a reoccurring speech in the narratives always connected with the idea of identity, and the documentary was seen as a way to preserve those traditions and, consequently, boost identification with the positive aspects of neighbourhood, other than the prejudiced image it carries on. Traditions identified in the narratives were the “Sociedad Secreta Abacuá” [Abacuá Secret Society], the “Cabildos”, the “Rumba”, the “Comparsa Imaliana” [Imaliana Carnival Group], the “Quema del Muñeco San Juan” [Burning of San Juan’s Effigy], the “Fiesta de la Comida Tradicional” [Traditional Food Festivity], the processions of the “Virgen de Regla” [Virgin of Regla], and of “Santa Teresa” [Saint Therese], all of which we will address in the following. The first thing to notice about these “recovered traditions” is that they are referenced in previous cultural Cuban life, and permits musicians and dancers to use a larger degree of improvisation” (Leonard, 1994). Winner of three Grammys, the group still has La Marina as their home. 281 manifestations in the neighbourhood, but they are not simply remakes. They embody present contexts and re-signify their past content. In doing so, they all are connected with afrodescendant content, being it already present in the original manifestation, such as the “Comparsa Imaliana”, or aggregated to its newer form, like in the “Quema del Muñeco San Juan”. Finally, they connect to a wider network of traditions that resists not only through these cultural manifestations, but also in communitarian organization at large, such as the Abacuá Secret Society and the Cabildos. The project also dealt with formation and capacitation spaces, promotion of sports, establishment of “organoponicos” [urban organic gardens], and “the renovation of all public illumination, the dredging of the Yumurí river, the renovation of the dike wall that surrounds the neighbourhood and the reorganization of the family physicians among other actions” [Translated by the author from the originalcxliv] (Daniel, 2007: 139). As stated in the mentioned documentary, the actions of the project began to become complex when population indicated that the biggest challenge of the neighbourhood was housing. According to the narratives from the neighbourhood, some “solares” [typical Cuban colonial house] were renovated and there were some other whose facade was repainted. However, difficulties in organization connected to the hardships inflicted by hurricane Michelle on a national level dried out resources from the local government and put the renovation in the neighbourhood to a stop. According to data collected by the project with governenment’s “Fondo Habitacional” [Housing Fund], 82% of the houses in the neighbourhood remained under precarious condition. That hit the project to the heart and is also root the questions around the role of governmental institutions and communitarian leadership in addressing the issues of the neighbourhood. These issues had to do with trying to change prejudiced images about the neighbourhood, the renovation of the houses being the center of the claims. It also revealed difficulties both government and community encountered in dialoguing under the sign of institutionalization and in promoting communitarian involvement and mobilization. Even though being coordinators of the project, none of the community 282 members seemed to be qualified to address the “institucionalidad”, which preferred to continue talking to the neighbourhood through outside delegates. That was certainly present in the management of the “Casa Comunitaria”, but it was the case with numerous demands community had, ranging from the neighbourhood’s school being closed to resources for the survival of cultural manifestations. The project’s managing group centralized the actions to a point that the role of other communitarian leaders was diminished, what generated internal conflicts that fragmented communitarian organization as whole. These are challenges that linger in the present project “Identidad y Barrio La Marina”, which aims at contributing to strengthening identity in the neighbourhood by addressing its historical, social, cultural and economic traditions and practices. The newer project, though focusing on grounds scarcely revolved by the previous initiative, stands on the structure that was constructed under the sociocultural project. Kimbo leads the managing group and the members have participated one way or the other in the previous project. I am part of a collaborating bunch that was identified by the managing group of the project to aid their communitarian objectives. The managing group sees the materialization of their work in a monograph that will engrave the history of the neighbourhood and is base for communitarian organization in order to address the “institucionalidad”. I became a collaborator of the project “Identidad y Barrio La Marina”, following my first coming to the neighbourhood to participate in the festivity of the San Juan’s effigy burning. Still thrilled by the energy of the festivity that gathered more than 400 people along the streets of the neighbourhood, we learned the next morning in a meeting at the Centro Kairós that although much was researched and done on the previous Proyecto Socio Cultural, there was little actually written about the history of neighbourhood. That bit caught the attention of Rolando Zulueta, professor of history at the Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría (CUJAE) in Havana, and one of our five companions on that trip to Matanzas. Being from Matanzas, Zulueta was 283 immediately interested in developing a work with the community that would inevitably have to go not only to their oral histories but dig into their oral traditions. I came back to Havana from the festivity with my spirit unsettled by Kimbo’s invitation in that meeting at the Centro Kairós for collaboration to write the neighbourhood’s history. On the way back we could not stop talking about the nature of that invitation and what it meant by “writing the neighbourhood’s history”. The extent to which oral histories and oral traditions would serve as key elements for research in the neighbourhood were not quite clear at first. After all, in every Cuban city there is a designated official historian and an official heritage curator. Local public libraries also hold very important information about the municipality and what cannot be found there is assure to be found at the National Library or affiliated institutes of research. There is also a wealth of bookstores that are spread out in the country and sell books at irrelevant prices, virtually accessible to the majority of the population. That is partially why, after we, the five of us in the white Lada, had become official collaborators to the project, I was quite taken aback by the fact that La Marina was not anywhere to be found. Not in the literature, not in the census, not on public record (except occasionally on police reports). The neighbourhood in which we had just witnessed such a mass and live cultural manifestation was simply not there. The other part of my astonishment, as I would discover after careful research on the oral histories and oral traditions in the neighbourhood as well as on the oral histories of inhabitants of Matanzas and Havana, was the fact that La Marina was not there had to do with historically built prejudice and racism. At that point it was clear these oral histories and traditions would dispute the dominant version available. Also, it became clear that “writing the neighbourhood’s history” was not a task concerned with scavenging forgotten documents or digging up artefacts from a distant or recent past, as a means to dispute the dominant version in its own terms. “Writing the neighbourhood’s history” was actually re-writing, based on community’s group accounts, personal traditions, and historical gossips, all of which 284 Vansina (1985), recognizes as sources of traditions. The historian points out traditions represent a common historical consciousness and are a source for writing history. Being in asymmetric positions of power, however, historical consciousness in La Marina would have to dispute official history, for awareness about that was not anywhere to be found but for La Marina. That revealed as well that community’s desire to dwell around historical consciousness issues that connected them to their present struggle for the institutionalization of their demands. That is why we inevitably came across oral histories present in the community. I see oral history and oral tradition sources as inevitably intertwined for the anthropological work. The distinction Vansina (1985) makes aiming at establishing the credibility of using oral tradition as a source for history may be valid if the objective was led to simply “writing the history of the neighbourhood”. However, the work developed into re-writing the history of the community, asserting it in and against the dominant version available, connecting it to the present struggles community is facing and to the strategies of resistance it has been undertaking so as to change their social positioning as a group in Matanzas. Then both oral tradition and oral history sources were necessary to support present mobilization around a collective identity that is informed by tradition, which is kept alive and used by community through group accounts, historical gossips, and personal traditions, but also reminiscences, hearsay, eyewitness – the latter sources of oral history, according to the historian. As Cruikshank (1998: 2) points out, “anthropologists are historicizing the narratives they tell about culture, looking at how documents, texts, and accounts passed on orally are rendered significant as representations of what has taken place”. Communitarian organization, as seen, is based on the these religious-myth-political territories of resistance, from which cultural manifestations arise and in which personal traditions and historical gossips encounter group accounts, converge and are retold. But they also are constantly redressed by new fields of significations that came with each epitomizing moment the country has gone through in the past 60 years, making reminiscences and hearsays, but specially eyewitnesses most important to 285 understanding and re-writing their history, if not history. In that sense we were able to capture not only one last page but also several of a lost series of successive historical documents, and to connect those pages with the impending future of the community. The matter at hand was not to test the credibility and accuracy of transmission, but, after verifying the social life of narratives in the present, construct ways to recognize its existence so that it can contest the dominant version and access institutionalization. Group accounts, historical gossips, and personal traditions in La Marina have been being told generation after generation, often confined to these religious-mythical-political territories of resistance, and constitute the base for the communitarian traditions. They continue to be retold and redressed by the living eyewitnesses of the events and situations that have been rapidly changing the country and community’s impeding future. They seek to shift their marginalized social positioning to be heard. So a lot of people passed information to a lot of people, but neither of them have been the ones not only writing it, but also in power to make it the dominant version. So the monograph is a tool in that sense to extend these connections, to bridge social fractures that threaten to fragment human relationships, to build a relation on other terms with Matanzas’ official society. Concerns of the community members participating on the project were not about style and form but how to speak to broader audiences, much in the way Yukon elders were concerned about extending connections “to younger people, to cultural outsiders, and across linguistic boundaries in the Yukon” (Cruikshank, 1998: 15). So importance was rendered to the narratives that spoke to a knowledge remembered and considered valid to address problems of the present as well as their translation to broader audiences. To some extent the monograph is a performance, a recorded tradition that serves a purpose, often temporary. Due to its perfomatic nature the monograph may serve as tool for other numerous performances community may chose to make and to the performers it may collectively chose to elect. It is clear that the monograph is a tool in highlighting reproduction forms of traditions recognized and non-recognized in their 286 intent, place, time, frequency, memory, mnemotechnic devices (music, jokes, riddles, tales, and so on), objects, landscapes, and examples of people to learn from, imitate and emulate. Performance then becomes “the normal expression of a whole tradition. “The conditions of its [performance’s] reproduction are those of the tradition itself” (Vansina, 1985: 39), and the monograph is one form of recording tradition in a specific time. It also becomes, as Vasina stresses, source for the tradition itself, like early 1940 June Collins work with the Upper Skagit indigenous peoples of Washington State, USA, that anthropologist Molly Malone (2013: 101) found tribe members took from it “insight into tribal history through an accessible text”. Miller (2011: 67) nevertheless highlights that “oral traditions that have been tape - or digitally recorded, transcribed or not, are not inert, nor are they immune to change”. Therefore, their social life extends beyond being a source to tradition to being an active tool for interaction with society. Narratives based on these oral traditions, recorded or not, are a framework to understanding both historical and contemporary issues. In that sense, they fill the “floating gap” (Miller, 2011: 98) between “the immediate past and deep past”, addressing the “the intermediate past [that otherwise would remain] hazy and possibly telescoped”. Furthermore, the anthropologist indicates newer social science approaches are concerned with examining the ways in which contemporary peoples use their narratives to think through and comment on the current situations in which they and their communities find themselves, and the ways in which communities remember and characterize some events and processes and discard others (Miller, 2011: 11-12). Narratives address the “floating gap” because they refer to several levels of historical consciousness individually, in their families and in their communities, as anthropologist Molly Malone (2013) could see in relation to the several forms of historical consciousness that emerged by the Upper Skagit indigenous people’s interaction with culture and history. These several forms of historical consciousness arise in the different ways people socially construct history, as they remain significant means to think through and comment on current situations. According to the Comaroffs, “consciousness is best understood as the active process — sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit — in which human actors deploy historically salient cultural 287 categories to construct their self-awareness” (1987: 202), and historical consciousness is what lies in between history and culture (2009: 38). Sider (1993) adds that asymmetric power relations force into history and culture dominant versions that communities have to confront in order to address their issues. So La Marina, Periperi and the Hwlitsum are challenging the dominant version by accessing their traditions and culture in order to confront history, but not just any history, their history, both in relation to the general society and in relation to themselves. Their historical consciousness is what characterizes the situation in which the communities in this study are presently, is what drives them to a “transition moment” by becoming aware of their “conditions of possibility”. Sometimes historical consciousness may be dormant, but they can be revived by the emergence of a “transition period” or provoked by a collective stress situation or even stimulated from outside the community. By accessing forms of historical consciousness communities become “units of mobilization” and may dispute dominant versions about their histories and impending futures. To some extent they address the possibility of returning the dirt that was thrown at them and made them polluted (Douglas, 1966). This pollution that has separated them from a place amongst society and has punished them with the sign of impurity. They are in a underdog situation because they chose, facing historically woven external pressures that are taken for granted as laws, to transgress these boundaries and margins that have carefully demarcated their separation and that have characterized them as an untidy experience in relation to society. But the society does not exist in a neutral, uncharged vacuum. It is subject to external pressures; that which is not with it, part of it and subject to its laws, is potentially against it. In describing these pressures on boundaries and margins I admit to having made society sound more systematic than it really is. […] For I believe that ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions have as their main function to impose system on an inherently untidy experience”. (Douglas, 1966: 4) It is not an easy or quick process, though. It is not simply by choosing to place themselves in an underdog situation that communities are able to face those histories and promote the desired shifting of their social positioning. By choosing to encounter 288 these histories, the activating of historical consciousness, and mobilizing around a collective political struggle, La Marina, as well as the other communities in which this study was centered, inevitably placed themselves in an underdog situation. This situation nevertheless, is one that brings about reworked strategies of resistance, based on their resilience, but adapted to their reading of the present “conditions of possibility”. That is why, for instance, the first name that was chosen for the present project was “Àgbára-Dúdú104: Africanidad y Cubanidad en La Marina” [Àgbara-Dúdú: Africanity and Cubanity in La Marina] and not “Identity and Neighbourhood La Marina”, as it is presently called. The managing group had decided upon the first name in early meetings in 2014, following discussions about how prejudiced images were constructed about the neighbourhood and the lower social positioning that was relegated for blacks in the city. Their narratives connected to being considered a conflictive, dangerous, dirty neighbourhood, related to prostitution and gambling – a neighbourhood of blacks. They felt they were marked by these representations; they felt polluted, and mobilization was to be around a project that could address these polluted conditions in promoting a change of perception about their way of life, connected to African based traditions. It would be something that needed to be recognized within the “Cubanity”. Later that year, when we were about to publicize the project in order to address the institutionality and other partnerships that could aid the objectives of the project, they evaluated that the name of the project need to be changed. Their assessment was based on their reading of the already deteriorated conditions within local society and the institutionality to address the objectives of the project. Addressing historical, social, cultural and economic traditions and practices, so as to strengthen identity in the neighbourhood meant that we would have to construct counter-narratives to the dominant version available, one which impregnates the present local frameworks of understanding, the institutions, and the way matanceros relate to each other. Adding the previously chosen name to the project, though encompassing as it was of the 104 Meaning “black power” in Yoruba. 289 sentiments the group had about the realities in which they were inserted, in the described scenario, would be a flagship but one that would certainly be bound to sink, according to their assessment. Through the project “Identidad y Barrio La Marina”, several of those historical consciousnesses could be captured by the members of the community themselves. A camera and a recorder were provided to the managing group of the project, and no fuss would be made by intentionally messing around bee’s nests. They were the ones who went after the information that would support their own idea about their history and present, interviewing elders, young, women and men of La Marina; organizing meetings with the community; revitalizing cultural manifestations; rethinking about the importance of the communitarian organizational structures and their background; and building partnerships within their extended community. 290 Figures 15, 16, 17 - Kimbo’s Minutes of Project’s Meeting; Milagros Notebook with Interviews Made by Her with Community Members; Meeting When the Project Identidad y Barrio Was Formed Source: Author’s reap Date: February 2015 and October 2014 Figure 15 – Kimbo’s Minutes of Project’s Meeting - February 2015 Figure 16 – Milagros Notebook with Interviews Made by Her with Community Members - February 2015 Figure 17 – Meeting When the Project Identidad y Barrio Was Formed – October 291 Project also connected with other communitarian project from the neighbourhood of Simpson, the “Ilé Egbe Ogbon Ifá”, in the midst of the work of research. That connection addresses both a joint objective of research about traditions and cultural manifestations as well as a clear political drive to face institutionalization issues with the local government. Both movements draw on the idea of an extended community that connects neighbourhoods identified as black in the city. That movement of approximation with the Ilé has also influenced the managing group’s format. The inclusion of new members from Simpson has de-concentrated the roles that were otherwise absorbed mostly by Kimbo. This allowed for other members to stand up and assume more up-front roles in the organization of the project. It also set the grounds for external partnerships, such as the one with the “Projeto Nova Cartografia Social105” [New Social Cartography], based at the Universidade Estadual do Amazonas (UEAM) [State University of the Amazonas], with the objective to work with community in order to produce a social cartography of the neighbourhood. Community sees cartography as a necessary and important tool, combined with the work underway with the monograph, as the neighbourhood does not show up in any maps, neither in the official political-administration divide of the city, nor is considered in design of public policies. Community immediately connected with the social cartography projects displayed by the New Social Cartography’s coordinators within the scope of the activities of the International Seminar Identities and Collective Mobilizations mentioned. Community identified with the collective, social and territorialized peculiar struggles of other communities in Brazil and other countries of the Americas the project works with. It is a connection that has directly to do with their awareness of their historical consciousness. A historical consciousness that allows them the grounds to be aware about their polluted condition and connect to other polluted communities, and the role of the cartography as another element to reinforce their claims as counter-narratives to status. The fact that they are in the process of strengthening their counter-narratives through the project “Identidad y Barrio La 105 For more information on the New Social Cartography see: http://novacartografiasocial.com/apresentacao/, 12.09.15. 292 Marina” and its connections to initiatives within the scope of their extended community, allows them to understand shared realities from outside. That is a feature that makes their social and territorial experience peculiar in relation to the Cuban society thorn by “double consciousness” and a fragmented “diaspora identity” that imply a permanent feeling of wander. In the midst of this new field of significations the “economic actualization” is provoking upon Cuban society it is interesting how La Marina is working out the “floating signifiers” as an opportunity to look into their neighbourhood, raise awareness about their historical consciousness. The “permanent doubt about the possibility of being home” that “double consciousness” and fragment “diaspora identity” create is in that sense soothed or reorganized towards the communitarian struggle. It will be curious to see how being able to visualize their territory and their communitarian references will effect their own views about their collective identity as “marineros” and their struggle for institutionalization. Those are crossroads that relate to the ones Periperi and Hwlitsum have driven by. Riding on the front seat with the communities of this study, I came by several crossroads. It was no different in La Marina having driven by some crossroads that inform their present struggle, such as the community’s earlier collective organization around the Proyecto Socio Cultural; revisited some, gathering around a new communitarian project; and they are still peeking at other, though they cannot fully grasp on it, newer ones, as in the case of the reconnection with their territorial base and extended community and the effects of collective identity and political struggle for institutionalization. Again this is not a synchronic process, but it is one that singles them out from other communities, in the midst of co-existing histories, pollution from external pressures, and ever changing rules. 293 Chapter 9 - Pretty like a Saint, Ugly as it May The road stretches through the coaslands in between Havana and Matanzas following the sea line, revealing and concealing sea and land in a spectacle of colours, shapes, and people. People are a constant presence on the 92 km of the “Via Blanca”, the road built by former dictator Fungencio Batista to connect the capital with Cuba’s most visited touristic beach, Varadero, 45 km from Matanzas. Batista had made a deal with foreign investors (mainly in the US) for the development of a multimillionaire touristic project, including hotels, casinos, and nightclubs, and “Via Blanca” was what would make it possible. At the eve of the 1959 Revolution, everything was prepared for the road’s inauguration. From the reminiscences of the toll that would gather the funds to pay international contractors that built the road, still standing after the undersea tunnel that crosses Havana bay, numerous cities lie on the way to Matanzas, beginning with Alamar. The road is dominated, nevertheless, by air-conditioned buses that buzz to and from Varadero, carrying people that will never get to know Guanabacoa, Jibacoa, Bacunayaga, or even Matanzas, since “Via Blanca” will encounter the city only in its fanciest neighbourhood, Playa. Tourism is both a presence and a non-presence in the city. The air-conditioned buses that are constantly crossing town seldom have other destinations than Varadero. Nevertheless, lots of matanceros work in the hotels built by joint ventures negotiated by the Cuban State, following the “special period”. International tourism conglomerates, such as the Spanish Meliã, would provide the resources, and Cuba would authorize touristic exploitation for a ten-year tax-free period, after operation started. Cuba would also provide the workers at government pay standards. Capital remained in government’s hands, generally at a 51-49% basis. There are no international tourism conglomerates in Matanzas, let alone La Marina. In the neighbourhood, the interaction with tourists is not as rarefied as it 294 seems, though. Marineros may not see the same tourists that tip them at their work time in the hotel lobbies and bars, but they interact with another type of tourist that seeks different things from the all-inclusive resorts. As Matanzas is seen as the source for Afro traditions in Cuba, the black neighbourhoods are the “Meca” that tourists want to find. Tourists from Cuba and abroad come to the neighbourhood seeking religious advice at the temple houses and to participate in the communitarian cultural manifestations, such as the burning of San Juan ‘s Effigy, the Virgin of Regla’s and Santa Teresa [Saint Therese] Processions, the Traditional Food Festival, and the Comparsa Imaliana, a group of community members, that parades every year in the city’s Carnival commemorations in August. We were sort of feeling touristic that June 23rd when we arrived at La Marina to participate in the 2014 festivity. Sort of, because we were all interested in more than the festivity itself, but how the neighbourhood works around it and the connections to their traditions. But then again most tourists that will find the neighbourhood will tell similar stories. The burning of San Juan’s Effigy is not an event that happens only in La Marina. In Matanzas, Pueblo Nuevo neighbourhood gathers around an effigy of San Juan that is sponsored by the Province’s Cultural Direction. The effigy of Pueblo Nuevo is carried in procession from Cultural House of the neighbourhood (also sponsored by the Cultural Direction) and burnt at the margins of the San Juan River, during the daylight of the 24th. Other festivities in honour of the Catholic Saint happen throughout the country, in Remedios, Santiago, or Holguín106. Really, up to the point that I know, here by the river Yumurí there was a group of religious people, some where abacua, other were ‘santeros’ [practitioners of the Reglas de Ocha and Palo], and then they had made a little house there by the river – I still think it is there. There they would smoke drugs [marijuana], drink a lot of rum, a lot of ‘aguardiente’, play rumba, and that was isolated, because to get there one had to cross a little bridge. […] They would go there, started to play rumba, and there they remained in their frenetic attitude and there they followed the tradition, and from there the effigy came to be, the effigy was made because of a necessity. […] I am talking about from 1950 to 1960, because this vanished with the Revolution, because the majority of these people there were incorporated to the Revolution, and those who were 106 http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2015-06-23/san-juan-de-los-remedios-cinco-siglos-de-historia-leyendas-y-tradiciones, 14.09.15. 295 marginal or marginalized were incorporated to the Revolution [Translated by the author from the originalcxlv interview with plastic artist Fedor Monet, La Marina, February 2015]. In fact, the festivity in La Marina is born out of the same traditional root, and represented an amusement to some community members, who gathered, in the years previous to the Revolution, by the margins of the river to play rumba, drink “aguardiente” [distilled sugarcane] and rum, smoke marijuana, and burn the effigy of San Juan. However, when the tradition was recovered in the year 2001, a different form of historical consciousness started to grow around the festivity. People would light candles near the effigy, asking it to remedy their ailments. Community members bathe the effigy in rum and cigar smoke, like it is done in their African based traditional rituals, before it is carried in procession throughout the neighbourhood. The procession in La Marina soon included their neighbours in Simpson, following the extend community logic. The effigy is blessed on the procession’s path by the several “cabildos” and temple houses in both neighbourhoods. A crowd of more than one thousand people watched the effigy burn at the banks of the Yumuri River that boards La Marina and rejoiced it, dancing to the rumba presentation that followed through the dawn of the 24th, this year. 296 Figure 18 – Kimbo, spitting rum at the effigy and blessing it with cigar smoke, at the Burning of San Juan’s Effigy, La Marina, Matanzas. Source: Picture by Anthropologist Barbara Oliveira Date: June 2015 What was something related to amusement only, a traditional festivity, became “religious”, says Fedor Monet, the plastic artist, born in the neighbourhood, who every year puts together the effigy with the help of his brother and the aid of several community members. “Someone gives me a hat, another a pair of shoes, another a shirt, another flour to make glue, and the effigy arises”, said Fedor, explaining to me that the effigy is a collective construction, rather than his work alone. The local artist also explains why the effigy cannot be “pretty like a saint”, because it burns and, along with it, all the evil in the community. That is why it has to be “as ugly as it may”. Well, the effigy I make along with my brother and there are other people who are collaborators, but this is collective. Already is the early days of June, which is when the effigy is celebrated, on the 23rd, I begin here throughout the neighbourhood to ask for it clothes, because I ask them for clothes, the one who has an old shirt, trousers, old shoes, anything, a tie, a bag, so all the community, all, because this is not only here in my block, all who can provide me something they begin to bring them to me and I start to devise them. What is not good I trash it or I take its good part, but mostly it is good stuff, because the effigy cannot be beautiful, because this is bad, the effigy will burn the evil, all that is ugly, all that represents misery […] Because I can make the 297 effigy beautiful, I can make it as beautiful as a saint, but that is not its purposes. Because, how are you going to burn all these evils, all that is ugly becomes the evilest possible […] We put together the effigy when I already have the rice bags that the grocery store woman gave me, and I make out of them a set of trousers and the body with hands. I make the body and the head with paper mache, which is made from mixing ‘engrudo’, glue made with flour. So, glue each bit to each bit and when I make a ball of paper, I shape the head. The hair I make out of ‘soga’, or sometimes out of fabric, sometimes out of nylon that I shred it into bits. I find him a hat, it always has to have a hat, glasses, it has to have glasses, a pipe, because he is a smoker also, for the people who are smokers [Translated by the author from the originalcxlvi dialogue with plastic artist Fedor Monet, March 2015] “Pretty like a saint” and “as ugly as it may”, as just opposite sides of the same coin. Both the imagery and the connotations around the festivity indicate that rather than a transculturated, syncretic fusion into a Catholic framework, represented by San Juan, the saint was stripped out of its ”prettiness” to become what the community’s historical consciousness relates to, “as ugly as it may”, to burn all evils. The narratives in the neighbourhood also relate the effigy with Oggun, the Yoruban Orisha connected to metal and war, and patron of the blacksmiths. It is indeed a resilient image of their traditions that comes forth; a resilient image that community accesses to materialize their strategies of resistance. Figure 19 - GPS – Path of the Procession of San Juan’s Effigy – La Marina and Simpson, Matanzas, Cuba Source: Google Earth Snap Shot in Author’s Possession Date: September 2015 298 The effigy is carried out in the procession, followed by the abacuá drums, the crowd signing along rhymes in Yoruba, learnt by heart in the abacuá public rituals or in the temple houses and “cabildos”. They stop at several cabildos on the way, as it is shown in the map above that depicts the path of the procession. The blue line marks the path of the procession that stops at the cabildo Yesá (Salamanca, between America and 2 de Mayo streets), the cabildo Olocún (Salamanca, between 2 de Mayo and Manzaneda streets) and the cabildo Arará (Salamanca, between Zaragoza and Manzaneda streets), respectively. Numerous abacuá potencies are also around the path of the procession, as the Uriabón Efi (Salamanca, between Compostela and America streets), the Acamaso Efi (Velarde between America and Compostela streets), the Efi Yumani (Velarde, between 2 de Mayo and Manzaneda), and the Ficondó Efi (Velarde between America and Compostela streets). Figure 20 – Procession of the Burning of San Juan’s Effigy, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Picture by Anthropologist Bárbara Oliveira Date: June 2014 299 The procession differs dearly from the other festivity that burns another effigy across the river, by the banks of the San Juan, during daylight, in the neighbourhood of Pueblo Nuevo. The description that Yodekis, the cultural promoter of the neighbourhood, makes of the festivity, is cleansed of African traditions while it is bathed in the Catholic debate about whether the effigy should be taken and blessed by the local parish. There in Pueblo Nuevo the festivity follows the line of so many others throughout the country. The burning of the effigy is related to abundance. With the effigy are burnt rice, pork, and everything that relates to wishing for more and merrier. With the project we developed the burning of the effigy of San Juan, from a different stand point, because there [in La Marina], they connect it to each one of the temple houses and cabildos that are in the path of the procession, and bless it on their way. What is the deal, Pueblo Nuevo was a neighbourhood in which the burning had been done a long time ago, almost from the time that the neighbourhood was founded around the 1800’s, because it was a neighbourhood where Spanish people and other that had to do with this tradition lived. Because they were from the Canaries, it was a different effigy, because the effigy they took it to the Church, they blessed it by the image of the Catholic saint of the Church. Families did it. They burnt the effigy at the 4 corners, by the river [San Juan], by the Church, but the burning we make today is completely different, because that kind of burning was suspended, because one day they went wild in the 4 four corners and it was all burnt, and that is why our dear firefighters suspended the tradition in the neighbourhood, and if you burnt an effigy you would get a fine or something like that […] the project came, and a year after we thought about reviving the burning of the effigy. This was a totally improvised thing. We had investigated, we had made questions about the effigy’s path, how it was done, and in what way, and then we had to face that there was no path, the burning was done by the families, the community didn’t do it, and then I said: this is troublesome […] The kids made their effigy, and of course we later fixed it because it wasn’t really pretty, and we took it for the first time, we took from the Cultural House. We paraded it through San Juan Bautista’s street, but we could never take it to the Church because the priest there in from Guatemala, he not even Cuban, and to him this was something from the devil, and we could not do it. Then we said, we are going to go elsewhere, but in another way [Translated by the author from the originalcxlvii interview with cultural promoter Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, February 2015] Another interesting point in Yodekis’s narrative is that the tradition of the burning of the effigy was held by families of the neighbourhood and not the community. Because of an accidental fire originated by one of the burning effigies, the firefighters called the tradition off, imposing a penalty on families that insisted on carrying the tradition on. A project from the Provincial Cultural Direction revitalized, in 2011, the tradition on other terms, bringing it to the communitarian level, stimulating the community to gather around the festivity. 300 The effigy was not “as pretty as it should be”, according to Yodekis, and the Cultural Direction helped members with materials and other resources in order to make it better. In the following years, the effigy incorporated some of the imagery members of the neighbourhood identified themselves with, like the representation of Pánfilo, a comedian that makes fun of the difficulties of the present Cuban way of life, and that is a big success among the critics of the regime, as well as in the Miami Cuban-American cohort. The procession in Pueblo Nuevo starts at the Cultural House, run by the Cultural Direction. It follows San Juan’s street in the neighbourhood, crosses the Tirre bridge and the effigy is burnt by the banks of the San Juan River, across the bridge. There, a cultural activity is held by the Cultural Direction, gathering also members of the Versailles neighbourhood, across town. We took the effigy and incredibly closed Tirre street […] we arrived at Tirre bridge […] and crossed it, where was traditionally where the effigy was burnt and after they made the ‘treból’ [clover] party, and we burnt the effigy for the first time, at the same Vigía [square] we did a cultural activity, because we want to gather all the group and with this we also gathered the people from Versailles, as you can see the articulation between us and the neighbourhood, we made Versailles do their burning as well and then the two groups gatherd at the same place to burn their two effigies, Versailles and Pueblo Nuevo, because La Marina’s is a midnight. So we did it and this has worked and we have been doing it for all these tears […] the Cuban satire, because put the effigy in a custom of Pánfilo, they made it all even a bread inside the bag with his ‘tarjeta’ of the local grocery’s and all. They placed a roasted pig and all in the front of the effigy, they filled it with abundance, because here in the neighbourhood when you stuck rice, in these traditional things, is related to abundance. So, the objective was that we were going to burn the effigy so that next year will come food, and with other stuff [Translated by the author from the originalcxlviii interview with cultural promoter Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, February 2015] Versailles is a neighbourhood that is identified with Spanish, working-class decendents that worked at the port. As we will see ahead, racial relations in the city have carved the way neighbourhoods were occupied. By means of “caballaje”, people in Versailles normally were formally employed at the port, but who actually were the stevedores were often the people from the neighbourhoods identified as black, such as La Marina and Simpson. They would get sometimes 50%, sometimes less, of the pay of the ones actually employed. “Caballaje” went on all through the colonial and republican periods. The narratives in La Marina state that it stopped with the Revolution. We will discuss its features and effects in the neighbourhood in the next chapter. 301 Figure 21 - Tirre Bridge above the San Juan River that separates Pueblo Nuevo from downtown Matanzas and La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Author’s reap. Date: June 2015 It is important to note the way Pueblo Nuevo builds their idea of extended community today in relation to Versailles, and La Marina to Simpson. The new neighbourhood (Pueblo Nuevo) was created to house warehouses that stored sugar and other products that came in the wagons on the railroad from the countryside plantations. The products would later be transported to the port on “lanchones”, smaller ships that could enter the San Juan River. These products would later be loaded on bigger boats at the port by the stevedores. Local historian Urbano (personal communication, 2014) told me that freed black people moved into the neighbourhood to work in the warehouses, run by managers and engineers decedents of Spanish people from the Canarias, and could access a form of pay that would distinguish them from the general black population. Although originally a 302 neighbourhood identified as black, and still holding blood and “of saint” ties to the neighbourhoods of La Marina and Simpson, Pueblo Nuevo does not fully connect in the latter neighbourhoods’ present perception of their extend community. The association with Versailles depicts in a nutshell that present reality, drawn from historically built separations of class and latter ethnicity and more recently, following the economic actualization, renewed race discrimination, as it could not be fully addressed during the years of the Revolution. Pueblo Nuevo is an example of how accommodation continuous to play a definite role in the communitarian life rather than the resistance that can be spotted at La Marina. The neighbourhood’s narrative seeks not to confront the homogenizing discourse, but rather to embrace it, changing over the years to incorporate into the Cuban ethos. Their cultural manifestations seek to relate to the “Cubanity” idea rather than to press for the maintenance of traditions that would have resisted and made them resilient. The “Cuban thing” that La Marina seeks to institutionalize is, in Pueblo Nuevo, a “Cubanity” already part of the institutionalized structure. It is promoted by this structure, rather than claimed by the community. Neither a “transition period” nor a “transition moment” can be identified in Pueblo Nuevo that could create a collective stress that would turn community towards a reassessment of their “mazeway”. “Conditions of possibility” are not in place in Pueblo Nuevo, as they are in La Marina, where accessing their historical consciousness has allowed them to become a “unit of mobilization”. Rather than mobilizing they have acquiesced to the expected positioning that was granted to them by the “official society”. It is quite striking how two neighbourhoods that were created in similar timeframes, separated by nothing but a river connected by a bridge, experienced similar homogenizing forces throughout the years, and have accessed different strategies for their insertion in society. One is dependant on an outside drive and the other on internally weaving strategies of resistance. Both in the expected lower social positioning, as subaltern or subordinate, but one of them falling into a differentiated standpoint. 303 To some extent, the Provincial Direction of Culture seeks to emulate what they recognized as the “source” of African traditions in the city, La Marina, to compose the project they put together for Pueblo Nuevo. Yodekis’ narrative, however, states how that emulation, characterized by the research that was made by the Provincial Cultural Direction in La Marina to support their project in Pueblo Nuevo, could not defy the establishment. The emulation remained emulation, but could not find its way out of deference (Keesing, 1992). It could not transgress the expected social positioning because it did not have a resilient base to be supported upon. We when we began, we wanted to do this in La Marina, because La Marina has a strength in relation to the theme, having been part of a previous project and all, but they themselves did not let it happen, that is, they themselves didn’t let change come to their place. They wanted to continue having their Marina the way it is. It was different here, considering their own condition, when I say: let’s do this, let’s do that, everybody asks for more, and what else needs to be done. So that is why they are different. […] Yes, it is another idiosyncrasy also, for instance: La Marina is a neighbourhood in which there is a lot of conflict, there were a lot of stabbing, these things. In all the activities that are made in La Marina, there is no activitity in which there isn’t someone hurt from a broken bottle, that there isn’t conflict, these things. We here have related since 2011, doing activities and here there has never been conflict. […] Inside Pueblo Nuevo and the city of Matanzas there has always been rivalry, because it is the identitary rivalry. The ‘neuvopueblano’ always says “I am from Pueblo Nuevo” and the one from La Marina and the ones from Simpson the same. […] The people from Pueblo Nuevo, thay said, well, you [La Marina] have your space, but it is yours, and you always have tremendous conflict. We have ours, the ‘callejon de tradiciones’, which is classy, that is this was a neighbourhood of more upstandard blacks, more elegant. They have always looked above their shoulders. You [La Marina] are playing your rumba there is this thing that floods and we are here very peacefully, lots of culture, we are from the culture, that is, you can see the conflict between the two, but when there is rumba here the one from there come here and the ones from here go there, they move in between the neighbourhoods. [Translated by the author from the originalcxlix interview with cultural promoter Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, Matanzas, February 2015]. La Marina was seen as a too conflictive, indecisive, and confused neighbourhood, not prone to embrace the opportunity that the Provincial Cultural Direction’s project was granting them. Pueblo Nuevo was made the new adequate space for the Project, where a “Callejón de Tradiciones” was implemented. There, is where rumba local and regional groups make presentations funded with government resources, and several local development projects, based on the premise of an African tradition that has been resisting, relying on both official and, more recently, international support, such as the Norwegian International Cooperation Agency (COSUDE), are undertaken. Those 304 resources flow naturally to Pueblo Nuevo because the neighbourhood fought for them, according to Yodekis, though the traditional base where government drew from to construct the idea of the neighbourhood as a cradle of African traditions was elsewhere, in La Marina. Also, these international funds that were fought by the neighbourhood, according to Yodekis himself, need to be scavenged in the internet and out of contacts made by high level authorities that do not often arrive at the neighbourhoods. Contact with government officials is also important to be able to administer the funds, since few associatinos in the country are allowed to administer funds directely. Yes, the money is there in the government, this money no one can touch but us […] now, it is indeed a little difficult to access the funds, because as it is not something that is broadly know, it something that in Cuba there has been a lot of experience throughout many years […] but it is not reproduced, that is, it is not taken to where it is needed […] if there are five calls for proposals here being offered, you have to go and access the internet and try to find a way to get them […] We are entrepreneurs we go anywhere in search for resources. Last, I became aware of COSUDE [Translated by the author from the originalcl interview with cultural promoter, Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, 13.09.15] A fundamental difference between the process of identification in the neighbourhoods is not measured in the excellence of the undertakings they have engendered, but in their nature, and how they accommodate to the expected social positioning in society. One way that this is manifested is through their cultural manifestations, but it has effects on their political organization and their insertion in the city’s society. Where community draws from to materialize their cultural manifestations, how these manifestations relate to the “official society”, how they are worked out within the community, how they connect with strategies of resistance and the community’s present struggles is important to understand their present situation and the effects of placing themselves in that situation. The trajectory of the neighbourhoods highlights also the intentional character of the resistance and the nature of their situation. In La Marina, other cultural manifestations relate to this situation: the procession of the Virgin of Regla, and the one of Saint Therese, as well as the Comparsa Imaliana and the Traditional Food Festival. Fedor Monet relates the procession of the Virgin of Regla with the festivity of the burning of San Juan’s Effigy. For him, the same 305 people who had been involved with the festivity prior to the Revolution were the ones who carried out the procession. Because the same people that celebrated the Virgin are the ones who celebrated the effigy, they coincide, because this neighbourhood is basically of stevedores, of the port, and these are the ones who celebrated the virgin of the port’s syndicate, a strong organization there was in the port. They were not vagabounds, they were marginal or marginalized, but they had their work at the port, and they did the two things [the effigy and the Virgin]. Because the Virgin I remember the ‘lanchones’ from the San Juan river, where all the storehouses were, filled with sugar. And from there the ‘lanchones’ would came from, because the big ships could not come into the river. And the sugar was carried into the ‘lanchones’ and taken to the middle of the bay, these were the same people, who were from another syndicate, which was the ‘carretilheiros’ [forklift driver’s] syndicate, which was in Pueblo Nuevo […] And there was another stevedore’s syndicate. There were two syndicates [Translated from the originalcli dialogue with plastic artist Fedor Monet, La Marina, Matanzas, February, 2015] They were workers at the ports, marginal (or marginalized), who brought their traditions into the stevedores’ organization at the syndicate. As seen, the majority of the stevedores then and presently are members of the abacuá society. They were the ones who took the Virgin from the syndicate seat, where it laid, to the “lanchones” through the San Juan River into the city’s bay, where the Virgin was presented to Yemanja, the Yoruban orisha, who represents the maternal force of the sea, and patron to all fisherman. Milagros, a member of the managing group in La Marina, told me that the procession of the Virgin ended, following the intensification of control over religious activities by the State in the 1970’s. The Virgin was thrown out of the syndicate into the street by a new direction that came to power in the stevedores’ organization. A stevedore by the name of Alfonso Elecua, abacuá and “santero”, recovered the Virgin from the street and safeguarded it in his house, where it remains until the day, even after his death. Community members hold a desire to revive the tradition, but they lack the funds, since it involves excessive expenses for gasoline, and the availability of a boat, among other necessities. And back then the Virgin of the port was paraded through the sea and river. I remember one year that people from the national folklore came here to work with that and they would put by the fence cans with torches that lighted up brilliantly, and then they would parade the Virgin. I think this was the last year that that was done. Then Alfonso Elecua died, because the port din’t want the Virgin no more and Alfonso Elecua recovered it and he was the one who dedicate to celebrating the Virgin de Regla. After Alfonso died, his daughter Elena continued with her husband Chino. Presently, Elena is deceased, but her husband is there. I think the virgin he asked 306 a son of his to take care. I don’t know if they keep on following the traditions because I have not heard about them, and these things are being lost [Translated by the author from the originalclii interview with Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, near the Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, October 2014] An important feature in Fedor’s narrative about the Virgin relates to the abacuá brotherhood and stevedores’ ties that brought workers involved with the port together around the procession of the Virgin. Fedor states that there were two syndicates, one in La Marina, of stevedores, and one in Pueblo Nuevo, of “carretilleros” [forklift drivers]. Both connected to the port, as the bigger ships could not come in the San Juan River to load the sugar products that had to be carried on the “lanchones” that unloaded them at the docks, where the stevedores loaded them back on the ships. The Virgin was taken from the Stevedores’ Syndicate in La Marina, loaded in the “lanchones” coming from Pueblo Nuevo, and both stevedores and “carretilleros” worshiped the image at bay, bound by traditional ties of blood, faith and class. It would be interesting to see how historical consciousness would play its role when tradition comes to live again, in the midst of such different historical constructions both neighbourhoods are making in the present. Conditions are not in place for that to happen for now, though. Boy! The virgin of the stevedores, this was the biggest thing there was here in Matanzas. It was on the seventh, they carried the virgin, I don’t know if they do it elsewhere in Cuba, to the sea with the batá drums of Chá-Chá. The boats came from that part there of San Juan and from the river to here – this was a festival at the sea. When the revolution arrived, they threw the virgin on the street and then a companion named Alfonso Elecua, he took it to his house and there it is presently. This virgin paraded from Matanzas to Cárdenas back and forth. Now the virgin is with a companion called Chino. When his date arrives, Chino dresses the virgin and we go, and that is how the virgin is preserved [Translated from the originalcliii dialogue with Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, La Marina, Matanzas, October 2014] Nevertheless, Raimundo’s narrative reveals other paths the Virgin has taken in the past that may lead to future trails. According to Raimundo, the Virgin traveled as far as Cárdenas, the closest city to Varadero (about 15 km), and home to most who work at the touristic resorts. But it was not tourism that connected La Marina with the “City of Crabs”, as it is also known. In the two cities, along with Havana, the abacuá potencies were found and remain to the day. There are no abacuá potencies anywhere else in Cuba, but for these three cities. Kimbo often talks about the “juegos” of Matanzas and 307 Cárdenas as having a closer bond. Havana’s “juegos” are seem as non-traditional, too distracted from the source, and dealing in much “guapería”, or abacuá members being involved with fights and disrespectful deeds. All in all, the Virgin gathered stevedores and “carretillleros” from across town and far out places like Cárdenas, all of which were connected through their abacuá network. The several abacuá potencies in the city have also staged other Virgin processions throughout the year. Each abacuá potency has its Virgin and most of them are paraded throughout the neighbourhoods. I watched the procession of the Efi Yumane potency that gathers sworn abacúa from La Marina and Simpson. The potency itself was founded in 1942, in the neighbourhood of Simpson. It gathers around 90 paying members today. The processions takes place at Yemanjá’s day, September 7th, every year, as the Virgen of Regla is the image of the motherly orisha that is the queen of the sea. It had been eight years since the Virgen was not paraded in the neighbourhoods’ streets, though, following the death of an important abacuá brother, shedding a mourning respectful interdiction to the procession. It starts in La Marina, in Daoiz street, at around eleven o’clock p.m., and follows through Velarde street until it reaches Simpson. Figure 22 - GPS procession of the Virgin of the Abacuá Potency Efi Yumani, La Marina and Simpson, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Google Earth Snap Shot in Author’s Possession Date: September 2015 308 The black image of the Virgin dressed in full bluish garment, surrounded by white angels, is brought out of the house and carried by a set of four men that are sworn members of the potency into the street, accompanied by a marching band playing Catholic hymns and followed by a small crowd, consisted mainly of members of the potency, their wives and some community people. The Virgin stops at two houses in the neighbourhood of La Marina to salute Virgins of other “abacuá” potencies that are guarded therein. At midnight, at the junction with 2 de mayo street the procession stops and a champagne is spilt into the air onto the crowd by the dignitary of the potency, the “Jamba”, which announces the coming of the “íreme Encanima”, representing the spirit of an ancestor, playing a purifying role in public functions, such as the procession. The batá drums change the rhythm of the procession that continues onto to the dignitary’s house already in Simpson. Figure 23 – Íreme Encamina at the procession of the Virgin of the Abacuá Potency Efi Yumani, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Author’s reap Date: September 2015 309 The crowd is increased by community members and other “abacuá” from Simpson and La Marina, but also people from Pueblo Nuevo and Cárdenas, who have come to pay their respects to the Virgin and to the potency. The feast that follows goes on through the dawn, accelerated by the “abacuá” music being played in between “reggaton” and salsa rhythms, and by the beer and rum which are distributed along with sweets and cakes amongst the participants. The men control everything from the details of the procession to the distribution of beer and sweets. They gather on the back of the house where women are not allowed. Food and drinks are brought to the women on the living room and onto the outside of the house, on the street, where hundreds of community members remain to enjoy the festivity. Figure 24 – Image of the Virgen of Regla worshiped by the abacuá potency Efi Yumani, Simpson, Matanzas, Cuba Source: author’s heap Date: September 8th, 2015 310 The first thing that struck me about the festivity was the presence of other “abacuá” from Pueblo Nuevo and Cárdenas in the activity. It shows that, in the first case, communitarian networks go beyond the assorted general perceptions of the relations between the neighbourhoods, and the familiar ties of blood and “of saint” still remain within extend community logic. Even if, in the general picture, the neighbourhoods have taken different paths in relation to the strategies they have engendered in accommodating or resisting the impinging forces of the “official society”, individual and familiar historical consciousness coincide in moments that address shared traditional realities. As to the presence of people from Cárdenas, it reinforces the idea of the broadness of the class, blood, and “of saint” ties that connect the “abacuá” society, mainly in the two port-cities. The second thought I had from the procession related to the persistence of resilient manifestations of the African tradition among the community that reinforce the idea that they were not transculturated in to the dominant Cuban ethos. The champagne that was spilt onto the crowd at 2 de mayo street marks the abrupt transition from the Catholic related signs connected to the Virgin to full embrace of “abacuá” reality, purified by the presence of the íreme. That duality is clearly stated, although the Virgin remains of the background. The abacuá embrace the Virgin, which continues to participate in the public function. But the Virgin does not subdue abacuá representations and rhythms. It is as if abacuá have invited the Virgin to their party and she loved it so much she wants to come every year. Also, the crowd was very familiar, and the presence of outsiders was rarely acknowledged, bringing to the present similar images of the unimportance city society has often held to the neighbourhoods’ cultural manifestations, its people, its traditions. In addition, considering the celebration was a public function, open to every one in the streets, the non-presence is a picture of the fear that city society still has about the celebrations of the “abacuá” society. The “diablito”, the íreme, is cheered by the crowd in the neighbourhood, adults, children and even babies alike, but it still brings connotations of fear and savagery in the imagery constructed from the outside. 311 Another communitarian network resides along side with the only functioning “cabildo” in La Marina, the “Cabildo de Santa Teresa” [Cabildo of Saint Therese] which is run by Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, great-great-granddaughter of Blás Cardenas, distinguished babalawo lucumí who established the Cabildo in 1814. It is said to be the oldest cabildo in the city The cabildo has given wing to a lot of speculation about the date it was founded, its family heritage and ethnic ties, as well as in relation to its location in the neighbour of La Marina. Nevertheless, it remains undisputable that the cabildo is a reference for the members of La Marina, from where they draw connections to their traditions, their family relations within the neighbourhood and with the other black neighbourhoods in the city. It has resisted in the neighbourhood throughout all these years since it was founded creating around it a network of mutual aid in between families of all black neighbourhoods in Matanzas. No, the cabildo is there in front, where my grandmother first lived, a ‘solar’. There it was where she began her feast since October 9th until the 15th. […] This cabildo began in 1814 with Blás Cardenas, who was my grandmother’s grandfather. He was born in Pueblo Nuevo. He came with the slaves. He came with the forst babalawos who came to Cuba. Then my grandmother moved here to the block of my deceased grandfather Juan Villamil […] and reorganizaes the cabildo de Santa Teresa, with we have never let it fall again. […] NO, in 63 I was born, and in 64 my grandmother conferred me my saint, when I was 10 months old. I have 50 years of saint and I am pleased to be 51 years old. Blás Cárdenas was the grandfather of my grandmother, he was the daddy of the mother of my grandmother. […] My grandmother was called Tomasa Villamil Cárdenas [Translated by the author from the originalcliv interview with Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, La Marina, near the Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, Octubre 2014] Clara affirms that her family, the Villamil, came from Pueblo Nuevo, where probably the cabildo was founded by her great great grandfather, Blás Cárdenas. The family’s moving to La Marina was in the same period in which displacement of cabildos and other black societies and associations was promoted by the repression measures taken into effect by the Spanish colonial rule. The oppression imposed to black associations did not stop in the period of intensification of the United States presence on the Island, following the independence wars. Nevertheless, drawing from strategies of resistance around their family and traditional ties, the cabildo remained a refugee to the maintenance of such practices with its reorganization in La Marina. 312 Yes, my mommy moved to this street in 1944. They used to live in Pueblo Nuevo. My family in from Sumidero, but already in 1944, my mother came here, my grandmother rent a room here, because back then you could rent, a room here in the street, and then they remained here, my grandmother made here house here and we remained here. We were seen brothers then; today we are six. We are seven siblings but our family is immense; Villamil’s family, here in every block you can find a Villamil [Translated by the author from the originalclv dialogue with Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, La Marina, near the Cabildo de Santa Teresa, Matanzas, October 2014] Another interesting feature of the process of reorganization of the cabildo lies in the incorporation and practice of several distinct African based traditions and the interconnection with a trend of spiritualism. The crossing with the Regla del Palo Monte, the incidence of spiritualism practices, and the ties with the abacuá fraternity were verified by Reyes (2010) in the research the author made about the cabildo. The resulting amplified network translates the resistance strategies that were used within the cabildo to resist the stigma promoted by the local society in Matanzas. As seen, “cabildos” are a religious-mythical-political territory where those traditions are condensed (Evaristo, 2010). A tradition of resistance is based on the culture that is reorganized in those territories. This tradition has made communities, where those territories are located, resilient. From that resilience, historical consciousness may arise and it can be activated towards a collective mobilization. Such a territory is the “Cabildo de Santa Teresa” for La Marina. This resistance process allowed for broadening the network of mutual aid and help and the family and the ties of fraternity, “of saint”, and kinship among black families in Matanzas, condensed, reterritorialized and gathered in La Marina. One of the most visible forms that this network took was the connection among several temple houses that practiced distinct forms of African based cults, as well as spiritualistic practices, situated through the black neighbourhoods of Matanzas, with the Cabildo de Santa Teresa. From the relations reorganized in the cabildo, Reyes (2010) identified what he called a “the religious family of the cabildo”, complex ritualistic network of kinship. Kimbo, for instance, leader of the neighbourhood today, abaucuá, “santero” and “palero”, was born in Pueblo Nuevo, and sustains family, traditional and blood relations to the neighbourhood, despite the general sentiment of detachment from the extended community, discussed previously. 313 Figure 25 – Image of Saint Therese (Oyá) and Sain John Baptist (Oggún), at Clara’s house, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Aurthor’s reap Date: October 2014 The patron of the cabildo is Saint Therese, which represents Oyá, the deity of the pantheon Yoruba, owner of the rays, and tempests. Besides the image of the saint that remains at Clara’s house, a small representation of San Juan, Oggún in the Yoruban pantheon, lies modestly in green and red garment, small, but companion at the feet of Oyá. They form a couple, a duality that is said in the Yoruban legends that none can conquer. His unequal size by the feet of the image pays respect to the role of the yalorishas in the maintenance of the tradition, although Clara recognizes his importance, as the first patron of her blood family, the Villamils. It is also another feature of the interconnections between the traditional process, cultural manifestations, and strategies of resistance in the community, since the saint will be paraded in October, after the San Juan’s effigy was burnt in June, both manifestations 314 are embedded in the community’s traditions, and arise in the several historical consciousnesses the community make of their presence and culture in the space of the neighbourhood. Every year Clara, the present bearer of the traditions of her blood and religious family, dresses the saint with a new garment and parades the streets in procession, followed by the neighbourhood’s rumba groups. The procession starts in the Cabildo, located at Matanzas and Salamanca streets, and crosses all Daoiz Street until Jovellanos Street and comes back to the Cabildo, all inside La Marina. The procession gathers people from La Marina as well as from other points in the city who connect to the tradition. These people who could be seen otherwise as outsiders are referred in Clara’s narrative as the “great family of saint of the cabildo”. In October 14th the procession is held every year. This year I did at six p.m., but my family, after my grandmother died, decided to hold the procession like grandmother used to do, with the band and all those things. So, after 11 p.m. we take her out in procession and we move to the streets at midnight with the drums on our back. Oyá is Saint Therese of Jesus; Oggún, San Juan. He has to have what we call a sheep beside him, a calf it is really, and it is not a cross, it is a staff what he holds; it is his sceptre. […] Because our patrons; the Villamil family’s is Oggún; the first is Oggún. Oyá is the second; Oggún is the saint that the father of my grandmother, Juan Villamil inherited, without even having to be made the saint, and we were born under this rule, and then my grandmother is made in Oyá. There are some who are made in Oggún, because that is the way it is; they were made in Oggún but also Oyá. […] In addition, our cabildo does not only celebrate Oyá. We celebrate Oggún also, because of the inheritance of my grandfather which is still present. Until today maintain that. December 31st we also have the transcendence of the gift that was given to us by Juan Villamil [Translated by the author from the originalclvi dialogue with Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, La Marina, near the Cabildo de Santa Teresa, Matanzas, October 2014]. Although the “cabildo” remains as a reference to the community and many temple houses in the black neighbourhoods of Matanzas are connected to it, another form of network around the cult to the orishas is established having as a locus the houses of the families in the neighbourhoods. Each practitioner is connected to a temple house, which is run by a babalorisha [men] or yalorisha [women], often in their homes as well. However, there are ceremonies that each practitioner does privately at home. In numerous homes in La Marina, I would be invited in and the first thing I would see would be altars with colourfully garmented dolls to which offerings in liquor, cigar, 315 cigarettes and sweets were always placed by their feet. I was only when Barbara gifted a yalorisha artist in Havana, who makes dolls referring to the orishas off paper mache, dolls quilombola women from the quilombola community of Conceição das Crioulas, in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, that we came to know about their significance to these practitioners of the African based traditions in the Island. Barabra explained to the yalorisha that the dolls in Conceição das Crioulas are representations of the six quilombola women who bought the land where the community is situated today, with resources from the product of their work making oil from cotton seeds. Each of the women has a history of leadership in the community, which is represented in the way they are made. Francisca, the eldest of the women, is the only doll represented with no eyes stitched to her face, as the quilombola from Conceição das Crioulas believe she was illuminated and saw further ahead. When the yalorisha heard the name Francisca she was swept off her feet and ran to the living room to bring her own Francisca for us to see. Now we were bamboozled by the coincidence and ask her what the Francisca doll meant to her. The yalorisha explained that every practitioner of Santería and Palo Monte has a Francisca on their houses, who is their individual protector throughout their lives. Her comment took me right back to the dolls I saw in several houses in La Marina that were in distinguished places of their home, often side by side with a China-made soup recipient that had different shapes and colours, which I was explained then that were related to the saint of each person. Stimulated by the exchange, the yalorisha artist went on showing us more of her work with paper mache which included dolls of all sorts and also the “soperas”, soup recipients. She explained to us that the “soperas” are representations of the orisha of each person and vary in shape and colour according to the “saint” of the practitioner. 316 Figure 26 – Two Franciscas. Figure 27 – “Soperas” Figures 26 and 27 – Plastic Artist Yalorisha Mercedes, with her two Franciscas and with her “soperas”, La Ceiba, Havana, Cuba. Source: Pictures by Anthropologist Barbara Oliveira Date: July 2015 317 Before the procession of the Virgen of the abacuá potency Efi Yumani, I stopped by surprise at Milagro’s house to great them. The doors were all open and reggaton music was pouring out of the house. I found her daughters Diana and Lizandra, who are also part of the project “Identidad y Barrio La Marina” managing group by the door and, after greeting them, I realized that the floor was covered with sweets of all sorts place at the feet of two “soperas”. The blue fish like “sopera” was a representation of Yemanjá, Diana’s “saint”; and the yellowish round one, of Ochun, Lizandra’s. It was about nine o’clock pm, and I took advantage to stop by their house while waiting for the procession of the Virgin that would start at eleven down in Daoiz street, two blocks from their house. I was immediately given an exemplar of all the sweets by the feet of the Virgin and, as they knew I was affiliated with a candomblé house in Brazil, as I was asked to salute the “soperas” with shakes on the maraca and bell that were laid in front of them. I also deposited a symbolic bill to indicate my respects to the orishas. As I respectfully backed from the altar, I looked into the house and found several people drinking and dancing to the sound of the music. They would come in and go and Diana explained to me that they were her friends, neighbours, members of her temple house, the Ilé Ȩgbȩ Ǫgbǫn Ifá, as well as other practitioners from different temple houses in the neighbourhood. 318 Figure 28 – Representations of Yemanjá and Oshun at Milagros’ House, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Author’s reap Date: September 2015 Practitioners meet around these familiar celebrations that become a space for creating cohesion of practices, customs, and traditions in the community. When I talked to babalawo Tato Quiñones about how the “terreiros” of candomblé worked in Brazil, being not only the house of the babalorisha or yalorisha, but also where the practitioners gathered, their “saints” were settled, and where the trees, herbs, and fundaments of the house were worshiped, he noted that in Cuba, the stigmatization of the African based traditions throughout the colony, republican and revolution years had shaped the way Santería and Palo Monte cults were practiced. During the colonial times, the space of the “cabildo” was the place where they could maintain their traditions, always under the careful, close, and prejudiced surveillance of the colonial authorities and the “official society”. The “cabildos” had to be reorganized in amusement societies, labour associations, and other fraternities for 319 blacks during the republic that followed the independence wars, still impregnated it was with the black fear that had had spread all over the colony, following the slave insurrections in the Cuban plantations and cities as well as the Haitian Revolution. The colonial authority had taken measures to dissolve the “cabildos”, which, reorganized into these associations, remained territories where African based traditions resisted. With the Revolution and the drive for national unit, white clubs were unsegregated, but it also meant that these black societies would also have to go. That is why Tato Quinõnes (personal communication, 2015) affirms that, although some “cabildos” like the Santa Teresa in La Marina resisted the colonial, republican and revolution measures that intended at their dissolution, practitioners of the cult to the orishas had to resort to more familiar, private places. It is true for the temple houses and for the celebrations and worshiping of orishas that are done in the familiar homes. Nevertheless, the idea of a network of mutual aid and help among practitioners was preserved through their blood and “of saint” ties, such as the interaction I saw in Milagros’ house, and the celebration by the feet of the “soperas”. The tradition of resistance carried out in finding different strategies for the maintenance of these networks around the cult of the orishas through different adverse historical contexts has made the communities in which these practitioners live and practice their traditions resilient. Those are the networks community members find support in to address their present political struggles. They irradiate their tradition of resistance in the organization of the community and cultural manifestations, which become the material and immaterial products of this resilience, slowly, intensively, and insistently impregnated into their culture. La comparsa de Imaliana [Comparsa of Imaliana], presente en el barrio de La Marina hoy, es heredera de este proceso de resiliencia. According to García Rodríguez (unpublished), the Comparsa of Imaliana “was created in 1952 by broup of inhabitants by a renonwed musician of La Marina [Chá-Chá], through the triumph of the Revolution and was maintained active until 1983, when it disappears until 2001, when it is revived 320 thanks to the efforts of the organization of the neighbours, rallied by a natural leader [Kimbo]” [Translated by the author from the originalclvii]. The Comparsas are communitarian groups that gather around the festivities of Carnival that are traditional in Cuba. Carnival festivities in Cuba are held around the month of August and may last from two weeks, like in Havana, to three days, like to the one in Matanzas. The comparsas are accompanied by rumba groups, each with its thematic song, referring to political circumstances, criticism, or traditions in the neighbourhoods of origin, like the Imaliana. Figure 29 – Comparsa of Imaliana’s Reharsal, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Project Identidad y Barrio Date: August 2015 Imaliana’s components are dressed in blue and white garments; their heads covered, and carry scimitars, representing the Arabic motifs that characterized their first appearance in 1952. The year saw the formation of the most famous rumba group in 321 Cuba, the Muñequitos de Matanzas, who have won three Grammys, and were originally from La Marina, founders of the Comparsa Imaliana, such as Chá-Chá. The musicians are not always, but often members of the abacuá society; the Cabildo Santa Teresa is rendered honours on the path of the Comparsa; “santería” women from the community are dancers and choreographers; and the streets of the neighbourhood are their stage, all intertwined in between their history and culture, and alive in their historical consciousness. Well, my sister was founder of the Imaliana. She perfomed in the Imaliana. My brother Gustavo also; I performed in the Imaliana. I was a dancer of Imaliana, but I have also directed it; being a choreographer. […] A rumba was formed as quickly as that and the Muñequitos that were form La Marina, from this solar, today they don’t say it, but they are from this solar, from the room of their director Florencio Caes Peraza, alias Catalino, from this solar. [Translated by the author from the originalclviii dialogue with Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, near the Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, October 2014] This year’s Carnival the Comparsa Imaliana did not parade in the streets of La Marina. Four Comparsas were financed by the local government and strangely La Marina’s Comparsa was left out of the arrangement. Community decided that they would not parade this year again with their garments torn out, and no support from government, what places them in an unequal position to compete against the others. The Comparsa had been wining first prizes since its recreation in 2001, weighting on the richness of their songs and presentation, connected to the neighbourhood’s Afro traditions. Kimbo (personal communication, 2015), the present director of the Comparsa, said they would not participate in this year’s Carnival and that served as a statement to the authorities. The Traditional Food Festival is a newer communitarian creation that is not relationed to dismantled past events. Born of an idea that circulated among members of the previous “Proyecto Socio Cultural”, the festival gathers community members in the “parquecito”, La Marina’s square, who present to the community dishes that related to traditional preparations that allude to their memory and present of what was cooked to the stevedores and is still reproduced in their houses and inside their religious-mythic-political territories. 322 Figure 30 – Traditional Food Festival, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Author’s reap Date: April 2015 The dishes are “fricassee de chivo y puerco”, “guizado de cangrejo”, “tostones”, “pescado enchillado”, “ropa vieja”. The dishes are made with the food that was available to the community and that they could more easily find fishing in the river and the sea or raising pigs at their diminutive backyards. It is interesting to note that these same dishes are not at all strange to what is served in State-run restaurants and even in some “paladars”. The coincidence reminded me of how traditional dishes in Brazil, such as the “feijoada”, the “munguzá”, or the “feijão tropeiro”, which have documented connections with ethnic or racially bound territories and historical and cultural circumstances, are incorporated into the Brazilian ethos, robbed of their signification. The Traditional Food Festival is, nevertheless, pure historical consciousness activated at work, because the connection they make, although being aware of the “Cubanity” connotation to which the dishes have been associated, is to their traditions. 323 These cultural manifestations draw on historical consciousnesses that connect the neighbourhood with their history and culture. The way that they are accessing this historical consciousness now and materializing in their struggle for institutionalization has on these cultural manifestations forms of visualizing their struggles and bringing cohesion and awareness about their traditions both to the neighbourhood, to their extended community, and to the “official society”. In order to understand how this process works in the present, it is fundamental to understand the way the “marineros” have constructed their history, with patches from the literature available, which rarely mentions them, and their narratives from the moments they encounter that literature and those moments that remain in their oral histories and traditions. The present struggle to re-write their history on their own terms draws on both history and culture. It lies in between history and culture and contests the dominant version available. 324Chapter 10 - The “Papa Fría”, the “Papa Tíbia”, the “Papa Floja”, and the “Papa Caliente” I had been coming in and out of La Marina for over a year since the time I settled my commitment as a collaborator in the “Proyecto Identidad y Barrio La Marina”. On a hot Sunday morning of March this year, Kimbo gathered children from the neighbourhood for an activity on a street that is close to the Yumuri River, in the heart of La Marina. Kimbo told me that La Marina was divided into the “papa fria” [cold potato], on the outskirts of the neighbourhood, near Contreras street, where identification with being “marinero” was feeble and people are trying to disconnect with the neighbourhood and the stereotyped image it carries; the “papa tíbia”, referring to the part of the neighbourhood where people identify with participating only mainly in the occasions when cultural manifestations are being performed in the streets; “papa floja” [loose potato], inside the neighbourhood, where people could shift their identification according to their best case scenario of allegiance; and the “papa caliente” [hot potato], near the river, where there was nowhere to run from their identity as “marineros”. According to Kimbo, the activity had no way to go wrong because we were in the “papa caliente”. And just like that, thirty or more kids popped out of their houses on Salamanca street and their chatter made everyone curious about what was going on. One kid talked to another, who asked their parent’s permission to participate in the activity, and so on. In a matter of two minutes we were surrounded by children of ages that ranged from 2 to 16. 325 Figure 31 – Drawing 1 Figure 32 – Drawing 1 and kids Figure 33 – Drawing 2 Figures 31, 32, and 33 - The children of La Marina and their drawings about the neighbourhood, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Author’s reap Date: March 1st, 2015 326 The children made drawings, mostly connected to positive images about the neighbourhood. Figure 31 shows the “parquecito”, where La Marina begins, according to the girl who drew it. The children also depicted the Yumuri River, fish, a girl from the neighbourhood, as well as their houses with flowers. The houses are simple, but tidy, and the flowers add to an image of an organized and rustic neighbourhood. Parts of this image do not fully connect with the visual and sensorial experience I had walking through La Marina. They are also contradictory to the depictions made by communitarian members in their narratives, relating to the lack of public infrastructure, public lighting, sewage system, leisure locations, schools, cultural places, as well as the poor condition of their own homes. The positive image is even more intense in the second map (Figure 33) that another group of kids made about the neighbourhood. The children represented in the drawings some public equipment and places that I could not identify in the neighbourhood and are not present in the narratives of community members, such as the soccer field, the “plasoleta”, also know as the “parquecito”, La Marina’s square, the “parque de diversiones” [amusement park], and the “escuela secundaria” [Junior High School], which was closed in 2010. Later talking to the children on different occasions I could realize that those places do exist, just not the way I had them pictured in my mind. The first thing that comes to my mind when I picture La Marina are the narrow streets, boxed in by a wall of run-down “solares” [sort of twin-houses that are geminated together], bustling with kids playing “pelota” [baseball] with sticks and paper balls. Prior to seeing their drawings, I had not realized how the streets are much more versatile for kids in the neighbourhood. The soccer field is improvised there in the street, the amusement park is there just around the corner in every kid’s game, and the “escuela secundaria” is still present in the streets they have to cross to get to “the other neighbourhood’s school”, since theirs was closed. Azevedo (2013) dialoguing with Ingold (2011) sees drawings as a form of connecting observations and description experiences that end up being “narrative 327 compositions” rather than mere illustrations of narratives. For the anthropologist “images and texts can be read simultaneously”. Ingold (2011: 9) sees drawings as a way to connect those visual and descriptive experiences filling in the hiatus produced at times by disconnected images of time and space. If there is a hiatus at the heart of ethnography, it is not then between participation and observation, for these are in truth aspects of one and the same movement. It is rather between observation and description. How might they be re-joined? One way to do so might be to think of description in the first place as a process of line-making rather than verbal composition. And this leads us back to drawing (Ingold, 2011, p. 9). So the images drawn by the kids of La Marina about their neighbourhood are “narrative compositions” that fill in their fragmented historic and culture impressions of their community. They express their historical consciousness about the place they live. The images of places, moments, and things which cannot be seen are drawn among those that are actually there for the participant to behold and describe, like the “Círculo Edad de Oro” [Age of Gold Elementary School], the boats in the river and plenty of fishing, as well as the kids themselves playing in the streets. However, even these places, moments, and things are tinted by their own perception of the settings, compared with my own visual experience, which told me that “Edad de Oro” had a much smaller covered-roof part that did not make it look as nice; boats that I could spot in the river looked like rustic vessels with no engines like the drawings suggested; fishing is quite sporadic for inhabitants of La Marina today because the river has been polluted by sewage; the kids I saw playing in La Marina are almost all black and their hair is curly; and I do not remember seeing flowers spread throughout the neighbourhood. These spatial and visual connections all link back to the several historical consciousnesses of the neighbourhood, how the neighbourhood came to be, how it has resisted over the years, and how it identifies in the present. The kids expressed with their drawings not only what they wish their neighbourhood was like, but also how they experience it. The representations express all the “papas” of La Marina through their living experience. 328 The drawings also relate to the present struggle “marineros” are undertaking, bringing their cultural manifestations out of the “papa fria” and into the city life, away from the stigmatization that has relegated them to the lower social positioning expected of them. They want to arise from the dirt (Douglas, 1966) that has separated them from society and constructed the image of a place that is conflictive and undeserving. In the “papa tibia” remain the shortcomings in their resistance strategies in creating community’s cohesion amid such strong impinging forces that have drawn members away from identifying fully as “marineros”. In the “papa floja” lie the present expectations around the history that is being re-written, as well as the accomplishments and challenges in facing “official society” and their own histories. Within the “papa caliente”, their traditions are sedimented in their historical consciousness in order to build their collective identity, aimed at shifting their social positioning. 329 Figure 34 - Map of the “Black Neighbourhoods” of Matanzas, Cuba - La Marina, Simpson and Pueblo Nuevo. Source: Author’s ethnographic work from narratives of community members of the three neighbourhoods. Date: November, 2015. 330 The history of La Marina lies in between those four “papas”, as historical consciousness lies in in between history and culture. From their narratives we were able to bring several historical consciousnesses at the individual, family and community levels together. An important part was to collectively dig back through history, and follow it forward to discover the history of the neighborhood. The neighbourhood of La Marina is connected to almost all of what has happened and made history in Matanzas. Although a marginal importance is conferred on the neighbourhood, making it nearly invisible, its presence and identity are felt in the local society and in the development of the municipality, from its foundations to the present. Today, the neighbourhood is located at the “south margin of the River Yumurí, until it reaches the Yumurí bay, and limits with one of the most hectic streets of the city ‘Contreras’” [Translated by the author from the originalclix] (Daniel, 2007: 125). The neighbourhood, since its foundation, is known as being “of blacks” (Escalona, 2008), and once covered much more space than it is considered to now. Much of the area was gradually taken from it, following interests deeply connected to the city’s political, economic, social, and cultural development, from which the inhabitants of La Marina have been ousted. Matanzas, “La Atenas de Cuba”, is also La Marina, with its African tradition, its stevedores, its cultural manifestations, its political exponents, and its strategic position. San Carlos y San Severino de Matanzas was founded in the year 1693, as a way to develop the Yumurin region and protect Havana with fortifications against the impertinent French who threatened the region (Ruiz et al, 2001). Since before its foundation, the presence of African enslaved was identified. They came from Mandinga, Gangae, Mina, Lucumí, Carabalí, and Congo ethnic groups107clx. However, it was only after the development of the slave-run sugarcane plantation, beginning in 107 “It is important to note that these definitions were used by the slave traffickers. These definitions grouped several diverse peoples from the African linguistic family ‘kwa’, such as the Yoruba (oyó, egbá, ilesha, ifé, etc.), the Nupe (also known as takua in Cuba), the mossí, as well as the warí (from Burkina Faso)” [Translated by the author from the original] (Guanche, 1996: 51). 331 1763, that the relation between white and black people in the city would change to reveal the size and importance of the contribution of the enslaved. The presence of black people in Matanzas precedes the inauguration of the port and the foundation of the city. Since 1955, this presence can be accounted for when it constituted 23% of the total, being 48,1% identified as red or indigenous, 22,2% white, 6,7% mixed. From then on, the black population will grow, but always in numeric disadvantage to the white, until 1817 when the process begins to revert. [Translated by the author from the originalclxi] (Escalona, 2008:20). Right about this time, at the end of the 18th century, the history of the neighbourhood of La Marina was born, which then received the denomination of San Sebástian. A captain of the mixed and brown battalion, who had intended to set up his estate there, disdainfully characterized it as a “neighborhood of blacks”. With the inauguration of the port, in 1763, the neighbourhood grew, drawing on its connection to this economic activity, reaching the whole area between the rivers Yumurí and San Juan – “La Marina from river to river” (Juan García Fernández. Artistic Director, Researcher, y Ethnologist. Documental Bendita Sea La Marina, CMMLK, 2009). From a historical point of view this neighbourhood [San Sebástian] is the origin of the one, which goes by the name of La Marina, where with greater strength, presently, are preserved African originated cults in the city of Matanzas, along with the neighbourhoods of Simpson and Pueblo Nuevo. In the end of the XVIII century it was characterized as a neighbourhood of blacks by a captain of the mixed and brown battalion who asked for a land in order to settle with his family in this zone. In the 19th century its population and territorial space increased reaching the immediate zone connected to the port, which was known as La Marina amongst the population, because it was situated in between the river and the bay. It is located at the North margin of the Yumurí River [Translated by the author from the originalclxii] (Escalona, 2008: 151-152). Tato Quiñones (2014) calls those who remained at the margin of the social-political construction of the nation, but who played a fundamental role that at times has been erased, and forgotten by the ruling elite, the “pueblos sin historia” [People without history]. Supported by the oral history that was passed on to him by his ancestors, Kimbo, Raúl Domínguez Valdés, leader of the neighbourhood in the present, connects the banks of the San Juan River, where the “barracones” [where the enslaved were grouped before they were sent to the plantation or placed in the 332 city] were located, with the margin of the Yumurí River, to where La Marina grew, according to Escalona (2008). This whole area would constitute La Marina. Such a conformation could not hold until the present because of a process of forced displacement based on prejudice and fear against black people, their traditions, and their necessary but inconvenient presence. In the past, La Marina was from river to river, because there were the ‘barracas’ in the San Juan River, where they pushed the slaves. Today, this zone has no name, when I tell you that it has no name it is because there is La Marina, there is Playa, there is Simpson. What would you call this chunk here? From Contreras to here they say ‘Centro” [Center], historic center. Center of what? […] The Center should be situated in La Marina, because La Marina is from the Yumurí until the San Juan, which makes seven blocks, from river to river. […] Well, I will explain to you, in the investigation that we made, down Ayuntamiento, right and left they say ‘Ojo de Agua del Popó’, the famous Popó, which is from here to right down on the bridge of La Marina, Manzano until you get to the corner. Because today people living in Contreras they do not feel [marineros] because it is the central avenue, they think that they are from Center, and what they do not know is that La Marina is the entrance of Matanzas. The symbol of Matanzas is the bridge and the road from Havana to here, to your right, this is La Marina [Translated by the author from the originalclxiii dialogue with Kimbo, La Marina, Matanzas. September 2014. From this perspective, the majority of “La Atenas de Cuba”’s reference points, which are regarded by Matanza’s population as the cultural nest of the country, would be situated within La Marina. The Sauto Theater, the Athens Coffee Shop, The Vigía Square, the Firefighter’s Headquarters, the Liberty’s Square, the Concordia Bridge, even the Junco Palace, seat of the Provincial Government, would be situated inside La Marina. It is certain that the neighbourhoods are born; they develop or fragment, according to historical circumstances and social-economic movements of the city. Nevertheless, the process of the ghettoization of an inconvenient, marginalized, invisible population bearing a specific colour can be identified following the city’s development. It is worth stressing that the concept of ‘Atenas de Cuba’ [Athens of Cuba] responded to a pure elitist drive. It was the project of a class that believed it was the bellybutton of the Colony, and to express all its strength, raised culture up high. Apart from this drive, as it could not have been different, were the popular and folkloric manifestations. The sumptuous epithet did not regard the contribution of the blacks. [Translated by the author from the originalclxiv] (Martínez Carmenate, 2000). 333 The neghbourhood of La Marina is the other history of Matanzas or the other face of the coin of Matanzas? The neighbourhood of La Marina appears together with the neighbourhood of Ojo de Agua and Yumuri, right at the coast margin of Matanzas. This population is humble, this population is clearly black, and descendent from African enslaved. [Translated by the author from the originalclxv] (Juan García Fernández. Artistic Director, Researcher, y Ethnologist. Documental Bendita Sea La Marina, CMMLK, 2009). Form the “barracones” until the plantations. From the “barracones” until the city. The sugarcane plantation was a large-scale enterprise that involved land, money, and an enormous amount of black human beings. Other blacks from Jamaica and Puerto Rico were added to the Africans brought from the continent, placed mainly on the plantations, but also in the city as constructor workers, house wives, and also merchants and artisans, when they were freed. “It is interesting to note that at the peak of the plantations’ production, the percentage of enslaved placed in the city [Matanzas] was barely superior to those placed at sugar factories” [translated by the author from the originalclxvi] (Escalona, 2008: 21) Cuban population was made, mainly, of two great racial groups: white and black. The blacks were divided in ‘morenos y pardos’ [mestizos and mixed], who were freed men, and slaves. Among the blacks, a distinction was made between those who were born free and those who had been freed. Among the freemen, there was a small minority who had their own business, who dedicated to arts and offices: coachmen, tailors, carpenters, musicians, bricklayers, cooks, activities devaluated by ‘criollo’ white people [white identified people who were born in the Colony]. There was another small minority of blacks who had a broad culture and great artistic talent. […] It is true that a great majority was illiterate, but not all of them […]. At the Island there had always been a mix black population who had had several free generations and that was as capacitated to the public life as any person who arrived from the Spanish peninsula or most ‘criollo ’white people. Due to the economic position of their family, they were able to study in Europe, or were great artisans. [Translated by the author from the originalclxvii] (Arrechea, 2004: 53-54) The interaction of this black population with Matanzas’ society was marked by prejudice and discrimination from the high and middle sectors of the local population (white). These sectors saw blacks as inferior and in need of “civilizing”, regardless of their attempts to seek a better social positioning by means of education or applying their skills. Their cultural manifestations were demonized, with Christianity and repression as their ultimate remedy. Their inconvenient presence would force them to the margins of the city. 334 In between the alternatives to subdue or resist, a lot of those African enslaved, along with freed blacks as well as mixed, engendered strategies of resistance supported by the heritage and tradition of their ancestors. La Marina was where the confluence of a majority black population produced social interactions that arrived at intense resistance processes, developed through the connection of its people with the work at the port where products from all the coastlands Havana-Matanzas were shipped, and the proximity to the city center, from where political processes were developed. Matanzas’ port was one of the most important in Cuba, if not because of the great amount of products from the sugarcane industry (the province produced 55.56% of all national sugar production in 1857) and strategic position, considering there were no navigable rivers and the poor condition of the roads in the zone (Castañeda, 2002), then because of the African enslaved traffic. Almost all enslaved black workforce would arrive in Cuba through Matanzas. At the port, the enslaved were forced to carry bags made of henequen [agave fiber] filled with 200 or 250 kilograms of sugar, under a work regime that came to be known as “caballaje”. The “negro caballo” [black horse] was not signed up for the job, which was officially for the other, normally white, but also sometimes mixed or freed blacks. They would hire the “negro caballo” to work in their place for 30 until 50% of the wage they receive at the port. There were people who had fixed Jobs. I worked at the port in the begging of the Revolution, […] I was signed up in the 2 lists of the day. They would call my name and I would go. As I was thin and weak, they would put me in the packing and as water boy. But I go a job there as a ‘caballo’ […] they would call me from the list and I would board the boat and went there [to the port] […] A man came and paid us all everyday […] That is why everything is connected, the Virgin, the customs, the stevedores, the forklift drivers, the river San Juan, all this has some kind of religion, the bars, the prostitutes. [Translated by the author from the originalclxviii dialogue with Fedor Monet, La Marina, Matanzas, February 2015]. La Marina was home to a lot of those “caballos” who had being positioned by the banks of the Yumurí River, where boats would collect them to go to the port. Conveniently hidden in La Marina, though very close to the port, the blacks from the neighborhood were an abundant, easy, and cheap workforce who played a subaltern 335 yet decisive role to the city’s economic process. Although they were exploited under this unfair system, it was at the port that black people had the main form of economic income, since the implementation and intensification of commerce at the city’s port, in 1818, with the liberation of commerce to all countries, until 1930, when the port of Matanzas became one of the most expensive ports in the world, wounded from lack of modernization and depth for docking larger ships (Ruiz et all, 2001). Yes, I worked at the port, I worked in the boat too, and I work at the docks. […] This at this time was called ‘caballo’. [For example] I had a fixed job and you worked for me, and gave me half, that is what is called ‘caballo’, and it happened because people had their necessities and if I had a fixed job, I would get someone and say, well, you go and work, boy let me go in your place, well, yes, go. He collected the wages and game me half. That was called ‘caballo’, and that is how several people lived here, they dressed on it, they ate on it, […] the ‘caballos’ almost lived better than the ones who had fixed jobs, because the ‘caballo’ worked today for me and tomorrow for the other and I did not work every day, because he [caballo] went for me, and for the other, the other, and the other, and I didn’t, I only went one day. [Translated by the author from the originalclxix dialogue with Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, La Marina, Matanzas. October 2014] It is confirmed in the narratives of the members of La Marina that still today there is a strong relation of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood with the port. “Caballaje”, they say reached the outskirts of the Revolution, but it did not thrive within the context of equality policies that came along with it. Raimundo remembers the day Fidel Castro went to Matanzas and asked the workers at the port what was “caballaje”. There were (and still are) stevedores who had doubts about the Commander’s resolve to abolish “caballaje”. Raimundo is among then, because “the ‘caballos’ almost lived better than the ones who had fixed jobs, because the ‘caballo’ worked today for me and tomorrow for the other”. In his narrative of the events, he presents his way of seeing history through his participation in it, aided by several historical consciousnesses that he activates on the individual level, but also from what he heard from his mates at the port, from the perceptions of his family and community in the neighbourhood. Even though they knew the regime presupposed that they did such inhumane work while others would get paid for nothing, those social-economic relations were so deeply 336 imbricated into the lives of the inhabitants of La Marina that even with the abolition of “caballaje” by the Revolution, there were “marineros” who doubted their destiny without the support of “caballaje” to work at the port. The income they got was decisive for their way of life and granted them social status in the community. Surrounded by these socio-economic conditions, blacks in the city had to work out strategies other than the “cimarronage” that was promoted by the brothers and sisters in the coffee and sugarcane plantations. Nevertheless, those strategies had equal if not superior impact. Along with other black neighbourhoods in the city, such as Simpson and Pueblo Nuevo, the urban Cimarron resisted the slave regime by means of the persistence of traditional organizational practices, class ties, and “of saint” religious presence weaved from their culture. Although the resistance of the servants had had a constant and diverse presence in the island of Cuba, their most significant manifestations had been the frequent insurrections that took place at the sugarcane and coffee plantations since the 1820’s. From 1843, these rebellions started to be characterized by their amplitude and organization. In that year, there were insurrections at the Alcancía, La Luisa, La Trinidad, Las Nieves, and La Aurora sugarcane factories, at the Moscú coffee plantation and at the pastureland Ranchuelo. The enslaved who were building the Cárdenas-Bemba railroad also mutinied, and, at finally, the slaves at the Triunvirato and Ácana sugarcane plantations. The wave of the seditious movement reached the entire Colón coastlands when the slaves invaded La Concepción, San Miguel, San Lorenzo y San Rafael sugarcane plantations [Translated by the author from the originalclxx] (Zequeira; Barcia Paz, 2001). Reid (2004) describes the consecutive burnings of the plantations that was used as a strategy by the enslaved to position themselves against the colonizers the year just before La Escalera in 1844. The experience gathered from these burnings might as well have been a basis for the insurrection that took place with the Conspiracy. The experience came from the field, through their several connections with the city, as it is depicted by Zequeira y Barcia Paz (2001). In early November of 1843, slaves revolted in western Cuba’s rich sugar district in Sabanilla, Matanzas. Starting with the Triunvirato sugar plantation, the group continued to the neighboring Ácana plantation, where slaves had rebelled a few months prior. Burning property in their path and dragging hesitant bondsmen with them, insurgent slaves left six whites dead and numerous wounded. By the time the rebels arrived at the nearby Concepción plantation early the next morning, the local magistrate had been alerted and ordered mounted troops to subdue the uprising. Instead, arriving slaves drove off the forces and, joined by thirty Concepción slaves, set fire to the grounds. Two more sites, San Lorenzo 337 and San Miguel, suffered damage as slaves continued their rebellion for another day. An armed confrontation with a cavalry regiment and civilians finally stopped the revolt. (Reid, 2004: 3) […] the criteria about the existence of these plantations as isolated enclaves, with slaves barred from having connections with the exterior, is a historical construction that does not stand up to the scientific analysis of the problem. The social microcosms of the plantation – supported by multiple documents – shows several types of relations between masters and slaves, between enslaved and free workers, between servants and merchants, and in between members of the different sugarcane and coffee plantations. If these forms of sociability had not taken place, the rapid dispersion of the seditious movement would not have been possible [Translated by the author from the originalclxxi] (Zequeira; Barcia Paz, 2001). It is quite curious, the coincidence between La Escalera Conspiracy, the insurrection that produced the strongest and most horrendous reaction from the Spanish authorities in the Colony, and the biggest fire in La Marina, in 1844. In “el año del cuero”108 [the year of the lash] La Marina would witness a fire that had immediate effects on the households and lives of inhabitants of the neighbourhood. These effects would be felt far beyond the fire that consumed the entire neighbourhood and the ashes that were left of their wooden homes with balsa leaf roofs. The images of “el fuego grande” [the great fire] remain in the oral history of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, based on the narratives of their grandfathers and grandmothers. It was a fire that would have been set by “el pueblo” [the people]. This fire was there, it was in a pharmacy that was there. Here there was another fire, ‘Tamborín’ set it because we wanted to, in front of the soap store, where there was the storehouse, and there he set fire. We would call him ‘Tamborín’, we don’t know his name, and this was his nickname. It was a big fire in this corner, a pharmacy they burnt. […] What I know is that it was the people that set the fire to the pharmacy. […] The owners smuggled rum. The people set the fire. I don’t recall who lived there [Translated by the author from the originalclxxii dialogue with Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, La Marina, Matanzas, October 2014]. After the fire, the burnt neighbourhood was re-occupied by the marginal population. These were mainly black, but also Chinese, hired to work at the 108 For references on La Escalera Conspiracy see: Reid-Vazquez, Michele. The Year of the Lash. Free People of Color in Cuba and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World. Early American Places Series, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011. According to the author, the conspiracy came to be know as La Escalera, because of the punishment that was inflicted on the conspirers, tying them to a “escalera” [latter], and whipping them to their death, on after the other. 338 plantations and at the port. The “Chinos” were introduced to Cuba after the prohibition of the African enslaved traffic, which followed the agreements made between Spanish colonizers and British authorities109. La Escalera also played a role in the composition of the new neighbourhood, since “el miedo al negro” [black fear] was spread all around, connected to a more general fear of an insurrection in the Haitian fashion. This fear generated strategies of importation of European and Asian people, as a way to maintain sugarcane production and at the same time diminish black population in the Island110. Because this was created, because La Marina was a swamp, and after they began little by little to create a neighbourhood. The entire La Marina was a swamp and little by little they began to make houses. But before they made these houses, there was Simpson, there was the creation of Simpson. After they downed from Simpson and began to fabricate. They made this neighbourhood, neighbourhood it wasn’t really, it was more like prostitution and bars, at all corners there was a bar [Translated by the author from the originalclxxiii dialogue with Kimbo, La Marina, Matanzas, September 2014]. Blacks, here there were more blacks then…, although they mixed, black remains as the predominant color. Here there was a lot of Chinese; they had business and all, dry cleaners. They got along with everyone [Translated by the author from the originalclxxiv dialogue with Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, morador de La Marina. October 2014]. All of us, almost all of the ‘marineros’ and ‘marineras’ are descendants of black slaves, our ancestors who got together and mixed with Chinese, and with every vagabond and poor soul that was in Matanzas, and went to dwell in La Marina (Maria Mercedes Valdés Casanova, inhabitant of La Marina. Documental Bendita Sea La Marina, CMMLK, 2009). The resistance practices of these marginal inhabitants were materialized, therefore, hand-in-hand with repression processes. These processes, which were 109 For references on the effects of British slave traffic regulations on Cuba at the time of La Escalera see: Curry-Machado, Jonathan. How Cuba burned with the ghosts of British slavery: Race, abolition and the Escalera Published in ‘Slavery and Abolition’, 25:1 (April 2004), pp.71-93. 110 “La Escalera exacerbated colonial tensions over slavery and agricultural production. To prevent further upheaval, in 1845, Spanish authorities implemented a new law to abolish the slave trade. Acquiring slaves, legally and illegally, became increasingly difficult. Without sufficient chattel labor, however, planters feared that the lucrative sugar industry would collapse. Furthermore, news that the black population had reached a majority on the island shocked the white sector. This reality, combined with the wave of uprisings, sparked renewed fears of a Haitian-style slave revolt. These combined pressures pushed colonial authorities, planters, and merchants to explore ways to reduce the size of the population of African descent and the island’s dependency on them for labor. [...] These realities forced colonial Cuban authorities and planters to consider importing free agricultural workers, white and non-white. A series of plans emerged to contract Europeans, Asians, and in spite of the perceived danger, Africans to solve Cuba’s agricultural labor shortage (Reid, 2004: 122-123). 339 connected to black fear, were transformed with time, incorporating new connotations. They were, however, widely diffused throughout the colonial period, following the insurrections and conspiracies, continued during the period of domination from the United States, remaining in the dictatorial years, and felt in the heart from the Revolution until the present. References for this type of resistance were in the “cabildos”, which, after the Revolution tried to suppress their organizational function, following the idea of national unity, became “sociedades y agremiaciones de socorro, ayuda, recreo” [societies and groups of help, aid and amusement] (Arrechea, 2004), disguised of their African and black connections. De la Fuente (2014) points out that even disguised as societies and groups of help, aid and amusement, black associations were persecuted during the Revolution period, intensifying in the “gray quinquenium”, ans making them nearly disappear, and resume to dormant forms of organization. Resistance, nevertheless, was also undertaken through the “comparsas” in the Carnival and in the network of mutual aid among families from the black neighbourhoods, which were also the targets of the repression from the authorities. These are the social manifestations, weaved as strategies of resistance, from which the inhabitants of the black neighbourhoods of Matanzas have constructed their social organization and identity. Out of all neighbourhoods of Matanzas, La Marina is where all these characteristics ended up being weaved into strategies of resistance, which is the basis for the construction of the neighbourhood’s identity that makes them resilient in the present. As it is argued by Arrechea (2004), the end of the 19th century saw black fear become intensified by the insurrections that took place during that century, and it materialized into a colonial policy of organized repression to the black organizations in the Island. At this moment, several “cabildos” are converted into instruction and amusement societies with a clear intention to take from them their role not only as religious-mythic-political territories where African based traditional practices were 340 maintained, but also to isolate their leaders who were then already distinguished voices in the colonial society111clxxv. Supported by savings collected from their members, the “cabildos” had not only freed enslaved Africans, but also to instructed them and granted them distinct social positioning. In the context of the peak of the abolitionist process that was going to arrive in the following years, the necessity to reorganize the domination mechanisms was imminent. Spain asked to the coloured element that they convert their ‘cabildos’ and ‘confradías’ [fraternities] into societies of instruction and amusement, but taking after the pattern of the white societies. This obliges us to ask what were the intentions of the Metropolis in formulating this petition; to precisely what did it expect from the blacks and what benefits it expected to have with that policy being at the doors of total abolition of slavery and in full force of a process that would end up in a radical change of the economic regime [Translated by the author from the originalclxxvi] (Arrechea, 2004: 8) Being the religious-mythic-political territories that they were, strategies of resistance continued to be developed from the Afro-Cuban fraternities and groups that the “cabildos” were transformed into, like schools, casinos, societies of aid and other clubs. They did so by their very connection to the African tradition; because they remained connected to the several temple houses that continued to work, if clandestinely; because of the network of kinship and “of saint” practices among the families of the black neighbourhoods. They resisted through forceful displacements and changes in the city’s configuration. All these processes resulted in the reconfiguration of the networks of mutual aid and support that have perpetuated until the present. […] a lot of the new societies of mestizos and mixed will become nothing other than the old ‘cabildos’ disguised, according to governmental ruling, but firm in their intentions to veil and 111 “In Cuba, maybe the most influential form of such a posture against the African fraternity was at December 19th 1884, when the Spanish colonial government prohibited that cabildos of nation go out on the streets in the ‘Día de Reyes’, and four years later, at April 4th, 1888, when obliged them to transform into Catholic fraternities, making them almost virtually disappear as a tool of colonial slave governmental control. [...] the abolition of slavery in Cuba will also be the begging of the dismantle by the elites and the colonial State of the autonomous associative fraternal and mutual aid forms that in a prodigious way developed in the shadow of the cabildos of nation” (Quiñones, 2014: 8). 341 preserve the rich and dynamic cultural elements of African origin [Translated by the author from the originalclxxvii] (Arrechea, 2004: 14) These networks are the bases to which blacks turned to place themselves in the social-economic relations of the city. In the narratives of community members it is clear that members of Simpson rented places in La Marina so that they could be closer to the transportation collection spots for workers for the port. The Syndicate of Stevedores still remains to the day in La Marina at Street Daoiz, at number 8, in between Callejón de Mala and Magdalena. Raimundo’s father, who worked for the Stevedore’s Syndicate, belonged originally to the forklift drivers’ organization in Pueblo Nuevo. “Everyone got along well”, said Raimundo, referring to this network of mutual aid and help that was based on class, but also blood and “of saint” relations that are preserved, condensed, and re-worked in the religious-mythic-political territories, which once were called “cabildos”, remained dormant as fraternities, casinos, schools, and syndicates, and are renewed in La Marina’s narratives as “cabildos”, temple houses, and abacuá potencies. I lived inside the stevedore’s syndicate; this was at Daoiz, number 8, in between Callejón de Mala and Magdalena. Inside there were several syndicates, my father belonged to the people of San Juan, the stevedores belonged to this one here. So, I lived there, inside, everyone got along well, as everyone had their syndicate and its department [Translated by the author from the originalclxxviii dialogue with Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, La Marina, Matanzas, October 2014]. 342 Figure 35 – Seat of the Stevedores of the Port of Matanzas’ Syndicate, La Marina, Matanzas, Cuba. Source: Author’s reap Date: October 2014 There is probably a starting point for the reorganization of an idea of an extended community that grew between the black neighbourhoods. That idea, as we have seen, was also developed with Pueblo Nuevo, following class, blood and “of saint” ties. However, historical processes and the way communities resisted or accommodated them have shaped the extended community in Simpson to the present and not in Pueblo Nuevo. That does not mean that there are not still ties related to all three original connections. It means that both La Marina and Simpson access one another as part of the same logic and the same heritage, within common frameworks of understanding, which are fragmented in relation to Pueblo Nuevo. An important feature of the extended network idea is that it remains apart from the superficial current events. It can be re-worked and reorganized almost endlessly. There is no evidence that prevents it from being re-worked with Pueblo Nuevo, for instance, or taking different forms with Simpson. This is a feature of its resilience. 343 The “papa fría”, the “papa tíbia”, the “papa” floja” and the “papa caliente” are fluctuating spatial signifiers in the neighbourhood. They are interesting as representations of the different historical consciousness present in the neighbourhood, and how and when they are activated or not. They are fluctuating because of new fields of significations that have been opened up by epitomizing events, such as the “economic actualization”, presently, or the Revolution in the recent past, the frameworks of understanding propelled by dictators in the republic period, or the ancient colonial rulings. These fluctuating signifiers have also been pushed by the situation which this community has assumed for itself. They draw this situation from a tradition of resistance, condensed in religious-mythic-political territories. In these territories several levels of historical consciousness are activated. They are the triggers for collective mobilization in La Marina, but this is also true for Periperi or the Hwlitsum, as we have seen, despite enourmous differences between the three cases. That is also why the limits of La Marina today are fluid. They are as fluid as the histories about the place are, as fluid as the signifiers the population endow the neighbourhood with their narratives, as fluid as the different consciousness inhabitants have of their history and culture, as fluid as members of the community identifying with being “marinero”, and as fluid as the perceptions of members about the value of staying or moving to another place. It is quite understandable, following the oral history told in the neighbourhood of the past four generations, why the “marineros” would perceive their community reaching the San Juan River, which is where the “barracones” [edifications where the slaves where first debarked before they were sent to the plantations] were built. It is also where Pueblo Nuevo was erected, and where their kinsman made their living. There is where their fellow workers and abacuá brothers had settled. However those ties between the two neighbourhoods today have gone in different directions to the point that their limits have shifted. Presently, the limits of the neighbourhood are not in the political-administrative divide, but how the 344 community members in La Marina identify them. The local population in Matanzas also recognizes its existence, however shadowed by embedded prejudice towards the neighbourhood. The prejudice and stigmatized idea of the neighbourhood has also shaped distinct perceptions of La Marina’s members about their identification with the place, its history and culture, which is what allows for different “papas”. Well, I understand that La Marina is from Daoiz; the corner where the Gallo [bar] was situated was the most ‘caliente’ [hottest]. Back there it wasn’t so. [Translated from the originalclxxix dialogue with Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, in front of the Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, 18.10.14]. – Still today there is an stigma in the idea that if one lives on the neighbourhood of La Marina, including the people who live in the neighbourhood of La Marina say: just think about that I live in La Marina; what can I tell you, I live in La Marina; or else, behind these words there is the stigma of the region, of the place, of bad reputation precedent from the neighbourhood; this remains. – There is where the story is told in the radio that I tell you that when one seeks permutes […] but they always said to anywhere in Matanzas but to La Marina. – No one wants to live in La Marina. The Popular Council no, administratively the neighbourhood dos not exist; the neighbourhood exists physically because it was, people know where the neighbourhood is, people know in which streets they are when they are inside the neighbourhood of La Marina. – But not even inside, from their own inhabitants, there, sometimes there conflicts to know where one goes to where one goes. – Yes, because it is clear that this is administratively in the past. There is no one who can make a real delimitation of the neighbourhood, but they indeed can tell you, they can tell you the streets; this the neighbourhood of La Marina; when you go out of this nucleus, you are already in La Marina. [Translated by the author from the originalclxxx dialogue between Orozco, City’s Heritage Curator, and Diana Rosa, member of the managing group of project “Identidad y Bairro La Marina”, Matanzas, 28 de February 2015] Class, blood, and “of saint” ties can be identified through history and culture in Simpson. The way that these ties were developed through networks of resistance has shaped different relationships and spatial representations between Simpson and La Marina. Today, following the collective mobilization in La Marina and the partnerships that were made with the mobilization in Simpson, the scope of these relationships and the spatial representations they make of their neighbourhoods and the idea of extended community is shifting even further. Their historical consciousnesses are activated in similar directions, which has allowed for the combined use of their religious-mythic-political territories for their collective mobilization towards institutionalization of their similar claims to the State. And that has strengthened even further their idea of extended community. 345 That idea is both internally and externally bound. We have seen that the reworked cultural manifestations in the neighbourhoods today have led their members to jointly congregate around them. We have seen that the political organization is also walking hand in hand, developed and supported by a shared history of resistance. Resistance to the stigma of a conflictive zone where bars, gambling, and prostitution were fixtures. Resistance to being framed as a neighbourhood of black people, but that, as City’s Conserver, Orozco, told me (personal communication, 2015) matanceros would use it as “an escape to dissipation”. Resistance to being separated from “La Atenas de Cuba”, from a city of poets, artists and musicians, and from the high culture they propelled to the nation. Now, Matanzas has a very interesting and contradictory characteristic. We are a seaside city, a port city, we have one of the most important bays in the country, but the ‘matancero’ lives with his back to the bay, he does not care about the activities that may be developed in the bay. This activity of fishing to the ‘matanceros’ of the day was a poor activity. Matanzas was an elite city, in Matanzas lived the richest plantation owners of Cuba, middle class families, but also the richest in the country. The city developed in an environment of elevated prosperity in the 19th century, […]. There was the school La Empresa, the newspaper La Aurora, the printing machines, the writers, the poets, the musicians, that is, you see, it is a city the acquires the name ‘Atenas de Cuba’ precisely because of this development of culture and of the colonial society at a very high level. So, the majority despises these activities such as fishing, fishing is for the poor, and this is of no interest to them. Therefore, they neither incentive it, nor acquire it. See how many poets sang about the rivers, they sang about the nature, they sang about the city, and no one has sung about the fishermen, […] because this is an activity for the poor, and this inheritance has reached the present. […] Now, let us turn to the literature, the poetry. There are 50 million poets in Matanzas. Matanzas is the city of poets, but Matanzas is not the city of stevedores, or of the forklift drivers, or of the fishermen, even though it has one of the biggest bays in Cuba, because they were poor activities, they were born poor, and that has remained in the mind of the ‘matancero’. There is not an important relation to the master bay, and this is a paradox [Translated by the author from the originalclxxxi interview with Leonel Orozco, City’s Heritage Curator, Matanzas, February 2015]. That resistance generated emulation of the stigma that was pressed on them, but without deference (Keesing, 1992). The response of the neighbourhood to being seen as a conflictive zone was to embrace this history. Yes there was prostitution, yes there were bars and people in La Marina liked to drink and gamble. The narratives presently state that everything is contained and controlled within the neighbourhood, by the members themselves. Yes they are a neighbourhood of black 346 people and these black people are the ones who developed it and transformed it into a distinct community that has produced their own distinguished poets, artists and musicians. This tradition of resistance has made them resilient and that is the base of their collective identification today. Their push to be recognized and to live by these resilient terms has placed them under a situation that makes them feel like underdogs. In the next chapter we will discuss the several ways in which communities that were part of this research were pushed and pushed themselves into this underdog situation. I will make my way through the plains, the river canals, and the reminiscences of the canneries in Canoe Pass, Hwlitsum territory, in order to stir up discussion about the triggers to collective mobilization in all three cases, the different transition moments and transition periods that were at work, the distinct resistance strategies that were engendered, how they have been worked and reworked within religious-mythic-political territories facing epitomizing events that pressed collective stress in the communities’ “mazeway”, and pushed them into assuming their underdog situation. We will try to touch base with the present Hwlitsum struggles as a way to compare these very different scenarios, seeking not to measure them in an evolutional scale, but to better understand their realities in an effort also to provide useful frameworks of understanding from their own standpoint. The challenge is placed on their shoulders when while trying to figure out ways to encounter and face the fluidity arising from the acknowledgement of the different histories that have been told and which they tell about themselves. Our challenge is to go beyond being a mere audience, and to experiment with these neglected frameworks of understanding that might offer alternatives to the biased dominant version available. 347 Chapter 11 - Discussions: into the “Mazeway” and out from the “Dirt”. Almost a year after first meeting Chief Rocky, Lindsay and Janice Wilson, at the Department of Anthropology, I came back to Vancouver to learn that the Hwlitsum had been involved in a new lawsuit against Canada aiming at establishing their fishing rights on the mouth of the Fraser River, onto the Gulf Islands, and in the mainland, around the course of the river. Summer as it was, it was also high time for fishing sockeye salmon in the Fraser, and Lindsay Wilson, Chief Rocky’s niece, was running his boat along the river for weeks now, taking advantage of the good weather. Between the lawsuits (three now) and fishing, the Hwlitsum were all actively involved with their community of no more than 300 descendants from Hul’qumi’num112 speaking people on the lower mainland of British Columbia, the Gulf Islands and eastern Vancouver Island (Wilson; Miller; Angelbeck; and Grove, 2013: 2). 112 “The Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group was founded in 1993 to jointly negotiate a comprehensive treaty with British Columbia and Canada in the BC Treaty Process. We represent over 6,200 members in six First Nations: Chemainus First Nation, Cowichan Tribes, Halalt First Nation, Lake Cowichan First Nation, Lyackson First Nation, and Penelakut Tribe. Hul'qumi'num is the shared language that connects us, as do our common traditional territory, culture, and history” http://www.hulquminum.bc.ca/news, 21.09.15. Although sharing the language with the other tribes listed, the Hwlitsum are presently not part of the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group. 348 Figure 36 – Hwlitsum’s Major Places of Cultural Importance, Picturing the Territory They Have Historically Used, British Columbia, Canada. Source: Wilson; Miller; Angelbeck; and Grove (2013) Date: November 2013 349 There are three the lawsuits in which the Hwilitsum are involved at the moment. The first one deals with fishing rights as they relate to shared rights which have been claimed by other tribes recognized under the Indian Act. Hwlitsum’s injunction claims those fishing allocation were made without Hwlitsum participation. The Hwlitsum want to put a stop to other First Nations fishing before fishing rights are renegotiated with them. In a meeting at the community last September, their lawyer informed them that the fishing injunction failed. Losing the injunction, however, has not stopped their broader case up to courts in relation to the renegotiation of fishing rights with other tribes and the Crown (Miller, personal communication, 2015). Their case goes forward. The Crown’s insistence on an argument that aims at stating that they have no standing on the case reveals the continuity of a relationship with the people, one which has been historically characterized by fear of contagion and an unwillingness to address their situation, as we shall see ahead. Hwlitsum people have been historically recognized among Coast Salish People as great fishermen, and connect their culture to sockeye salmon fishing. They are “subjected to the fish”, as Chief Rocky (personal communication, 2014) explained, and do not seek to dominate nature. He understands modernity’s cannon, as embedded in Christian frameworks of understanding. Addressing the relationship between humans and nature from that standpoint creates a separation that finds no ground in the Hwlitsum’s traditional way of life. It is a tradition they have emulated from their ancestors, as described in Lindsey Wilson’s narrative below. The maintenance of this tradition is also reinforced through communitarian ceremonies, gatherings and practices that refer back to their relationship with fishing. The First Salmon, for example, is distributed to the extended family and to the community, as described by Chief Rocky. Such gatherings are congregations like the “Canning Season”, honoring traditions of the earlier days before refrigerators were available when Hwlitsum people relied on hundreds of cans and mason jars of salmon that were produced and stored for their consumption during winter. Such practices relate to ways to come in the water to fish 350 “being perfectly clean”, to show respect and be respected, because “that’s what kept you alive”. I think what is important here also is that we are a salmon culture, specially sockeye salmon […] and the fish, sockeye reveals that is sacred, in order to even go in the water when the first ones came in the river, you had to be perfectly clean, because that was kept you alive, and that is one of the differences Lindsey was talking about on the conservation area. Because our people we see ourselves as subjecting to sockeye salmon. Chistianity itself and residential schools. Because I went to a Catholic school myself, in the 1960’s, we are in the beginning of the Hebrew Bible, there in the first chapter it says man shall subject to all creatures, fish or whatever it is, and be dominant over these animals, see that wasn’t part of our culture that was different, that is a huge difference in itself, like the fact that, that is why we have First Salmon Ceremonies, these fish are sacred to us. (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). Their relationship with the fish also commands the way they build their identity around the activity and that is carried onto the their social organization. The Hwlitsum see themselves as caretakers, invested with a role to maintain the fish from over-spawning or the men form over-catching. That identity is also invested in their practices of use of their territory, such as the traditional paths they take through the river, or the distribution of the sites that are allowed to fish. They have nowhere to run from this identity as they see themselves connected to the fish. “If they go, we go”, as Chief Rocky’s father impressed on him. We didn’t just take care of them as far as over catching them, we also managed them from over spawning as well, all the way up the river, to maintain these fish. That is basically what we are saying. We walk across the river and there was so many salmon, and now how come, what happened to them all? Let’s at least have a voice. The elders say some us here, we know how to look after them, and that is our sustenance, and my dad used to say, if we loose them, they go and we go, because that is a big part of who we are. (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). Wilson, Miller, Angelbeck, and Grove (2013) have collected narratives from Hwlitsum elders over the years of their political struggle that arrived at these several lawsuits. Lindsay Wilson (personal communication, 2014) narrates his paths around the Fraser River, mainland and Gulf Islands, recreating a triangular path through traditionally used passes (Canoe, Polier, and Active) from the practices he learned as a boy from his elders. There he would harvest what it was available from salmon to octopus to clams to a variety of fish, in different seasons. He showed complete 351 command of his territory and proudly relates to the teachings that were passed on to him through generations. The practices do no always conform with the uses perpetrated in Hwlitsum territory by sportsman fishermen, for instance, and regulated by the government. It runs in contradiction to the conservation logic community has developed. The non-recognition of their rights to fishing is considered in the narratives as impressing a heavy toll on their role as caretakers and, thus, impacting their own identity. The Fisheries and Oceans of Canada they are the ones who control it all, the fisheries and conservation, and I wrote a paper on the traditional conservation, up in the Skeena River, in Northern BC they have this steelhead, they were all worried about fishermen catching steelhead on the mouth of the river, but the river runs I don’t know how many miles it is but, on the other hand the government is letting sportsman fishermen go on these sandbars on the river, with their all trained vehicles, and their pop tents, their orange and blue tents, and they are fishing all these steelhead with their fishing rods, going all the way to the sandbars. Well this elder guy, Victor he spoke and he said his parents told him when he was a very young child, he is native to that territory, that he goes down to the river there is a certain path that he takes down as not to ruin the sandbars and the eel racks on the sandbars and that is part of the conservation, so they maintain the habitat for the fish. Meanwhile the Fisheries and Oceans of Canada they are letting these guys fish there like flying in from all over Europe and USA and riving all over these sandbars with their vehicles, setting a tent, and standing there for ages. (Conversation with Lindsay Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). The present lawsuit that embodies Hwlitsum’s expectations in relation to the renegotiation of the fishing rights in the area has multiple interests. As commercial fishermen, they want to establish their share in the fishes’ catch so as to guarantee their economic reproduction. But that economic reproduction is intimately connected to their way of life, their traditions, and their identity as caretakers of their territory. It also connects with reestablishing their role among other bands, with whom they have historically shared the territory, the Tsawwassen and the Penelakut113, whom both have 113 The Penelakut First Nation accounts for about 13 percent of the Hul'qumi'num population. Historically, Penelakut villages were found on Kuper Island, Galiano Island, and on Vancouver Island near the mouth of the Chemainus River. Today, the Penelakut have reserves on Kuper Island, Tent Island, Galiano Island, and one small reserve on the lower reaches of the Chemainus River. The term 'Penelakut' is used to refer to all the Hul'qumi'num people who, at one time or another, have lived on Kuper Island. Historically, there were three permanent winter villages on Kuper Island: at Penelakut Spit, Telegraph Harbour, and Lamalchi Bay. […] Penelakut comes from the Hul'qumi'num name for this place, penálaxeth', which means 'log buried on the beach' (perhaps a reference to houses being partly buried by sand on the beach). […] Telegraph Harbour on the northwest coast of Kuper Island was the site of another Penelakut winter village. The Hul'qumi'num name for this place is yexweló7es, meaning 'place with eagles.' […] The 352 established agreements with governmental authorities about their rights to fish in the region presently. third winter village on Kuper Island was at Lamalchi Bay, on the southwest coast. 'Lamalchi' is the anglicized version of the Hul'qumi'num name for this place, xwlemálhtse meaning 'lookout place' and residents of this village were referred to as the 'Lamalchis'. According to Rozen (1985, 97), this site has not been occupied since the early part of the 20th Century, when the residents were amalgamated with residents at the Penelakut Spit village” (emphasis mine) http://www.hulquminum.bc.ca/hulquminum_people/penelakut, 21.09.15. The indication of Lamalchi Bay as a Penelekut winter village in the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group website, presently, after the issue has been brought up again with the Hwlitsum, negotiations, although non-successful, having been brought up to the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group Council of Elders, is a testimony of the unsettled business between the tribes, but also it reveals an unwillingness to accommodate the case of the Hwlitsum. Interestingly enough, the Crown’s argument in order to delegitimize Hwlitsum’s claims for their recognition as a band under the Indian Act are based on the Crown’s assumption that the Hwlitsum are and were not an autonomous governing body. The main part of the argument is that Hwlitsum would not be an independent people, because they were once merged with the Penelakut. Now, the Penelakut and the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group buying into their argument goes beyond the Crown’s argument and reveals other interest present around the Hwlitsum claim. 353 Figure 37 – Hwlitsum’s Triangular Fishing Territory. Canoe, Polier, and Active Passes, British Columbia, Canada Source: Wilson; Miller; Angelbeck; and Grove (2013) Date: November 2013 354 The other ongoing lawsuit concerns a Title case to sue the Crown for concluding the Tsawwassen First Nations’ treaty and land agreements without Hwlitsum participation. The Tsawwassen First Nation includes 405 members, according to the people’s website, in lands occupied in Brunswick Point, near Roberts Bank, the Lower Mainland of the Fraser River and the interior of British Columbia, as well as a portion in Whatcom County, Washington State, USA. Tsawwassen traditional territory ranges across southern sections of British Columbia—as far east as New Westminster, south to the international border, and west to the southern Gulf Islands. Tsawwassen is a Hun’qum’i’num word that means “land facing the sea”. Figure 38 - Different type of lands that make up the Tsawwassen Final Agreement land package, Bruswick Point, British Columbia, Canada. Source: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada website114. Date: September 23rd, 2015. 114 https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100022787/1100100022789, 23.09.15 355 Tsawwassen First Nation drove a hard bargain in accepting the terms of the Treaty. Considered B.C.'s first modern urban treaty, the negotiations involved a wide range of stakeholders and interests regarding the industry already installed in the region as well as other industry’s craving for the real state opportunities to be opened by the treaty; agriculture land reserves (ALR), prime land close to Vancouver’s city center; taxations interests from the municipal, provincial and federal governments; the interests of the governmental and First Nations institutions pushing forward for the establishment of the treaty, which constituted a landmark in Indian-government relations in the country, after the Nisga’a treaty115, in 2000; the negotiation process about what it was called “overlaps”116, or the traditional territories claimed by other First Nations that overlap with the land that is mentioned in the treaty; and, connected to the last, fishing rights negotiated under the treaty that also “overlap” with the rights of other First Nations. Treaty highlights include a land package of 724 hectares plus 13.9 million CAD over 10 years in addition to 2 million CAD for mineral rights, 2.8 million CAD in ongoing self-government costs, 15.8 million CAD in one-time start-up costs related to programs such as culture and parks, and a quota of the salmon fishery. Behind these spotlights, the treaty negotiations suffered tough criticism from both local and regional conservative sectors and indigenous supporters alike. Local and regional conservatives centered their criticism on the prospect of prime agricultural lands being transferred to the band only to be converted into lucrative industrial port development; improving conditions for Tsawwassen individuals, diminishing the possibilities for other people in the county; and taxation being reverted directly to the Tsawwassen, and not composing 115 “The Nisga’a Final Agreement is British Columbia’s first modern treaty. A landmark in the relationship between Canada and its Aboriginal peoples, the Treaty came into effect on May 11, 2000, On that date, the Indian Act ceased to apply to Nisga’a people. http://www.nisgaanation.ca/about-accomplishments-and-benefits-nisgaa-treaty, 21.09.15. 116 “In British Columbia, traditional territories claimed by First Nations often overlap. As part of the British Columbia treaty process, First Nations must establish a process to resolve overlaps and report to the British Columbia Treaty Commission on the progress of discussions with other First Nations”. From the BC Treaty Commission’s website: https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100022787/1100100022789, 21.09.15 356 federal, provincial and municipal budget117. Indigenous supporters stressed the treaty’s depletory effects in diminishing existing First Nations’ sovereignty; concretizing an overall sentiment of defeat; the fragmentation of the community collective land into fee simple land allocation; and the implementation of numerous development projects and investments of the First Nations’ land, with overall impacts for the shared territory. The Fraser Institute, a well-known conservative think tank in Canada, gave a retort to criticism of the treaty negotiations from both local and regional conservative groups as well as the indigenous supporters. For the Institute118, the treaty would be opening access to prime agriculture land, otherwise in the hands of the band, which compensated for the eventual loss to industry’s interests. The Institute’s report stressed that Tsawwassen individuals already enjoy the same benefits that other people have in the county, so the treaty would not bring new realities in that matter. Resolving long-term unsettled Indian titles would boost local and regional economy, alleviating taxation issues. The treaty would provide the First Nation with clear ground on where to manage their territory, otherwise undetermined by a morose and costly process under the Indian Act, run by BC Treaty Commission. Fee simple land allocation119 would stimulate new dealings, while retaining the First Nation’s ability to manage their territory. While the Tsawwassen hold rights to purchase land within the Brunswick Point area and incorporate them to their territory established within the treaty’s terms for 50 years after the effective date of the treaty, new opportunities may be opened up for anyone to purchase land after that period, since the First Nation can only add lands to its treaty settlement lands if it purchases the land from willing sellers, and with the federal, provincial and municipal governments’ consent to the addition. 117 Cummins, John. Tsawwassen Treaty and Taxation. Tsawwassen Indian Band. Follow the Money: Who Pays and Who Gets to Keep the Money? Delta-Richmond East, 2007. Cummins was M.P. at the Delta-Richmond East at the time the article was published. 118 Milke, Mark. Incomplete, Illiberal, and Expensive. A Review of 15 Years of Treaty Negotiations in British Columbia and Proposals for Reform. Studies in Aboriginal Policy, Fraser Institute, July 2008. 119 “A holder of a fee simple interest cannot lease that interest to any lessee for a period longer than 99 years. TFN must not lease a parcel of Tsawwassen public lands for a period longer than 99 years for a residential lease or for a non-residential lease, for a period of 49 years or up to 99 years with specific authorization from the TFN Executive Council”. http://www.rebgv.org/tsawwassen-treaty-open-business, 21.09.15. 357 Ousted from the debate over the Tsawwassen treaty, the narratives of Hwlitsum members address the fact that the treaties made by Nisga’a and Tsawwassen First Nations just basically make them into white people, throwing them into the mainstream, framing a destitution of their indigenous identity. Chief Rocky’s narrative relates to most of the depletory effects foreseen by indigenous supporters and addresses Hwlitsum’s situation in the midst of negotiations that involved a wide range of stakeholders and interests but never considered the people in them. Lands depicted in green, the “specified lands” (Figure 34) match the territory claimed by the Hwlitsum, and overlap with agriculture land reserves (ALR) that may be made available in the near future to anyone for purchase, according to both the BC Treaty Commission and analysis from the Fraser Institute alike. Taxations interests from the municipal, provincial and federal governments or the Tsawwassen do not include the Hwlitsum. It is understood that the unsettled negotiation process about the “overlaps” will not include the Hwlitsum, if not by litigation. Tension about the fishing rights negotiated under the treaty that also “overlap” with the rights of other First Nations is augmented by the other lawsuit the Hwlitsum are moving related specifically to this issue, as we shall see ahead. Specially, Chief Rocky is concerned about the surrender of aboriginal title that has never been extinguished in these lands. The effects of establishing fee simple land allocation in an unceded indigenous territory, so close to their claimed home, makes the Chief conclude that “everything is taken away from them”, and may be a result that will directly affect present Hwlitsum political struggles. But that is the main issue here in BC now, because there’s no treaties here except for now one and two, and they set a template they basically, in my opinion, . . . , the Nisga’a and the Tsawwassen, where they just basically make them into white people, I mean they just make them into mainstream, you know like everything is taken away from them. So, like we have an issue with that as well right? After all the what was done, I mean whatever rates we would be given we are gonna keep them right? In British Columbia what we have here is unceeded indian land, and that just the legal truth right? I think that what everybody has to come. And whatever is fee-simple, whatever is Crown, or whatever it is, the aboriginal title has never been extinguished in these lands here. So that is the argument, that is a hard one to get the Prime Minister of Canada or the Premier of British Columbia or whatever they have to face the fact that it is a domestic wall as well as it is a international wall, and unfortunately, we as Indian people and ancestors, forefathers and everything else had to live under this rule of law which was the Indian Act and residential schools, and reserve systems. (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). 358 Chief Rocky also addresses the continued disturbances created by development projects to their possibilities of existence as a people. “There is here a domestic wall as well as it is a international wall”, referring to the global connections the Super Port or the oil pipeline have with interests that connect the Brunswick Point with China or the United States, as coal and oil, main exports in that region, come from the United States and other provinces (coal from Oregon and oil from the tar sands in Alberta) and are shipped to China. The First Nations are left with a high bill to pay in destruction of the natural resources in their territories, and in changes in the fishing cycle that direct effect their ability to provide for their economic, social and cultural reproduction. The depletory effects are increased by the hectic traffic on BC Ferries, and the construction of dams in the Coquitlam River, with impacts to Brunswick Point, where are both the Tsawwassen and Hwlitsum. The perspective of new development opportunities to be implemented under the provisions of the Tsawwassen treaty furthers the uncertainty around the power of negotiation the Hwlitsum will have with their own unsettled claims120. Similar issues were recollected by Chief Baird of the Tsawwassen at her speech, as debate began on the treaty, in 2007. There Chief Baird calls for reconciliation of their indigenous rights with the interests of the numerous stakeholders involved and is a testimony of what Chief Rocky calls “failed systems of the colonizer”. The Tsawwassen had to endure throughout the years of negotiation under the BC Treaty Commission process the impacts of industrial operations that have caused land, aquatic, light, and sound pollution of their territory, with effects to their traditional use. It eventually drove the community into accepting the terms of treaty, effective on April 3, 2009. 120 “Tsawwassen lands have the potential to host one of the largest greenfield developments in the Lower Mainland. Plans for the land include industrial, commercial and residential development. […] On June 21, 2010, the TFN broke ground on its new industrial park, Tsawwassen Gateway Logistics Centre. […] The goal is to make the area into a transportation hub for road, rail and sea, connecting the Lower Mainland to customers throughout North America and overseas. Current plans include an approved regional shopping centre, a new residential subdivision of 1,100 single family or multifamily homes on 123 acres of 99-year leased land, […] and permitted uses to apartments, bed and breakfast, business parks, duplex dwellings, eating and drinking establishments, single family dwellings and townhouses”. http://www.rebgv.org/tsawwassen-treaty-open-business, 21.09.15. 359 Today we have a tiny postage stamp of a reserve, a small fraction of a percentage of our traditional territory fronting a dead body of water, trapped between two massive industrial operations. Our land and aquatic ecosystems have been fouled beyond human comprehension. The ferry causeway, with its millions of cars and trucks, dissects our reserve to the south. And, Deltaport with its 24/7 coal and container traffic coats our houses with diesel particulate; truck sand trains keep us awake at night. Consider too, the bulldozing of a Tsawwassen longhouse for the construction of the ferry terminal causeway. No consultation, no compensation. These industrial operations that include a man-made island terminal and a causeway linking them to the mainland — have virtually destroyed our beaches, at least our ability to use them as we had traditionally. (Chief Kim Baird of the Tsawwassen First Nation’s address to the B.C. Legislature as debate began on the first urban treaty in modern-day British Columbia. October 15th, 2007). Thinking in hindsight about Chief Baird’s address, combined with Hwlitsum’s narratives, reveals some interesting points. First, the previous process run by BC Treaty Commission under the Indian Act, which involved federal and provincial negotiators and the band council, came under increasing pressure for its failure to conclude even one treaty up to the present. Chief Baird’s speech addresses the morose, expensive and troublesome nature of this process from which they felt, along with local government, ousted. The BC Treaty process had not come to a conclusion at that time, but it had allowed for full-fledged degradation of their territory and traditional use, as well as made rich men out of white lawyers, bureaucrats, technicians and negotiators. That was stimuli for Tsawwassen’s bargaining under new rules, though the terms were not as fair as they expected. They had to allow for fee simple land allocation to exist in their otherwise collective territory; they had to agree to development projects to be implemented in their lands; and they had to agree to current Super Port, BC Ferries, and oil pipeline continued operations. 360 Figure 39 – Tsawwassen Lands under the treaty, Brunswick Point, British Columbia, Canada. Source: Tsawwassen First Nation Final Agreement - Implementation Report. Date: 2009-2010. Figure 40 – Tsawwassen Traditional Territory under the treaty, British Columbia, Canada. Source: Tsawwassen First Nation Final Agreement - Implementation Report. Date: 2009-2010. 361 Several unsettled “overlaps” were disregarded in the process by both federal and provincial governments as well as the Tsawwassen alike, nevertheless. That relates to Lindsay Wilson’s narrative about the opposition held from other First Nations to Hwlitsum’s claims. The Hwlitsum think that the Tsawwassen cut them out, throwing away their unceded right to their territory, and hurting other First Nations’s ability to negotiate their situation. On the other hand, the Tsawwassen already agreed to their share of the pie and, as it scarcely feeds their own, they are unwilling to share even further. That feeling of opposition of neighboring First Nations to Hwlitsum’s political struggle is magnified when lands depicted in light yellow in Figure 35, described as “TFN Right of Refusal Lands”, matches the otherwise anonymously “Specified Lands”, in Figure 34, as well as the claimed Hwlitsum territory. “For 80 years after the effective date of the Treaty, [Tsawwassen First Nation] TFN will have the first right of refusal to buy up to 278 hectares of Brunswick Point lands”121. And we have other Native communities are against us, total, so it is bad, from not even and so […] so if it is like a pie, they want the whole pie, so like we have cousins, on different, various tribes, like surrounding us, and they’ve opposed us and everything we tried to do, they’ve, and it is like crazy, we are just being held back, which gets back to the low self-esteems and the abuses, right? (Conversation with Lindsay Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). So what was “specified” before treaty negotiations, became Tsawwassen land, under the treaty, which the First Nation will have the right to buy it first, but, if it does not, it is open to anyone for purchase at the highest bid. Also, Tsawwasseen traditional territory (Figure 36) engulfs all the Fraser River and some of the outlets and passes also used traditionally by the Hwlitsum in Brunswick Point, as well as the gulf islands. Although the traditional territory is shared with other First Nations and stakeholders and is not controlled directly by Tsawwassen, over which they exercise certain rights such as hunting and fishing, no mention is made to Hwlitsum’s claims anywhere in the implementation reports issued by the Tsawwassen or federal or provincial governments. That kind of invisibility connects this lawsuit the Hwlitsum are pushing forward (for the renegotiation of the treaty’s terms in order to include them) with a third lawsuit, 121 http://tsawwassenfirstnation.com/general-info/reports/, 21.09.15 362 concerning recognition as a band under the Indian Act. It is also connected with their historic trajectory. The third lawsuit is related to their claim to be recognized under the Indian Act as a band. Because their territory was not surrendered after the bombing of their village by British Navy, at Lamalchi, Kuper Island, in 1863, they could not establish consistence proof of an autonomous governing body and clear proceedings for membership that would satisfy the BC Treaty Commission Process. Therefore, references made to Indians in surveys that the colonial administration did back then, which support other First Nations’ claims, could not be provided by the Hwlitsum, since they did not figure as an existing village. Such things as enrollment charts that were also produced by the colonial administration were not anywhere to be found in the case of the Hwlitsum, since, after their winter village had been bombed, the remaining members of the Hwlitsum scattered around relatives’ territories, such as the Lummi122, the Katzie123, or the Musqueam124, despite always trying to reclaim their own at Lamalchi. The administration understood, denominated and managed the different indigenous peoples, considering their village sites (specially the winter villages, like the Lamalchi), regardless of their broad uses of their territories, what came later to be related in the anthropological literature as seasonal rounds. The seasonal rounds were 122 “We are a Self-Governing Nation within the United States, the third largest tribe in Washington State, serving over 5,000 members. We manage nearly 13,000 acres of tidelands on the Lummi Reservation” http://www.lummi-nsn.org/website/index2.html, 21.09.15. 123 “There are approximate 460 Katzie First Nation members. Of this, approximately 300 reside on-reserve, while the remainder live off-reserve, primarily in communities located throughout the Lower Mainland. Katzie First Nation reserve lands are situated in five different locations in the Fraser Valley. […] Pitt Meadows, Langley, Barnston Island, Coquitlam, and Maple Ridge. The Katzie First Nation once comprised at least ten villages throughout the territory. The Katzie First Nation derives its name from the Halkomelem word for a type of moss, and it is also the name of an ancient village site in the immediate vicinity of the Katzie Indian Reserve at Pitt Meadows. The only other Katzie village sites permanently occupied are the Katzie reserves at Barnston Island and at Yorkson Creek in Langley.” http://www.katzie.ca/background_information.htm, 21.09.15. 124 “The Musqueam people have been present in what is now Greater Vancouver […], particularly the Marpolemidden - located at the mouth of the North Arm of the Fraser River. […]Today, portions of Musqueam’s traditional territory are called Vancouver, North Vancouver, South Vancouver, Burrard Inlet, New Westminster, Burnaby, and Richmond [Greater Vancouver area]” http://www.musqueam.bc.ca/musqueam-traditional-territory-0, 21.09.15. 363 practices widely shared within the Coast Salish World125, in which the Hwlitsum have been distinguished members for a number of reasons, including their own tradition of resistance, as we shall see ahead. For one third of the year, Coast Salish peoples would stay at their winter villages, and the other two thirds were used to develop different resource connected activities, including fishing, hunting and gathering, in a much broader territory, often around a summer village, but not confined to it. These activities also included many shared sites amongst different bands, like Tlek’tines, near Hwlitsum summer village (Figure 32), on the mouth of the Fraser River, which is today part of their claimed territory. In many cases, like the Hwlitsum’s, the Coast Salish bands were not sedentary and were quite mobile in their territories. Another characteristic of the cultural practices diffused within the Coast Salish World is the naming of the bands after their winter villages. For the Hwlitsum, it would be Lamalchi, and that is how they were referred to in the scarce documents available, further creating difficulties for accommodating the Crown’s current demands for proof of an autonomous governing body or their ancestry. Years of trying to reestablish their home at Lamalchi ended up in no success, since the Crown had granted their territory to a white colonizer, who established a 160 acres farm in the location. After years of wandering without the possibility of being home the remaining members of the band gradually regrouped around their summer village, Hwlitsum, circa 1906. Following Coast Salish practice, they assumed the name Hwlitsum for the band. Furthermore, because they were one of the few bands that dared to directly attack the Crown, they were considered, revered and honored, warriors within the 125 “The ‘term Coast Salish’ usually designates a larger group of tribes occupying most of the area around Georgia Strait, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound and extending to the Pacific between the Olympic Peninsula and Willapa Bay. [...] Even among contiguous group of tribes, however, cultural differences are great enough that generalizations about the ‘Coast Salish’ are probably dangerous” (Suttles, 2000 [1987]: 29). Miller (2007: 2), however, points out that Suttles “emphasis on regional social networks – on understanding social organization through viewing the Coast Salish world as unified in several senses […] for example, shows the connections between subsistence and prestige economic activities (including potlatching) and kinship system as well as how Coast Salish people in one region are connected to those elsewhere”. The anthropologist’s “claim is that the Coast Salish continue to form themselves into named corporate groups, known locally simply as ‘families’. Further, many significant issues of contemporary social life might be best approached from an analysis of the ways in which these families interact” (Miller, 2007: 19). 364 Coast Salish World, but also savages, wild, dangerous and dirty Indians to the Crown. That created a mark of fear against them, present in the documents of the time, but also unwillingness towards their situation that contaminates onto the present claims they forward. That is the pollution they carry under the sign of contamination. The Hwlitsum would have to be done with for they could make a bad influence on other bands. A contagion sentiment that is still alive in the present disputes both with the Crown and other established indigenous people alike, as we shall see ahead. The Commissioners reviled the Lamalchi and denigrated them in their reports. For example, one described them as “dirty” people with “unattractive countenances” and warned that their children “should be carefully looked after, or they may grow up to be no improvement on their fathers, who have had the reputation of being one of the most savage tribes on the coast.” Then he disparaged their ancestors, stating that: The Lamalchi sub-tribe was a strong tribe 12 or 18 years ago with a record against it of many murders and depredations. They attacked Her Majesty’s gunboat “Boxer”, which had run aground, and shot a seaman. For this outrage their village was bombarded, and the chief and 3 other Indians hanged. The smallpox, afterwards, got amongst them, and 3 men [Charlie, Jim and John Wilson] of the whole tribe are now living. (Wilson, Miller, Anglebeck and Grove, 2013: 23) The resolve of the administration to be done with the Hwlitsum was also present in the decision to merge them, along with the Yekaloas, into the Penelakut tribe. The administrative decision that had managerial and assimilative purposes further confused and fragmented their existence as an autonomous governing body to authorities in the present. The terms of the administrative decision established the Hwlitsum would be relocated in the remaining territory at Kuper Island, where Lamalchi was situated, apart from the white settler’s farm mentioned, along with the Yekaloas and the Penelakut. It would be an opportunity for the Hwlitsum to finally return to their original winter site, but on a “do or die” bases, since no other alternative was given to them to pursue their economic, social and cultural reproduction. Although being recognized as full members of the Penelakut band, under the terms of the administrative decision, disputes amongst the peoples could not be resolved, which ended up in the killing of a Hwlitsum member by a Penelakut, and the fleeing of the remaining band to relative’s territories. They later regrouped in Hwlitsum village, as discussed. It is important to note that the Hwlitsum acquired additional rights 365 by becoming members of the Penelakut, but they did not surrender their existing rights. The practice is documented in Suttles (2000 [1987])126, since Coast Salish kinship is bilaterally reckoned, and assume rights in both their father’s and mother’s original bands. Also, the Penelakut are suspected to have delivered the locations where three leaders of the Hwlitsum were hiding from British authorities, following the attack on the British vessel that bombed their village and ended up in the killing of a British sailor. They were hanged. The episode is not forgotten by either band and it was basis for disagreements that ended up in Hwlitsum’s failure to enter the treaty process with the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group. Following their Hul’qumi’num language bound, shared with the Penelakut, the Hwlitsum attempted to enter treaty process within the organization that amalgamated the interests of Hul’qumi’num speaking bands for recognition. Although Hul’qumi’num elders acknowledged their people shared ancestry with the Hwlitsum people, the two parties could not reach final agreement on the terms of their union for treaty purposes. These old grudges with the Penelakut were at the heart of the disagreement. Nevertheless, although facing the hardships provoked by what Chief Rocky referred to as the “failed systems of the colonizer”, beginning in the bombing of their territory, the result of a biased policy of occupation of their land, despite ordinances from the Crown that mandated James Douglas, Governor of the Province at the time, to compensate First Nations for any loss of land. According to Wilson, Miller, Angelbeck, and Grove (2013: 18), Douglas over-stepped the Crown’s ordinances; failed to negotiate or treaty with the Lamalchi; and disregarded their traditional uses over ancestral village 126 “Native social organization in this area was characterized by seeming looseness. Kinship was reckoned bilaterally. Residence was usually, but not always, patrilocal. The nuclear families of brothers, cousins and brothers-in-law formed extended families […] claiming rights to certain local resources and to certain inherited priviledges. One or more such extended families formed a village or community. The community was linked through ties of marriage and kinship with other communities and these with still others to form a social network with no very clear boundaries. Groups of villages […] were linked by common dialect and traditions as ‘tribes’ but in recent generations these village groupings were certainly not separate ‘societies’” (Suttles: 2000 [1987]: 16-17). 366 sites, fishing stations or harvesting sites. Douglas, regardless, ordered the attack on Lamalchi, because he considered they have distinct ideas of property in land, and mutually recognize their several exclusive possessory rights in certain districts, they would not fail to regard the occupation of such portions of the Colony by white settlers, unless with the full consent of the proprietary tribes, as national wrongs; and the sense of injury might produce a feeling of irritation against the settlers, and perhaps disaffection to the Government that would endanger the peace of the country. (Governor James Douglas in Wilson; Miller; Anglebeck; Grove, 2013: 18). These “failed systems” allowed for a massacre of the Coast Salish indigenous peoples, who suffered a severe loss of population due to introduced epidemic diseases, particularly smallpox and measles. The Hwlitsum population shrunk more than 95% in the period, according to Chief Rocky. The “failed systems” also relate to the inability of the Crown to address disputes regarding traditional lands and resources between indigenous peoples and settlers, following the increasing numbers of hwunitumin, as Coast Salish peoples referred to white settlers, on the wake of the gold rush in California, in 1849. Facing a dilemma in protecting First Nations’ civil and property rights or gaining the loyalty of the newcomers (the majority of whom were Americans) by making lands and resources available, the Crown made way for non-compliance with its original ruling to negotiate and compensate land occupied in indigenous territory. There are numerous factors involved other than the gunboat diplomacy. Like a huge smallpox epidemics, which wiped out literally like 95% of the population. The first explores given them the disease whether it was James Cook or George Vancouver. I think that the premise was by the Brits that we would disappear all. They even called the vanishing Indians. But we are still here and we are still fighting like tigers right? (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). These “failed systems” reverberate onto the present in the narratives of the Hwlitsum, who address the continued effects of the bombing in 1863, and the loss of their territory at Lamalchi; the hardships faced by the fragmentation of their band and the present efforts to bring cohesion to the community; the impact of the reduction of their members provoked by the diseases introduced with the contact with Europeans; the occupation of their territory by new hwunitumin; and the disputes for resource allocation. But the narratives also address “newer” “failed systems”, such as the 367 residential schools, the treaty negotiation, and the process of consultation and accommodation of their claims in the context of implementation of development projects with effects to their claimed territory. These are all seen as “failed systems” in addressing the necessities of the community, connected to a continuity of unwillingness to understand their way of living, usurpation of their territory and resources, and appropriation of their culture, what has resulted in what members refer as “low self-esteems” among their population. Years of cold intimidation, tactics and low diplomacy, you know, to put our people down, in order to implement these intimidation tactics and this blatant racism and discrimination against people on the bush, against our people, they by design enacted some policies into the Indian Act […]. That is the cause our people have, like Lindsay said, say, they have is poor self-esteem. You know, and this is what I called the failed systems. On the Indian Act itself, you know, it is very ominous, you know, and everything in it. And it is still in existence, right from that second, and that is the problem, that is still and people say “that was years ago”. No, it still applies. And the reserve system itself, marginalized our people from early years. Like even today, we have very close friends like in places like . . . , you know, they’re just like marginalized. […] We may have lack of self-stem of social problems we may endure now, including alcoholism that type of thing, but these are, we forced on us, in our opinion, because of these failed systems we talked about. I have brothers and sisters that really died on the downtown east side. It comes down to not being able to fit in, taking the Indian out of the child, but the chain doesn’t make you white, but you still have accepted, and you got nothing right? We are who we are, what our soul tells us we are, and we are proud of it, and we live with it. And that is all the people need to now right? And that is what we are saying to the world now. (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). The “low self-esteem” refers to the inability to fit in the “white man’s world”, that drives people into isolation, drinking, and other social problems endured by the community. The narratives all connect with the “failed systems” that have not allowed for their full economic, social, and cultural reproduction. Nevertheless, when their narratives address these “failed systems” they also refer to the resistance strategies that the community has undertaken over the years, from the bombing to the residential schools, to the present disputes amalgamated in the lawsuits. They have placed them in a different situational position in relation to local and regional society, but as well as in relation to the other bands within the Coast Salish World. From their resolve to fight back the people who were bombing their village to their decision to claim their status as a band under the Indian Act they see themselves and are seen by other bands and local and regional society as underdogs (Miller, personal communication, 2015). 368 That permanent situation has inflicted upon them hardships related to the loss of their territory, the fragmentation of their community, difficulties to access fishing and hunting rights, and the “low self-esteem” community endures. But, it has also made them resilient. That resilience is the base for their desire not to accommodate into other tribes they are kin of and would be entitled to rights accordingly, as it would be the case with the Musqueam, the Tsawwassen, the Penelakut, the Katzie, or even the Lummi, in the United States. There is a resilient need to “honour our ancestors”, as Chief Rocky states, embodying a historical consciousness that permeates the individual belongings to their territory, the family emulation of their traditions, and communitarian practices, gatherings, and ceremonies. It took us 20 years to finally figure out, to realize that if you are stuck in that bureaucracy and have to adhere to the policy frame, you not gonna win, you got step outside the box, and just say it, this territory is unceded here, it is ours, nobody has ever taken from us, instead of worrying about what they will respond back in a matter of six months, step outside the box, because we have the rights very clear, we are not going to be walked on anymore. Because you can’t win plain inside, you can’t play the government, it is a beaurocratic system, you cannot fight the master within his house, you cannot deconstruct the master’s house with his own tools. And that is the problem, we are trying to play their little games, with these six steps, Indian Act process, and so we tried to, but the whole thing was design to fail for us, it is just wasn’t working, so now are taking a different approach. We understand all about modernity and all, but we still have a right to exist, and we are going to exercise that, and that is all we need to know. I think that they still have the same overlord view on it, right? It goes back to honouring our ancestors. (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). Historical consciousnesses are activated within narratives of resistance. Even when they are constructed so as to demonstrate the power of the “failed systems”, such as the residential schools, they are reworked to show that they are still here as a people, resilient, referring to their place within the Coast Salish World, to their grounded spirituality, to their ability to fight back, to their traditional knowledge of the land, to their distinctiveness, and to their connection to fishing. It was law for natives to go to residential schools, […] [big hands, he holds his hand up and said, Lyndsey – randomly] - on first contact they turned us over like pancakes, and they will never understand us, because they are not spiritually grounded as us. Oh, wasn’t kind of funny this guy? So when anyone come to tell about this residential schools, like this is in northern BC, they took you into Alberta and like uncle Rocky was saying the condition were so bad […] and he say he was so messed up from these residential schools, like low self-esteem, the drugs, the alcohol, and where he lived, when he wasn’t fishing, we was in this place called “terries”, which is about a 369 hundred miles in land from the coast, and it is just like one long highway, and he said to me it was like 50-50, he would be walking down the highway, dropped or stoned or whatever, and said it would be 50-50, whether we would walk on in front of the next car and end his life. He overcome it. He said it took him years and years to overcome that. He knows where he came from. He knew where he was going. […] It is not only one village its like nationwide. (Conversation with Lindsay Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). Residential schools were implemented in Canada following a necessity to deal with the perceived “Indian problem” that arose with the intensification of settler presence after the establishment of British colonial authority in 1760. According to Furniss (2011 [1992]: 15), “Indian residential schools were the product of nineteenth-century federal policy of assimilation.” The relationship between Native communities and missionaries, who had come to the New World along with fur traders under the evangelic mission of spreading the word of the gospel and saving the souls of a child-like, rudimentarily organized, precarious, hand-to-mouth existence, superstitious, savage race, radically changed when Indigenous people became obstacles to the country’s development. The way of life of Natives as skilled hunters and gatherers was essential to fur trades’ business, and although coming into contact with European values, customs, and Christian ways, according to Furniss, no radical change was provoked in their organization. But when white population came to settle in the region they were direct competitors for the scarce resources available and the process that was seen as conciliation changed into a process of civilization. Natives became a problem that needed correction and the answer was a process of gradual but intensive assimilation through residential schooling. Natives would be settled and taught basic literacy, agricultural, and industrial trades, as well as principles of Christian morality and belief. The ultimate goal of this program was to create Christianized, civilized, and self-governing Native communities under the protection of the British government. The program additional benefit of ensuring the adjacent lands once occupied by Native peoples would now be free for white settlement (Furniss, 2011 [1992]: 20). First organized within the territory of the communities in a day-school system, settler’s, church’s and government’s perception that the process was not going in a rhythm adequate to the assimilation expectations, as Natives were resistant in 370 absorbing the English language and the European ways, residential schools moved to the “best interest of Native peoples” into a system where children would be removed from their families and communities for months at a time. Part of that “aggressive civilization policy” was the “consolidation of Indian tribes onto reserves, the abolishment of tribal society and traditions, and the permanent settlement of individuals in their own homes and their own tracts of land” (Furniss, 2011 [1992]: 25). It became a joint venture between the Church and the State, according to Furniss. The results of this system of residential schools were disastrous for Native peoples, although different forms of resistance and accommodation were undertaken by them through the implementation of the schools that reached the outskirts of the 21st century, the last of them being closed in the 1980s. Debates about the issue in Canada included the effects of the separation of Native children from their families; their subjection to harsh physical punishment; the denial of their right to speak their languages; and the indoctrination of personal and cultural inferiority. First Nations have connected these effects with the high rates of alcoholism, suicide, sexual abuse, language and culture loss, low self-esteem, and dependency encountered in their communities. These effects and connections are also addressed by Hwlitsum members in their narratives. Lindsay refers to the histories told by elders within the Native community to explain the problems faced by his own people in dealing with the effects of residential schools. By not being spiritually grounded white men have imposed values, customs, and practices alien to Natives, materialized in the poor eating conditions, mistreatments, and punishments that have caused low self-esteem, drug abuse, and suicide within communities in trying to cope with the effects generated by the system. These effects are also connected within the narratives with the present strategies of resistance and political struggles native communities are undertaken. A destitute, low self-esteem, mentally and physically abused Native community has been taught that it was bad to be Indian and is now ashamed to be indigenous. like in our community and in our family, because in Native tribes it is like all the same family, like 371 cousins, uncles and aunties, you know, like, the low self-esteem is all bred on, because due to the residential schools here and all the other, like my Uncle Rocky here calls failed systems from the colonizer, we were, for a lot of our families, it was bad to be Native, it was bad to be Indians. It was bad, we have examples in our families, where like some of our cousins have dark skin, right? And because of the abuse suffered, like my grandfather and his brothers and sisters at the residential schools, they were like, they were abused mentally, abused physically, and so it was bad to be Native, and some of our cousins, their mama, like my grandpa’s sister, powdered her face white so they could be not mistaken for an Indian. I guess what I am asking is that is it like that down there are people ashamed to say they are indigenous? (Conversation with Lindsay Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). According to Furniss (2011 [1992]: 21), “through the history of Indian-white relations in Canada, Native peoples have sought to mold and manipulate their relationship with missionaries, fur traders, and government agents in order to advance their own interests”. Furniss stresses that Native apparent accommodation to the assimilation polices perpetrated by the government, supported on the Church’s structure, such as the residential schools, did not come without their resolve to enhance their opportunities, while at the same time enabling them to maintain their communities and their traditional cultures. I guess what I am trying to get out here is that external forces have created internal problems, cause it is the same with us exactly, that is exactly what he was saying, you know, from day one, with us, like, well, you know, the Lamalchi ancestors went in to these problems cause what you call crap-created colonial people, right, it was a transformation of life-style and culture, that we didn’t necessarily welcomed, but rather it was forced to and happened to us to this day, but it think that is the problem. (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). The impinging force that settler presence impressed upon Native communities in Canada, made them weave strategies of coping with the results of changing economic, social and cultural circumstances created, in between accommodation and resistance. In a way of better inserting themselves in these new circumstances, Native people first supported missionary-run schools because they thought they could learn the English language and agricultural skills. Nevertheless, after verifying the impacts discussed of allowing their children to be taken away from their homes and culture, they resisted the coercive policies implemented to force them into accepting the intensification of assimilative ways. According to Furniss (2011 [1992]: 33), their resistance took the form of everyday acts, subtle, indirect, and largely symbolic, “such as stealing food, lying, refusing to cry when punished, and speaking Native languages in private”. 372 I think we have been forced or even may have been blessed to come out and tell our story like that. Like, for example, my father went through those residential schools, and I know it, because of the trauma he went through, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, all those things, plus the lack of proper food, I mean they gave you rotten food. So the first thing that you would do when you got out, was steal, right? For an apple, for eating an apple. Because you had to sit back and watch those people abuse you, whether they are priest or nuns or anything . . . I mean, they are eating bacon and eggs and they are feeding you six-day-old mush. When you are a child, that stuff scares you forever, everything has come from childhood, I am not a psychologist or anything, but these things, and that’s they way it works. And that is one of the social problems that befollows our people. [ . . . ] Like our people are first and foremost, and the interest of our people, especially in British Columbia, are vital to me, to support them, and advocate for their rights because those are the things that had to be fixed on the ground. (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). Chief Rocky’s narrative concurs with Furniss’s account of the impinging force residential schools were to Native communities, and the effects in the present. The Hwlitsum Chief, however address another dimension of this compelling process of interference in Native peoples’ lives, which relates to their struggles of today. Carlson (2010) writes that indigenous peoples, despite these impinging forces, have continuously found different ways of being distinct. Narratives still relate “first and foremost” to their presence in the region, and to their commitment to furthering the traditional ways of their people. That kind of historical consciousness is activated by their narratives of resistance rather than accommodation, although weaved within everyday forms of resistance that may have always ended up in reinforcing “the racist belief that Native people were inherently ‘wild’ and resistant to discipline”, “civilizing program”, and “the control over Native peoples” (Furniss, 2011 [1992]: 34). After being denied recognition as being indigenous peoples in Canada for so many years, in 1985, following an amendment to the Indian Act that enabled First Nations people left off the Indian Register an opportunity to be registered, the Hwlitsum renewed their claim for recognition. In the negotiation with the government they were denied and forced to litigate up to the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which finally ruled in their favor, in 2000, determining the registrar that the Hwlitsum’s ancestors were ”Status Indians”. The decision created, nevertheless a curious and singular process, shared by no more than two other bands in the country. Hwlitsum are individually considered to be indigenous, but not as a band, for the lack of agreement on 373 their existence as an autonomous governing body, as discussed. Wilson, Miller, Angelbeck and Grove (2013: 8), however, write that The Lamalchi were a tribe because: they had a name that was widely known, a territory and sites to which they went seasonally, traditions of origin and history, and a common sense of common identity. Thus, both at contact and the time that British sovereignty was asserted in 1846, they were an autonomous social entity within the larger Coast Salish social network. The Hwlitsum First Nation as it exists today is the continuation of, and successor to, the Lamalchi First Nation as it existed at the time of contact with Hwunitums and, as such, the Hwlitsum First Nation as it exists today continues to hold the Aboriginal rights and title that the Lamalchi First Nation held at the date of contact. So the present lawsuit runs deep into their history and connects them to their present struggle for recognition as a band. Chief Rocky Wilson (personal communication, 2014) said that since they “did never succumbed to the Indian Act, [they] are still fighting the war of 1863”. In the mentioned meeting with the community this year, their lawyer informed them that the Crown is claiming they are Penelakut, and, thus, have no right to be recognized as a band under the Indian Act. The dispute is underway, but it is clear that the elements in which the Crown has been trying to support their arguments to delegitimize Hwlitsum’s claims are built in a continuity of the relationships it had with the people since contact. Rules have changed, British rule has been turned into Canada, British Columbia has settled agreements with other now recognized tribes, but the Hwlitsum are still pictured as a polluted community, with no claim in the present local and regional arrangements of power, dispossessed, and who cannot be considered a people. They continue to be a sub-tribe, like the Commissioners addressed them in the 19th century, under the Crown’s eyes, a race no more. Nonetheless, narratives of Hwlitsum members continue to address their distinction as a people and the histories of resistance that have characterized the community’s insertion into the “white man’s world”, as Lindsey Wilson puts it. It places them in an offset position in relation to other bands, creating difficulties for their recognition by the State, for their cohesion as a group, and for their existence as a people. Nevertheless, the fact that they had a different history may, in some ways, turn to their advantage, because they are not in the scope of the Indian Act. 374 An Indian Act band has nothing to do with us, it is a creation of the white man, so how can you force that to apply to us? It a creation of legislation […] They find a number of treaties, already the Douglas treaties, and they already went out of bounds at that time, so all those different little factors become involved. […] use against them what they throw at you. We have these meetings in our community, and a lot of our members think the government is going to get on our side, like we will give you this, we will give you that, and I have been denied so long and that is, they are not our friends, right? (Conversation with Chief Rocky Wilson, Vancouver, November 2014). Not being in the scope of the Indian Act, may open different avenues for their political struggle, and create an opportunity to “use against them what they throw at you”. This year’s Tsilhqot'in decision by Canada’s Supreme Court127 has recognized aboriginal title over 1,750 square kilometers of territory. The Tsilhqot'in nation is made of six bands located west of Williams Lake, in the B.C. Interior, with a population of about 3,000. The legal case dates back decades, to a dispute over logging rights granted within Tsilhqot'in traditional claimed territory, which, like the Hwlitsum’s, remained unceded land to this date. The decision might open new grounds for the relationship between indigenous peoples, particularly those not recognized within the Indian Act, and government, with effects to local and regional arrangements of power in British Columbian as well as to indigenous peoples nation-wide. Title, however, is not absolute. Economic development can still go ahead on titled land without consent in cases where development is pressing, substantial and meets the Crown's fiduciary duty. A major change the decision inflicts is that aboriginal title will not just apply to specific sites where First Nations lived or used intensively (the core of the reserves policy under the Indian Act). Government is still insisting, nevertheless, that the commitment to negotiations under the treaty format is the best way to resolve outstanding aboriginal rights and title claims. The decision rules, however, that British Columbia must either reach an agreement with the First Nation, or justify infringing on that title right by showing that the development project has urgent implications for the province’s economic welfare and proceed with work. In that case, government would have to compensate the First Nation, though. In order to infringe on the title, government would also have to pass legislation. The ruling will apply to any 127 Supreme Court of Canada. Tsilhqot’in nation v. British Columbia [2014] 2 S.C.R, July 26th, 2015. 375 unresolved land claims, and the biggest impact will be felt not only in British Columbia, but also in the Maritimes, as well as in parts of southern Ontario and southern Quebec. Skeptical positioning about the decision highlight government’s power to circumscribe “urgent implications for the province’s economic welfare and proceed with work”. There is also fear that the legal entanglements and the need for further regulation might lead the process of negotiation with government based on the decision into the same trap of the morose and costly treaty proceedings (Scott Schuyler, leader of the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, personal communication, 2015). Other indigenous groups have considered the decision a "game-changer", that will allow for better terms of negotiation with government. The Hwlitsum are directly affected by the new realities the decision might reveal since they are a non-recognized band and inflicted with installed development projects, as the Super Port or the BC Ferries, and foreseen ones, as the Northern Gateway oil pipeline. These new realities have yet to be assessed by the band. The Hwlitsum case opens up different perspectives for the communities that were part of this research. These communities were pushed and pushed themselves into an underdog situation. Being constantly and historically in such situation has created a different condition for these communities, as will address in my final considerations. In the discussions I make in the following, I will stress the distinct resistance strategies that were engendered, worked and reworked within religious-mythic-political territories, in the face of epitomizing events that pressed collective stress in the communities’ “mazeway”. I will identify the triggers to their collective mobilization that pressed them into different “transition moments” and “transition periods”, as well as their distinct “conditions of possibility” to become “units of mobilization” and state their political struggles. The starting point of the discussions I make is the identification of the stage for the interplay of social relations between communities which are in an underdog situation and the “official society”. Although inserted in post-colonial societies, communities and “official society” relate in settings characterized by a colonial culture. 376 This colonial culture pulses through abstract, everyday, complex and simple relations that range from the public policies that reach communities to the exchange at the local bakery. This creates frameworks of understanding based on an assertion of levels of purity. The shared understanding of this framework imposes order and rituals of asserting what is formed and formless, tidy or disordered, clean or dirty. Colonial culture is a framework of related common sense, taken-for-granted understandings about how society should operate. In the Americas, colonial culture has produced racialized identifications and relations, which have produced both ethnic and racial stigmatization. Identities are sorted out according to pre-determined criteria. All three communities with whom I worked are in settings that are informed by colonial culture. It is their state of affairs and that is what they must face in order to operate in relation to the “official society”. Colonial culture, being abstract and working by diverse, complex mechanisms is most recognizable by epitomizing events and the resistance strategies communities used to face those events. Examples of epitomizing events in Cuba are the Revolution, the special period, or the economic actualization. Despite the well-known accomplishments, racial issues could not be addressed in full in the Revolution, which perpetuated racialized relations inherited from the colonial and republican periods. The idea of national unit under a single Cuban ethos, the “Cubanity”, a transculturation of stripped founding ethnicities, is still the rationale central to the dismissal of self-identification processes such as at La Marina. The special period put all the cards on the table as it revealed the incapacity of the State to fulfill all the moral goals it had enforced and associated with loyalty to the Revolution. The economic chaos that followed the dissolution of the Soviet bloc made explicit the persistence of racism in the “pela isquierda” relations, unregulated by the State. In this pact between a State and a population struggling to survive, it was survival of the fittest – the fittest being the ones with family abroad that could send them money; with houses big enough to transform in to hostels and restaurants; with 377 adequate political connections to make ones’ way around the conflictive regulations of a changing State. The present economic actualization intensifies these contradictions, bringing this survival of the fittest logic to the institutional environment. White Cubans have a lot better chance to be hired at the “divisa” market around tourism, in hotels, private restaurants, and other services, regulated (or unregulated) by the State. They receive salaries in local currency, but the prize is tips in dollars, which gives them a huge economic advantage over those who remain on governmental pay. Cubans identified as whites have greater access to goods and services. In addition, the prices of goods and services are higher for impoverished communities; access to work under better pay conditions is scarce for blacks; less income from abroad reaches black families; and fewer black families have assets from which to profit. In Periperi, colonial culture has left its mark on the ground and on the minds of the community. Several development projects planned and implemented regardless of the community’s considerations have contributed to divisions amongst members, crippling production, and devastating the community’s environment. But also these projects have created immobility as community members do not really know what to do in the face of such monstrous spectacles of power. The Boa Esperança Power Plant in the 1960’s was supposed to bring economic redemption to the region. However, it ended up not producing the expected megawatts it was supposed to and consequently impacted a whole system of transport, production, and commercialization, key to small producers living at the banks of the Parnaíba River. Before Boa Esperança, Periperi members lived off the production they would get from the riverside land, naturally fertilized by the river. The river was also their main connection to the world outside the community that became as shallow as the river, following the implementation of the dam. That connection is today made by the PI-130 that connects Amarante, Palmerais and Teresina. The road outshines the river on the community’s map and is a living presence in their lives, but is not easy to live with. As it split the community in half, they 378 became exposed to run-overs, the prices of the fares, and the presence of people strange to the community. The price paid for development was a lesson to be learned, in the words of Seu Antonio. Part of that price Seu Antonio talked about is related to the development projects that were brought to the community from the outside by developers through the Periperi’s Association of Community Development. The projects were supposed to take advantage of the newly constructed road. Rice production would flow from Periperi to the main local and regional centers. Projects were poorly planned and executed, and created internal dissent in the community. People were frustrated by the banks, governmental technical and institutions. Developers treated them as lazy, ignorant, incompetent blacks after the projects went wrong, and community members refrained from joining the communitarian organization. The new power plant complex carries the signs of all these latter projects – the promise of economic redemption, development, and mobility. Community members are peripheralized in decision-making. The two dams, Castelhano and Estreito, box up Periperi in between them. Already experimented on by previous development projects, the community has been absorbing the disinformation about the actual implementation of the dams. Although construction has not started, people are stressed, and not know if they will be flooded and relocated, or if they will loose their production lands or their houses. The issues of the dams represent a constant variable to be considered in every decision of their lives, from community’s continuity to building your newborn’s room. The Hwlitisum case illuminates how these epitomizing events can have deep historical connections and produce effects in the present. The bombing of their village at Kuper Island by British Navy with direct effect on their present landless condition is emblematic of that reality. According to Miller, (personal communication, 2015), there are no other indigenous bands in the same condition in British Columbia. Everybody knows who they are and of their heritage as Indigenous people, and yet the Crown denies their existence because they do not have a territorial base and cannot, according to the Crown’s account, prove they held an autonomous governing body. The other 379 tribes say they cannot recognize them because they are not a status-holding band. The Hwlitsum are caught in the middle of this game established under colonial arrangements. The reservation schools represented the materialization of assimilation policies, following the motto “kill the Indian, save the men”. Community member, Lindsey Wilson (personal communication, 2014) said they really killed the Indian and the man in those schools. Lindsey point out to the alarming number of community members with psychological problems, which he directly relates to the barbarities that were done at residential schools and the prolonged effect on Hwlitsum families. Furniss (2011 [1992]: 31) writes that “so powerful is the residential schools experience in current thought that it has been the most common issue raised by Native peoples in their presentations to the Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples”. Living in a present colonial setting, destitute from their territory, and being denied recognition as a people, the Hwlitsum still have to endure other hardships related to both implemented and envisioned development projects, such as the Super Port, BC Ferries, and the dams on the Coquitlam River, or the foreseen construction of an oil pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to China. The development projects impact their aquatic and land environment, and have disastrous effects to the fishing cycle, base for their economic, social and cultural reproduction. Fishing is at the heart of their identity, and is embodied in their individual belongings, in the family practices they emulate from their elders, and in their community’s gathering and ceremonies. Colonial culture is pressed on culturally differentiated communities inserted in the most diverse countries in the Americas. It sets the stage, but not how the play goes, however. Communities in an underdog situation are stigmatized so they cannot slip in an out of categories that colonial culture deploys in creating order. But they also share the fact that they have embraced their “underdogness”, rather than given in to the expected lower categorization colonial culture has prepared for them. Their “underdogness” becomes their cultural difference. 380 That is why it is quite difficult to accept the Comaroffs’ argument of a global “politics of identity” at work, based on commodification of culture under market-oriented practices. While agreeing with the Comaroffs that identity and culture can be commoditized, the ethnographic work in this thesis has shown that communitarian moral commitment exceeds the importance of the commercialization of their identity. People in Periperi, at some point, relished being quilombola; the Hwlitsum want to be an “official tribe”; members in La Marina want their neighbourhood to be institutionalized. Yes, this transformed identity represents a commodity, but one that it is priceless and not available for commercialization. They want to access the opportunities available for the whole society and that are currently not coming to them because they are seen as polluted not because they want to sell their identity. “Underdogness” is an identity that is not easy to “wear”. “Underdogness” is based on an idea of systematic resistance to this overwhelming, homogenizing, colonial culture. Communities have attempted several different strategies, ranging from accommodation to the mechanisms by which colonial culture operates to full blown rebellious acts of defiance. Their strategies of resistance root them to their traditions and their culture that is constantly accessed in their social organization. Their tradition of resisting is what made them resilient. It is the place where several forms of historical consciousness are activated at the individual, family, and communitarian levels. In activating their historical consciousness and transforming it into collective mobilization they create conditions to shift their social positioning within local and regional structures of power. That is the moment when they enter into an underdog situation. They assume an unexpected identity different that the one society has reserved for them. This fragile situation places this revealed identity in a state of continuous dispute with colonial culture. Being constantly and historically in an underdog situation presses them to continue on this condition, because they cannot be anything else at several moments of their trajectory, particularly when historical consciousness are activated. Historical consciousness flows in different levels that have public and personal stages, and can be triggered by external and internal stimuli. At the individual level, in La 381 Marina, it is recognizable how important it was that Maritza López through the Afrodescendent Neighbourhood Network contacted Kimbo and Regla and infused new ways of thinking about their racial identification and how they perceived themselves as a black community and their significance as the root connecting black communities to African-based traditions. Kimbo’s statement about how he got involved with his communitarian work in the neighbourhood through baseball is a public statement of his historical consciousness towards the neighbourhood. His personal perception of his black identity is another form of historical consciousness that he incorporated in his communitarian leadership. In Periperi, Bispo played a fundamental role in bringing awareness of issues around quilombola identification to a community forced to be regarded as poor peasants. Seu Antonio re-signified his leadership by using his protagonist role in rebuilding the community’s Church and organizing the community’s soccer teams. His renewed position as a leader legitimized him in his own assessment of the historical conscious around the community’s traditions and history. His previous participation in the local Syndicate was a personal asset to his historical consciousness. Hwlitsum’s struggles were renewed by the exchange with scholars, strengthening their claims to a place among the Coast Salish peoples. Chief Rocky, building on his family’s ties to the only Hwlitsum indigenous person recognized by the Crown, forced their presence, at least individually, as Status Indians, into the unwillingness shed upon their struggle by the government as well as other First Nations. That allowed for the construction of community cohesion and the involvement of new leaders, such as Lindsay and Janice Wilson around the present struggles the people is pushing forward. At the family level, in La Marina, historical consciousness was condensed in communitarian organizations based on African traditions that outlived the colonial, republican, and revolution periods. The “cabildos” and the “abacuá secret society” created true families of “saint”, organized in “religious-mythic-political” territories in which these families could maintain their heritage and from which they could access 382 their shared historical consciousness. In Periperi, each one of the “tiras”, run by each family resulting from a direct relative of the founding couple Manoel and Maria Vaqueiro, is a religious-mythic-political territory, from which flows particular forms of historical consciousness. Hwlitsum’s collective identity being connected to fishing is structured on their emulation of their practices and traditions from their elders. The wharfs where they work along Canoe Pass, such as the Wilson’s fishing Wharf, constitute “religious-mythic-political” territories where practices are shared, histories are told, and traditions are invoked, connecting them as a distinct people among the broader Coast Salish World. At the community level, in La Marina, the cultural manifestations of their historical consciousness occurs in the neighbourhood gatherings and locally bound shared understandings of these moments. The rumba and the comparsa are directly connected to these understandings of a shared identity that roots them to a communitarian awareness of their culture, and what makes them refer to their history. The burning of the effigy of San Juan is an example of how historical consciousness can endow cultural manifestations with other symbolic meanings, since, as Fedor Monet told me (personal communication 2015), originally the procession had nothing to do with Afro traditions and today is it followed by a thousand members of the neighbourhood singing in Yoruba, and praying to the effigy to bring remedy to their ailments. In Periperi, community activated their latent communitarian, shared historical consciousness following the threat of the implementation of a power complex. The circumstances of the development project, which has not been implemented to date, has coaxed, nevertheless, community to mobilize around a collective identification as quilombola. To do so, they have drawn on historical consciousness about the history of the Vaqueiro family, their importance for the local and regional setting and the social positioning of Periperi’s members today in relation to the “official society”. The lawsuits the Hwlitsum are pressing momentously embody community’s claims aiming to place them in a differentiated position in relation to both government’s and other First Nations’ unwillingness to deal with their situation. 383 These several levels of historical consciousness are what triggers mobilization around a form of collective identification. That identification is often related to a desire to become depolluted. In La Marina, community members wish to be depolluted from the stigmatization of being predominantly black, of a neighbourhood associated with prostitution, drug dealing and gambling, where one gets diseases, poor, rundown, and violent. The people of Periperi fight prejudice against black people, and seek to change the image of community where no communitarian project flies, indebted, and with an unaccomplished heritage. The Hwlitsum seek to honour their ancestors by having their place recognized within the Coast Salish World, as dignified caretakers of their territory, and as a people that has fought assimilation and termination inflicted upon them because they stood against colonization, never ceding their rights to their land. The mobilization takes many forms. Recognition by the State, the creation of internal cohesion, accessing rights to hunt and fish, and becoming autonomous managers of public services are some of the goals identified in the work with the communities in this study. Recognition in Periperi took the form of applying for a certification by Palmares Cultural Foundation. The instrument certifies the community to be recognized as quilombola and confers on them a differentiated status to accessing public policies. Most immediately, members in Periperi wanted the certification to provide a barrier, on the grounds of cultural distinctiveness, to the potential relocation of their community. In La Marina mobilization is connected with their hopes for recognition by local authorities as a neighbourhood. They want their neighbourhood to be institutionalized in the structure of government and receive equal attention as the other neighbourhoods in town. The Hwlitsum have filed a suit for the recognition of their people as band, claiming the historical territories and their rights to hunt and fish in that area. Internal cohesion is both an objective of the community’s struggle and a problem for the mobilization process. The historical fluidity that arises from the several forms of historical consciousness can bring cohesion, but it can also set community into crossroads they will need to face in order to advance in their political struggles. Like the 384 question of recognition and blood quantum that is already underway, following the Hwlitsum decision to move forward with their claim to be recognized as a band. As seen, the 2000 decision ruled on their connection to an ancestor that would grant them Indian status under the Indian Act, individually, member by member. If they do get recognized by the Crown, several members who have not been able to demonstrate their connection to this particular ancestor recognized by the Crown as Indian will have to be thrown out of community potential reserve because of the blood quantum standards under the Indian Act. It would also create different classes of members among the existing community. Periperi also faces challenges ahead with the new certification as quilombola. The Foundation accepted existing data only on Periperi and left out the surrounding communities of São João and Riachão, which participated in the process of discussion about the quilombola identity, but did not reach a communitarian consensus and nor had leadership to push the issue around their communities. The idea of the extended community that includes those communities and others black and non-black still remains, nevertheless. It is not clear if Periperi is going to access this quilombola identity or if it will let it become dormant, because the certification was directly connected with the implementation of the dams. If the identity is taken up, the community can become a center for the diffusion of the quilombola identification to other communities in the region. However, the assumption of a quilombola identity can generate disputes similar to those that are being envisioned by the Hwlitsum. The quilombola identification may severe the community from the extended community. Cruikshank (personal communication, 2015) made me aware of the ongoing dispute among the First Nations of the Yukon, in Canada, around the demarcation of their lands. Lines that were drawn to limit the different nations’ territories in studies made about the region in the 1970’s are now creating conflict between bands following a policy change to require bands to decide internally on their borders. The problem is that those lines were basically anthropological approximations to enhance understanding about the complex realities of the nations who live in that region, and 385 they often overlap. Also, with the construction of the Alaska highway in the Yukon the land has changed in value to the nations, as everyone wants their territory to intertwine with the road. The anthropologist warns us about the power of the boundaries and their social life. In La Marina, if the community gets recognized as an official neighbourhood and they become the primary source of African based traditions in the city, there will be a shift in the relations between black neighbourhoods in town. The idea of extended community is being worked out with the surrounding neighbourhood of Simpson through the connection between the projects “Identidad y Barrio La Marina” and the “Ilé”. “Marineros” see their connection to Simpson and recognized that several “cabildos” and “abacuá potencies” that members of La Marina as participants are situated in the neighbourhood of Simpson, “the Africa Chiquita”. Both neighbourhoods oppose, nevertheless, the one across the river, Pueblo Nuevo, which has received most of governmental attention around the African tradition issue. The idea of extended community in La Marina draws on shared historical consciousness with the neighbourhood of Simpson, and on class struggle, ethnic ties and racial identification. It faces little threat of fragmentation with the potential institutionalization of La Marina. In the case of Periperi, the racial divide is still quite present inside the extended community. There are farmers who claim their share and impose “acolhimento”-driven relations upon members of Periperi and other communities. In São João and Riachão, the racial divide is at the heart of the indecision about the quilombola issue. Threat to the dissolution of the extended community is more present with the assumption of the quilombola identity in Periperi. In the Hwlitsum case the other tribes do not want to recognize new indigenous communities. They want to increase the numbers of existing members in existing tribes but not to share their rights to land, services, and financing with other newly constituted tribes. The Hwlitsum cannot really count on an extended community, the Coast Salish network, for community cohesion. 386 In all three cases the idea of contagion is a permanent fear for the establishment. There are, at least, 20 riverside black communities in the Parnaíba from Floriano, to Amarante and Teresina (Appendix 8). If they all were to exercise their territorialities in a quilombola fashion, they could force a significant change in the realities and configurations of power in the region. La Marina’s process is already “contaminating” Simpson. There is a fear of contagion that harkens all the way back to the Haitian Revolution for the case of La Marina and, to some extent, Periperi, as well. The case with the Hwlitsum is interesting because it is set in a stage were everyone has already got their cut of the pie and the Hwlitsum, who were invited to the party, arrive and there is no pie left. Now the Crown is saying they have no right to pie because they cannot provide proof of an invitation. Behind the scenes, it is fear of contagion based on the assumption that the Hwlitsum’s case could stir up other claims from smaller bands that are either not recognized or mingled within the larger nations and bands. Fear of contagion unleashes yet another prominent characteristic of communities which are in an underdog situation. Their mobilization makes them visible and there is no turning back for their condition, built by being constantly and historically in an underdog situation. Things may be dormant for a while, as in the case in Periperi, where quilombola identification is a response to the pending implementation of the power complex, which is not under way yet. So, as long as there is no threat, the identity may not be accessed. The pace may accelerate, as in the case in La Marina, and economic changes that are opening new grounds for collective mobilization under the increasing unregulated relations it has been producing. And things may be at stake, in the case of the Hwlitsum, with a long-shot lawsuit that injects new blood into community’s weary disputing process, while demanding everything they have on this wild bet. The decision on their hunting and fishing rights will be determinate the future, for better or worse. That is why this work was needed: comparisons are needed to cut across categories to understand shared phenomena like that that places communities in an underdog situation. By working with communities’ historical consciousnesses at 387 different levels - supported on their narratives of resistance to impinging forces, characterized by a colonial culture that presses them into to expected, polluted, lower social positioning - their resilience to an established, “official society” could be revealed. That resilience is built on a tradition of resistance. It is most salient in the identification of the epitomizing moments that forced transition moments and periods upon them, following collective stress that made them reassess their “mazeway”. Their narratives, nevertheless, despite recognizing the impinging force of these moments, address their underdog situation, and their possibility to shift their expected lower social positioning. The narratives identify several moments in their communitarian trajectory when they have found themselves into these underdog situations. It has led me to believe that at some point in their trajectory, being constantly and historically in an underdog situation, they could not dissociate from being identified with being underdogs. It creates an identity that is not easy to “wear”, but one that grants them collective cohesion, through shared histories and traditions of resistance. It is a condition they both have to endure and desire to exercise. In my final considerations I will work on the elements that have led me to understand their underdog condition, supported by the ethnographic work undertaken in this thesis. Nevertheless, it is an analysis that I consider shall need further research. My aim is to open a new field of research that, although builds on boundary transgression and has necessarily to cope with the challenges provoked by it, may represent more readable, comparative discussions to communities living situations such as the ones described in this thesis, contributing to activating different forms of historical consciousness, and aiding their collective mobilization and political struggles, in the face of impinging forces that continue to rob them of their histories and self-identification, and imposing impeding futures upon them. 388 Final Considerations – The Underdog Condition Seu Antonio’s passing away in September this year hit me like a bomb. I was in my desk placed strategically on the porch outside my house working on the thesis, where I could invariably be found throughout this year writing, sipping on a bottle of water, and smoking a cigarette now and then, grudging away from the children and family, when Bispo sent me a message through Facebook. The message contained the necessary information about his passing away, it stated the date, it informed me about the community’s mourning, and it addressed the resulting impossibility for us, Bispo, Seu Antonio, the remaining community and I to celebrate in loco (as we had planned for the end of the year) the victory that the recent certification of the community as a quilombo represented. The method of transmission of the information was probably the reason for the missing details. I needed the missing details, such as how it happened and how the community was coping with it, for our connection had been professionally and emotionally intense throughout the years we partnered up in researching about the community and struggling to address their struggles. After a week or so, Bispo responded, still without the elaboration I longed for because he, too, lacked information. Seu Antonio apparently had suffered a heart attack while driving his motorcycle on the way to Amarante, a route he took daily, running errands back and forth. The community was mourning his passing away, which drove them into thinking about the next steps in addressing communitarian organization and leadership. It inevitably brought them to assessing their recent accomplishments with the certification. As I have shown, the certification represented for the community an important success along the way in their struggles. However, it brought them to new crossroads and new tension regarding titling and the assumption of a quilombola identity both inside and outside the community. Furhter, Seu Antonio’s passing away got them thinking about reassessing yet other crossroads they had already revisited, realizing new forms and paths for leadership, but that were somehow overshadowed by the present 389 mourning. It also led them to evaluating how these crossroads inform their present struggle. Late in September I could finally reach Nilda through her aunt’s amplified antenna hooked up to a cellphone. Nilda briefly updated me about these events and about her and the community’s sentiments about their situation. These sentiments were connected to Seu Antonio’s passing away, of course, but also revealed their reassessment of the path of their present struggles. The “transition period” provoked by the potential implementation of the dams in the Parnaíba River had worried the community about impacts to their territory. The situation was relatively calm since the news that the development project had came to a temporary halt, since the project has not been considered economically viable, and has not, as of yet, found bidders. The “transition moment” that pushed the community toward the mobilization around the struggle for the certification as a quilombo had also quieted down. Nevertheless, Nilda’s narrative solely addressed their present situation, connected to the hardships community had to endure, and how they have overcome time and time again. As difficult as it ever was, our phone conversation could not explore much on these topics, but it stimulated me to thinking about their situation. Short of renewing their leadership, Periperi has yet to fully assess the spoils of their recent, rather successful mobilization. It is interesting that what preoccupies the community at this moment of mourning is exactly this topic. Different levels of historical consciousnesses were activated in the midst of the discussed “transition period”, which allowed the community to recognize their “conditions of possibility” and push their struggles forward through collective mobilization around their quilombola identity. These historical consciousnesses have not gone into oblivion. Their underdog situation remains, though reluctantly addressed in their narratives. They once again are in an underdog situation by thinking about their impeding future and how to establish new relations to the “official society,” now that they are under their new quilombola identification. They wonder how to cope with the communitarian reorganization promoted by their process of mobilization without one of their main leaders? What is to 390 become of the desire on part of the community to hold to collective titling and how to address that both inside and outside the community? These questions connect the community with their victories over mobilization, but also to other moments when their historical consciousnesses were activated to resist other impinging forces. As I noted, the underdog situation is not an identity easy to “wear”. They have been frequently and historically forced into this situation, but also have built narratives of resistance. Those narratives have created and aided community cohesion and have been gradually woven into their collective identification, to a point that they cannot cease to refer to them. It is a situation that, although it cannot be said to be permanent, is frequent. When members of the community address their underdog situation in their narratives, they do it often times by talking about some overwhelming force that could not be fought or was too difficult to bear, but that they ended up finding a way around it and resisting it. These narratives often make allusions to epitomizing moments that end up imposing totalizing narratives that support a history, robbed of the historical consciousnesses that inform the community’s resistance strategies. The community mobilization has often accessed these resistance strategies, thereby forcing the community as well as the local and regional arrangements of power to reorder. In the midst of this process the community faces and encounter different histories about themselves and about the setting in which they are inserted. The historical fluidity that arises allows them the chance to weave new histories, and shift their lower social positioning. It is not an easy process, though, and it often leads the community into having to struggle with the reaction of established groups and individuals who seek to reinforce the very own stereotypes that have forced them into these lower, expected social positioning, aiming at maintain the status quo. The narratives of “economic redemption” built around the construction of the Boa Esperança dam never considered the realities of riverside communities such as Periperi and the effects of the implementation of the dam to their economic, social and cultural reproduction. Periperi coped with this “economic redemption” by organizing 391 around the class struggle and their presence in the local and regional rural worker’s syndicate. It led them into their communitarian organization around their association of producers. The reorganized power structure, however, responded with local development projects, which again forced the community into a lower, polluted social positioning. Building on the role of their leaders and their communitarian organization, the community, facing the implementation of the Castelhano and Estreito dams, mobilized yet again around their collective struggle for the quilombola certification. Now they face renewed opposition aiming at demoting them from their accomplishments and they turn to their narratives of resistance to re-organize their struggles, yet aware of the problems facing them. The other communities part of this present study face different yet similar trajectories. From the bombing of their village, to the termination resulting from the epidemics spread by settlers, to the assimilation in the form of residential schools, and to the attempted termination of their chance to organization as a people, their non-recognition as a band under the Indian Act represents, the Hwlitsum have never ceased their obligation to honour their ancestors and fight for their unceded territory. They have found new ways to be different and not amalgamated into other indigenous groups with whom they related or into the modernity imposed by Canadian society that has been unwilling to recognize their distinct condition. The lawsuits they are pressing today embody their narratives of resistance that seek to weave different histories that can support a different social positioning than the polluted ones they have been relegated to. It also places them in a differentiated condition in relation to other bands, one which may allow for alternative grounds in which to position their struggles, as discussed, for instance, with the Tsilhqot'in decision. On the other hand, other bands and development projects have been establishing their presence in their claimed territory, with impacts to their fishing, hunting and gathering non-recognized rights, and to their identity and communitarian organization. La Marina has endured stigmatization as a neighbourhood “of blacks”, conflictive, bound to gambling and prostitution, since the displacement of freed and enslaved black 392 men and women, following colonial measures, driven by the fear of the insurrections in the plantations and the city, connected to the rise of the Haitian Revolution on a broader scale. Organized in “religious-mythic-political territories”, such as the cabildos or the abacuá secret society, bound to their ties of class, blood and “saint”, the neighbourhood has resisted the termination of their forms of organization that was aimed by republican dictators, and the assimilation promoted with the Revolution under the sign of national unit, materialized in an idea “Cubanity”, that robbed them of their ethnic and racial conscious, and the significance of their narratives of resistance to the construction of their collective identity. Their present struggle for the institutionalization of their demands builds on their tradition of resistance rather than in a desire to accommodate to the transculturated Cuban ethos. Historically addressing these narratives of resistance to support their mobilization has placed them in counter-hegemonic position throughout their trajectory. It has also given them the chance to change their social positioning apart from the expected, lower, polluted ones local, regional, and even national society have insisted on placing them. By historically building their mobilization around these narratives of resistance, communities part of this study were forced and forced themselves into an underdog situation that became salient in several moments of their trajectory, often while resisting epitomizing moments. By understanding these moments as epitomizing the communities’ narratives as well as to the national societies as a whole, we could better visualize the resistance strategies undertaken by the communities and how they mobilize. Frequently in their history, a fear of contagion was spread around them, something that need to be terminated, concealed, contained, assimilated, transculturated, or accommodated. Their resistance forced on them an ever dirtier, polluted social positioning, reinforced by stereotypes constructed by the dominant society. Nevertheless, their resilience continues to inform their present struggles up to the point that it may be better understood as a condition to their process of identification, and a base for their mobilization. 393 Further research may be needed to explore on the underdog situations described in this study, and may represent a creative field for future academic endeavours. The results of this thesis, however, have led me to the identification of a differentiated condition in which the communities that I was honored to share life histories with are both forced and force themselves into. It is a condition they have not been able to run from, albeit finding new ways to embrace it, in the underdog world they live in. 394 Epilogue This year my daughter Luiza turned 15. At the top of her “coming of age”, as some people tried to impress on her, her mind was swirling through her impending future as she identified a new field of significations was arising in her life, creating “floating signifiers” to her once thought assured realities. When we talked about it this last September, she told me she felt like she had no identity, and nothing to give to the people around her. She sounded like wandering without possibility of being home, craving to go through places she could not fully grasp what they were and yet they somehow materialized what she longed for. I told her I had felt the same way throughout several moments of my own existence, and that only recently I came to realize that what defines us are not the impinging forces that push you into lower, expected, polluted places, but how we resist such forces, and the different ways we find to go around them and sometimes overcome them. That allows us to devise the happy moments in our lives, in our ever-lasting search for happiness. I gave her my account on the struggles of Periperi, La Marina and the Hwlitisum, communities I was honoured to share life histories in the course of researching for this thesis, as I saw, pehaps mistakingly, but from the botton of my heart, like a father should do, that she could emulate from those histories ways to deal with her own impeding future. There were many important people who helped me acquire this additional wisdom I was glad I could share with my offspring. I should like to hounour them in the next pages. After all, your ancestors give you a jump-start in establishing the base for your own development. To you always Sabino and José. I also told Luiza that I have been learning from the commuites that our being conscious about our place in the world lies in between our histories and culture that can be activated at different levels of our existence, if we choose to do it. With me it was my grandma and my mom with their narratives that have endowed my trajectory with meaning. When you came, Luiza 395 – I impressed on her – those meanings were re-signified and later found relentless reassessment with Bárbara, João Caetano and, most recently, but definitely, with Dandara. Our family is the territory from which I am able to reproduce. “That is why we fight for it, Luiza” - I told her. The community is another level from which these historical consciousnesses are activated. In my community, in addition to my family, are friends from old and new. We are not supposed to always get along but we share history, traditions, narratives of accommodation and resistance, that have made our living together meaningful, dealing sometimes with the meaningless that is forced on us and that we force onto ourselves. By living through those situations, allowing ourselves to reassess our “mazeway”, or the mental picture we make of our relationships, facing and encountering different histories people make about us and we make of ourselves, we have become resiliently bonded. As we said our farewells struggling to transmit our feelings through the poor internet connection that nevertheless made our conversation possible between Havana and Brasilia, I thought about how fragile and strong those bonds are and the active role we have in maintaing them. We choose to do that, Luiza, I have come to realize. When we collectively decide to mobilize around that idea we may find ourselves in an underdog situation, as the expected places are not the boundaries of our expectations anymore. In different moments of our trajectory conditions of possibility are in place for such mobilization, others not. What is more to ask of an identity, daughther? 396 End Notes i. In the original: “situações históricas peculiares em que grupos sociais e povos percebem que há ‘condições de possibilidade’ para encaminhar suas reivindicações básicas, para reconhecer suas identidades coletivas e mobilizar forças em torno delas e ainda para tornar seus saberes práticos um vigoroso instrumento jurídico-formal” (Almeida, 2008: 17). ii. In the original: “Pues nada menos racional, finalmente, que la pretensión de que la específica cosmovisión de una etnia particular sea impuesta como la racionalidad universal, aunque tal etnia se llame europa occidental. Porque eso, en verdad, es pretender para un provincianismo el título de universalidad” (Quijano, 1992 [1989]: 447). iii. In the original: “Sem representar necessariamente categorias profissionais ou segmentos de classe, tais grupos têm se organizado em consistentes unidades de mobilização […]. O valor da força de trabalho não constitui sua base racional e declarada mas, a despeito disso, verifica-se um elevado grau de coesão em suas práticas, tornando-as formas ágeis e eficazes de organização política. […] Compõem-se, objetivando garantir o efetivo controle de domínios representados como territórios fundamentais à sua identidade e, inclusive, para alguns deles, à sua afirmação étnica. […] Fatores étnicos, raciais, e religiosos, usualmente utilizados para reforçar solidariedades e distinguir as chamadas ‘minorias’, perdem, no contexto desses antagonismos, sua força de marcar diferenças intransponíveis” (Almeida, 2011: 15-16). iv. In the original: “Confluência é a lei que rege a relação de convivência entres os elementos da natureza e nos ensina que nem tudo que se ajunta se mistura, ou seja, nada é igual. [...] Transfluência é a lei que rege as relações de transformação dos elementos da natureza, e nos ensina que nem tudo que se mistura se ajunta. É a partir dessas leis que se geram os grandes debates entre a realidade e a aparência, ou seja, entre o que é orgânico e o que é sintético” (Santos, 2013: 81). v. In the original: “Ao contrário da fadiga maldita a qual Adão foi condenado pelo Deus bíblico, aqui se vivencia a comunhão prazerosa da biointeração. [...] Assim, podemos concluir que a melhor maneira de guardar o peixe é nas águas, onde eles continuam crescendo e se reproduzindo. E a melhor maneira de guardar os produtos de todas as nossas expressões produtivas é distribuindo entre a vizinhança, ou seja, como tudo que fazemos é produto da energia orgânica esse produto deve ser reintegrado a essa mesma energia”. (Santos, 2013: 76-77) vi. In the original: “o repertório de ações de agentes, que não pode ser visto como produto de um programa inconsciente ou, no extremo, como produto de cálculo consciente e racional” (Acevedo Marin, 2010: 51). vii. In the original: “uma invenção permanente, indispensável para se adaptar às situações indefinidamente variadas, nunca perfeitamente idênticas” (Bourdieu, 2004, 81). viii. In the original: “O candomblé - religião brasileira dos orixás e outras divindades africanas que se constituiu na Bahia no século XIX e demais modalidades religiosas conhecidas pelas denominações regionais de xangô, em Pernambuco, tambor-de-mina, no Maranhão, e batuque, no Rio Grande do Sul, formavam, até meados d o século XX, uma espécie de instituição de resistência cultural, primeiramente dos africanos, e depois dos afro-descendentes, resistência à escravidão e aos mecanismos de dominação da sociedade branca e cristã que marginalizou os negros e os mestiços mesmo após a abolição da escravatura” (Prandi, 2004: 2). ix. In the original: “Confluência é a lei que rege a relação de convivência entres os elementos da natureza e nos ensina que nem tudo que se ajunta se mistura, ou seja, nada é igual. [...] Transfluência é a lei que rege as relações de transformação dos elementos da natureza, e nos ensina que nem tudo que se mistura se ajunta. É a partir dessas leis que se geram os grandes debates entre a realidade e a aparência, ou seja, entre o que é orgânico e o que é sintético” (Dos Santos, 2013: 81). 397 x. In the original: “Ao contrário da fadiga maldita à qual Adão foi condenado pelo Deus bíblico, aqui se vivencia a comunhão prazerosa da biointeração. [...] Assim, podemos concluir que a melhor maneira de guardar o peixe é nas águas, onde eles continuam crescendo e se reproduzindo. E a melhor maneira de guardar os produtos de todas as nossas expressões produtivas é distribuindo entre a vizinhança, ou seja, como tudo que fazemos é produto da energia orgânica esse produto deve ser reintegrado a essa mesma energia”. (Dos Santos, 2013: 76-77) xi. In the original: “O projeto de construção de cinco barragens de uso múltiplo (produção de energia e reservatório de água) no Rio Parnaíba, que servirão como base de integração dos megaprojetos de exploração mineral e da expansão da fronteira agrícola da monocultura irrigada. Segundo o próprio governo do estado, a construção dessas barragens poderá transformar mais da metade do Rio Parnaíba em um só Lago, inundando os territórios de inúmeras comunidades tradicionais ribeirinhas, tais como: quilombolas, quebradeiras de coco, pescadores artesanais, vazanteiros, etc. Construção da Ferrovia Transnordestina que, articulada com as barragens, se somará a essa base de integração que mudará a geografia da caatinga, isto é, do semiárido piauiense. Como nessa região as populações tradicionais vivem do extrativismo, da caprinovinocultutura e da criação de outros animais no sistema extensivo, ou seja, soltos no pasto (pois nessa região o pasto e as florestas são de uso comum, exatamente porque as populações tradicionais, sabiamente, não tem dificuldade de reconhecer que os recursos naturais pertencem a todos), e considerando que a Transnordestina nada mais será que uma ferrovia à serviço exclusivo do agronegócio que funcionará como uma espécie de cerca que dividirá o semiárido ao meio, inviabilizando em muitos lugares a prática de criação de animais soltos, em função dos riscos de acidentes com os vagões, dá para se ter uma pequena ideia do quanto essa via de expropriamento desmantelará os modos de vida e as práticas coletivas de um dos mais belos povos e de uma das mais belas culturas da humanidade. Por aí podemos imaginar o que poderá ocorrer com todos os megaprojetos de expropriamento que os colonizadores estão querendo nos impor, sem qualquer debate ou reflexão mais profunda sobre as suas drásticas e irreversíveis consequências”. (Dos Santos, 2013: 66-67) xii. In the original: “uma nova modalidade de apropriação formal da terra por grupos sociais como os quilombolas, baseada no direito à propriedade definitiva, não mais disciplinada pela tutela, como soa acontecer com os povos indígenas” (Almeida, 2005: 15). xiii. In the original: “Quilombo não se refere a resíduos ou resquícios arqueológicos de ocupação temporal ou de comprovação biológica. Também não se trata de grupos isolados ou de população estritamente homogênea. Nem sempre foram constituídos a partir de movimentos insurrecionais ou rebelados. Sobretudo consistem em grupos que desenvolveram práticas cotidianas de resistência na manutenção e na reprodução de modos de vida característicos e na consolidação de território próprio. A identidade desses grupos não se define por tamanho nem número de membros, mas por experiência vivida e versões compartilhadas de sua trajetória comum e da continuidade como grupo. Constituem grupos étnicos conceituados pela antropologia como tipo organizacional que confere pertencimento por normas e meios de afiliação ou exclusão”. (O’Dwyer, 1995:1). xiv. In the original: “Consideram-se remanescentes das comunidades dos quilombos os grupos étnico-raciais, segundo critérios de auto-atribuição, com trajetória histórica própria, dotados de relações territoriais específicas, com presunção de ancestralidade negra relacionada com a resistência à opressão histórica sofrida. Decreto 4887/2003. xv. In the original: Antes da abolição, as ocupações aconteceram por meio da fuga e da constituição de quilombos, por prestação de serviços em períodos de guerra, por desagregação de fazendas de ordem religiosa, ocupação após desagregação ou falência de fazendas, sem qualquer pagamento de foro (o que se dá antes e depois da abolição). No pós-abolição, o estabelecimento das comunidades em seus territórios pode ter ocorrido por meio da compra; de doação ou por desapropriação realizada por órgãos fundiários oficiais. (Souza, 2008: 35) xvi. In the original: “Para os moradores das serras, o ‘perigo da escravidão não passou. Quando lá chegamos, em 1982, fomos confundidos com militares disfarçados, não se 398 estabelecendo de imediato a hospitalidade própria dos Kalunga [...] Acreditavam que a escravidão havia chegado e que ‘seriam presos e levados embora dali” (Baiocci, 1995/1996: 11) xvii. In the original: “como possuindo raízes locais profundas, consciência ambiental, critérios de gênero, e se agrupando em torno das mesmas reivindicações, através de um critério político-organizativo. Os sujeitos em pauta passavam de uma existência atomizada para uma existência coletiva” (Almeida, 2008: 18-19) xviii. In the original: A territorialidade funciona como fator de identificação, defesa e fôrça, mesmo em se tratando de apropriações temporárias dos recursos naturais, por grupos sociais classificados muitas vezes como “nômades” e “itinerantes” (Almeida, 2008: 29-30). Laços solidários e de ajuda mútua informam um conjunto de regras firmadas sobre uma base física considerada comum, essencial e inalienável, não obstante disposições sucessórias porventura existentes. […] Aliás, foi exatamente este fator identitário e todos os outros fatores a ele subjacentes, que levam as pessoas a se agruparem sob uma mesma expressão coletiva, a declararem seu pertencimento a um povo ou a um grupo, a afirmarem uma territorialidade específica e a encaminharem organizadamente demandas face ao Estado, exigindo o reconhecimento de suas formas intrínsecas de acesso à terra. (Almeida, 2008: 29-30) xix. In the original: “os territórios tradicionais são espaços necessários a reprodução cultural, social e econômica dos povos e comunidades tradicionais, sejam eles utilizados de forma permanente ou temporária, observado, no que diz respeito aos povos indígenas e quilombolas, respectivamente, o que dispõem os arts. 231 da Constituição e 68 do Ato das Disposições Constitucionais Transitórias e demais regulamentações”.Decreto 6.040, de 7 de fevereiro de 2007. xx. In the original: “Artigo 1: A consciência de sua identidade indígena ou tribal deverá ser considerada como critério fundamental para determinar os grupos aos que se aplicam as disposições da presente Convenção”. Decreto nº 5.051, de 19 de abril de 2004. xxi. In the original: “A história da independência haitiana está intrinsecamente ligada à história de seus movimentos quilombolas. [...] Apesar das divergências ideológicas, nas interpretações que fazem os diferentes autores do papel histórico concreto das rebeliões dos marrons nas lutas pela independência haitiana, o fato é que o Haiti foi a única nação do Novo Mundo na qual o projeto de libertação negra, com a constituição de quilombos, pode ser visto com um projeto nacional” (Carvalho, 1995: 23-25). xxii. In the original: “Os quilombolas concertaram, desde cedo, certa modalidade de comércio – o simples escambo – com os moradores vizinhos. Trocavam produtos da terra, objetos de cerâmica, peixes, e animais de caça por produtos manufaturados, armas de fogo, roupas, ferramentas industriais, e agrícolas. Uma ou outra vez, porém, o escambo degenerava em choque armado – e a ‘fronteira’ dos Palmares iluminava-se com o incêndio de canaviais, currais de gado, e plantações dos brancos ou ensaguentava-se com as escaramuças entre plamarinos e senhores de terras. Daí as entradas, as sucessivas expedições pela destruição do quilombo. Daí, também, a resistência dos negros, que, embora vacilante, ocasional, e heterogênea, conseguiu manter vivo, durante mais de cinquenta anos de luta, o sonho de liberdade dos Palmares (Carneiro, 2011 [1958]: 4) xxiii. In the original: “Eu nasci na Água Branca. Não era cidade ainda, era distrito. Então papai era meio cigano, mudava de um lado, mudava de outro. […] De Água Branca ele veio para Regeneração. Olha, papai sempre lidou com gado, e lavoura de subsistência, não era commercial. […] De acordo com a necessidade, de acordo com a quantidade de gado que ele conseguia juntar, ele contrava um pião aqui outro alí. Então um que sempre andava com a gente era Enoch, que era filho mas não morava com ele. Enoch tinha vida independente, mas era muito vaqueiro, Enoch era muito vaqueiro, e sempre a gente saia pra comprar gado, papai chamava ele, por além de filho era muito vaqueiro. Preto que tinha que andava sempre com a gente era o Nego Tó, que papai falava que era parente dele, por parte da minha vó, da mãe de papai. Esse era preto, bem pretão mesmo, nego alto, e era bem vaqueiro. […] Não, nem se falava nisso, não tinha tensão nenhuma. Era uma vida normal, não se falava em nenhuma ditinção não tinha nada disso. Papai por exmplo tinha empregado aí em Amarante, tinha um nego chamava Otaviano, era magarefe 399 […] E era um nego lá de casa, ia lá em casa, fazia as coisas pra mamae, mas não tinha nada, não tinha preconceito nenhum.[…] O preto, papai falava que, vc conhece xique-xique? Tem o mandacaru que é aquele grande, e tem o aredondado, com espinho pra daná, xique-xique, pois é imburana, vc conhece imburana? Imburana é um arvoredo que ele é ocado, inclusive fazem aqueles cachimbo. Então papai falava que xique-xique é pau de espinho, imburana é pau de abelha, porque e ocado e abelha gosta de fazer casa alí, gravata de boi é canga, paleto de nego é peia. Peia é peia que se peiava animal, um chicote de couro trançado. Porque os animal mais danado para a gente poder conseguir. Então quando o nego às vezes reclamava. Ce tá no ceu rapaz, devia tá no toco amarrado, na argola, agora tá aqui no meio de gente, tá reclamando do que? Diáologo com meu tio avô Francisco de Carvalho, abril de 2015. xxiv. In the original: “o Piauí sempre foi região esquecida, inclusive, principalmente pelos piauienses que daqui emigram e a esquecem quando não a renegam. [...] Terra pobre e, por isso, esquecida, tudo o que apresenta é produto do esforço pertinaz do homem desamparado que a trabalha. E a pobreza de um, aliada à pobreza do segundo gerou o incompreensível amor que identifica o piauiense à sua gleba”. (Porto, 1955, prefácio) xxv. In the original: “sua atuação se deu a ao acrescentar a combinação instrumental – sanfona, triângulo, zabumba – tornando o baião um ritmo acessível ao meio urbano”. (Santos, 2004: 45) xxvi. In the original: “– Assim como N.S. Jesus Cristo batizou São João Batista no rio de Jordão. Em Arca de Noé eu te meto, com a chave eu te fecho. Ai, Jesus de Nazaré! Eu te benzo Jesus que nela morreu, responde por ti, teus inimigos... nunca se chegue a ti. Como tu é virginiano, que o Orixá, tuas linhas, teus pontos, tudo seu é de Ogum, então, vamos lá. Ogum, tu olha esse homem não deixe a demanda entrar! É hora, é hora, é hora, meu pai, é hora de trabalhar. Salve Rainha, mãe de misericórdia, vida, doçura e esperança nossa, salve! [...] Seja retirado todos os mal, todos os perigo, todos os desastre, todos os acidente, com os poderes do Pai, Oxalá, com as forças da N. Sra. do Desterro, com as forças de Ogum, com as forças de Xangô, com as forças de São Miguel, com as forças de todos os Santos, poderoso e milagroso” Momento de experiência-próxima com a “benzedera” Chica do Antero, Periperi, Amarante, novembro de 2014]. xxvii. In the original: “Eu estava no meio da mata, quando ouvi o tambor zoar, mas sou eu minero, mas sou eu minero, Santa Bárbara me chamou. Saravá o Céu! Salve a Terra! Salve os médiuns! Salve todos os caminhos! Salve os planetas! [...] Agora, sente aqui, que eu vou lhe benzer. Seu cidadão! Bota ele aqui na posição certa. Pois é, eu sou um guia. Sou moço de mesa, moço de cura, moço de força, luz de poderes. Meu nome é Minero. Todo mundo me conhece como Minero, mas eu sou o Príncipe Mãos de Ouro e feliz de quem aqui chegar! É muito bem-vindo, recebe suas bênçãos e suas forças e sua luz. Agora eu vou começar a rezar!” Momento experiência-próxima com a “Benzedera” Chica do Antero, Periperi, Amarante, novembro de 2014]. xxviii. In the original: “Um viajante inglês, que esteve no Piauí em meados do século passado, descreve as dificuldades que enfrentou para atingir Oeiras e daí se transportar aos municípios do extremo sul. Ressalvadas as vantagens de usar o automóvel, para quem se arrisque a quebrar o veículo em estradas primitivas, não encontra hoje o viajante modificações substanciais no penoso itinerário descrito por Gardner”. (Porto, 1955, apresentação) xxix. In the original: “Inclusive Amarante tem essa história, conserva essa história, esse dizer, ah, fulano não tem eira nem beira, então em Amarante isso é muito fácil de você compreender, porque as construções, uma casa de quem tem, uma casa de quem eira, uma casa de quem beira, e uma casa de que não tem eira nem beira. Aí o hotel Velho Monge, lá em Amarante, ele é isso, ele é uma estrutura enorme, com a área para dentro, construído em ‘U’, e a área, as varandas são todas para dentro, no mesmo formato de ‘U’, então isso aqui é uma casa de uma pessoa nobre. Aí aquela casa que é construída com as varandas também para dentro mas formada em ‘L’, é a casa de uma pessoa rica. Aí aquelas casa em que a varanda é feita para fora, e aí em formato de ‘I’, é a casa de uma pessoa que tem classe média. E aquela casa que não essas 400 varanda não tem nada, aí é a casa do sem eira e sem beira” Dialogo com Antonio Bispo, no trajeto de Floriano a Amarante, junho de 2013. xxx. In the original: “Da gente livre a que pertencia a classe dos pretos, é tão pouca que com ela se não pode certamente formar corpo de separação. Os mulatos são aqui em maior número, mas entre eles há muitos que se tem em melhor reputação. Os brancos finalmente são menos que os sobreditos mulatos e de tal forma que, nem naquela companhia de dragões pagos que aqui há, pude conseguir conservá-la sem muita mistura. Demais neste Sertão, por costume antiquíssimo, a mesma estimação de brancos, mulatos e pretos, e todos, uns e outros se tratam a recíproca igualdade, sendo rara a pessoa que se separa deste ridículo sistema, porque se seguirem o contrário, expõe as suas vidas.” (Porto, 1955: 75) xxxi. In the original: “Sobre o comportamento racial no cadinho dos chapadões piauienses. Sociedade que se formou em bases democráticas, desconhecendo os problemas da concentração agrária imposta pelos engenhos do Recôncavo baiano e da mata pernambucana, não admitiu as diferenciações entre brancos, pretos e mulatos. Houve, desde o início, como que uma homogeneidade de sangue. Essa constante é que não devemos trair, pois foi ela quem nos imprimiu o tipo característico do vaqueiro nordestino”. (Porto, 1955, prefácio) xxxii. In the original: “desde a década de 1970, muitos mimboenses casaram-se com pessoas de outros locais. Assim, nos dias atuais existe uma grande miscigenação no Mimbó”. (Tavares, 2008: 49) xxxiii. In the original: “– Você tá vendo que desinformação? Eu sou Amarantina e não sabia que Periperi é uma comunidade quilombola, não sabia. Eu só sabia do Mimbó. – Deixa eu te dizer porque que você não sabia. Não, mas é porque é assim, o processo de reconhecimento de auto declaração de algumas comunidades quilombolas, ele vai se dando de uma forma mais lenta. Assim, a comunidade tá ali, você, vendo Lagoa. Lagoa é uma comunidade negra, não é isso? Se Lagoa, um dia, vai se auto definir como quilombola, ou não, aí é outra história, que aí eles vão levantar a trajetória histórica deles, esse negócio todo. Eles podem fazer isso ou não. Isso ficou mais fácil depois que Lula criou um Decreto que regulariza o Ato 68 da Constituição de 88. Então, tem umas comunidades, por exemplo Mimbó, Mimbó porque tem todo um trabalho de pesquisa, história e tal. Periperi não tem o mesmo trabalho. Quando eu saí da Federação dos Trabalhadores, eu saí pra fazer isso. Eu saí pra fazer esse diálogo com as comunidades e contribuindo com eles nesse processo de levantamento da sua trajetória. Então, Periperi está nesse estágio, Periperi ainda não tem a certificação oficial, mas está em processo” Conversa entre Socorro Leal Paixão e Antonio Bispo, Fazenda Araras, município de Amarante, junho de 2013. xxxiv. In the original: “Existe no Mimbó, além da capela e do terreiro, um posto de saúde “Martinho José de Carvalho” que funciona precariamente, uma escola com os quatro primeiros anos da educação básica e com a 5ª série do ensino fundamental, uma casa para processamento da mandioca (Casa de farinhada), um clube de lazer e diversão (Clube Beleza Negra) e uma estação digital (Zumbi dos Palmares) recentemente construída pelo convênio com um banco. Como também luz elétrica, água canalizada e um telefone comunitário (um orelhão)” (Tavares, 2008: 55). xxxv. In the original: “Por isso que nesse contexto a gente tinha aqui como uma comunidade tradicional e não quilombola. Agora com a palavra quilombola, nego pra engolir é luta. Por que não tá no sangue não tá na cultura. Quer dizer de 1800 e pouco para 2014, já vai dando né, são quase 130, 140 anos, e nunca foi endossado, a gente ouvia falar de quilombola assim nos livros, assim muito longe da realidade, mas dentro do sangue, da etnia, isso nunca chegou associado à gente mesmo. Então esse é a dificuldade que a gente tem encontrado que no aspecto dentro de nós aqui mesmo de adotar a palavra quilombola. Agora uns que já tem começado a se conscientizar a gente já sabe que não tem pra onde correr, já tem uns que já aceita de bem. Agora no primeiro momento, quando falou de quilombola o pulo foi dez metros pra trás. Porque achava que quilombola era desfazer do meio social evoluído e tal”. Dialogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. 401 xxxvi. In the original: “O território do Piauí é constituído por um vasto chapadão ou planalto, inclinado para o vale do Parnaíba, tendo as arestas mais altas assentadas nas alturas de uma cordilheira ou serra, que recebe diferentes denominações locais, valendo referência os nomes de Tabatinga, Galhão, Mangabeira, Jalapão, Piauí, Dois Irmãos, Serra Grande e Ibiapaba. Ramificação do planalto central brasileiro, estende-se essa serra sobre uma dezena de milhares de quilômetros, destacando-se notavelmente na fisionomia geográfica do nordeste. Na parte mais meridional do estado, a montanha termina de forma abruta, com paredões talhados a pique, dificílimos de acesso. [...] A série característica do estado, que aflora em mais da metade da sua superfície, é chamada de ‘Série do Parnaíba’ [...] Constitui-se principalmente de arenitos predominantemente vermelhos, alternando leitos e folhetos multicores, em algumas oportunidades calcários.” (Porto, 1955: 87) xxxvii. In the original: [...] tivemos uma grande motivação profissional quando, juntamente com outros técnicos do DNOCS, em visita ao governador do Estado do Piauí, salvo engano no ano de 1961, no Palácio de Karnak, em dado momento da conversa, o governador se pôs de pé e com o braço direito estendido, apontando para o crucifixo na parede e olhando para os visitantes, disse emocionado: ‘construam essa barragem; ela será a salvação do Piauí’ (Dantas, 2001, p. 65) xxxviii. In the original: “- Com certeza! Não, e aqui antes dessa audiência, eles rodavam demais. Eles fizeram reunião com a gente aqui demais. Eles fizeram apanhado aqui de tudo. Até dum prédio laranja... apanharam tudo, tudo, tudo pra tal audiência. Aqui era rodado demais deles, desse povo, deles tudo. [...] Desde quando esquentou com o negócio de fazê [...] Faz uns, vai fazê uns 4 anos, né, Maria? O povo não qué nem ouvi falar nisso aí. – Quando começou a falar nela aqui, já tá com uns 11 anos. 11 anos. Podia ser 12 não meu bem. É que eles disseram que ia fazê mesmo, que minha mãe gostava de xingar, já que ia pro outro lado da roça e ela passava acolá nuns buraco apertado e começava a xingar. Aí começava a xingar aqueles ‘nomão’, que essas miséria vem do inferno pra abrir serviço na terra, tanta terra boa, essas miséria vem acaba com elas... essas misérias ... barrage pra acabar com essas terras, não sei o que”. Minha mãe tá com 11 anos que morreu, nunca essa barrage chegou. Aí, eu tava dizendo, aí quando os meninos fala, quando eu vejo... minhas coisas. Como é que eu faço agora?” Diálogo com moradores da comunidade de Lagoa, Manuel e Maria Domingas, município de Amarante, Piauí, junho de 2013. xxxix. In the original: “O impacto existe a partir do momento que foram anunciadas [as obras]. Já não é nem só, porque já foram atingidas mesmo, porque aí o pessoal fica na dúvida, eu continuo plantando ou não plantando? Vou plantar culturas perenes ou [outras] culturas? E aí assim as pessoas quando vão construir casas, construo ou não construo? Reformo ou não reformo? Então, a comunidade tá paralisada. Aí já é um prejuízo enorme. A tensão é muito grande. [...] A própria produção, a questão das moradias, o investimento na propriedade, sobre o modo de vida da comunidade, os planejamentos, assim, como é que uma família que está se constituindo agora? Como que ela vai planejar sua vida em cima de tamanhas dúvidas? Quer dizer, começa uma família, vai construir uma casa boa ou não vai? E se construir, vou pra onde? O próprio poder público municipal na hora de construir uma escola, constrói ou não constrói? Então, assim, paralisou. O próprio poder público também fica na dúvida. Quando você manda um projeto de financiamento para um Banco, o próprio Banco vai ter dificuldade de investir naquele projeto. Como é que você vai fazer um projeto de financiamento numa área que vai ser inundada. Então, assim, as dúvidas são muitas” Diálogo com Antonio Bispo, trajeto de Floriano a Periperi, junho de 2013) xl. In the original: [...] a comunidade participou da audiência publica, mas a audiência pública, segundo a própria comunidade foi muito complicada, porque as pessoas não podiam se manifestar, na maioria das vezes, não podiam se manifestar através da fala, tinha que ser por escrito, e as comunidades tradicionais dominam melhor a linguagem oral, e aí, aquelas que podiam falar, tempo era limitado. No processo da audiência, há comentários de que eles ofereceram um lanche para o pessoal, mas a condição para participar do lanche era assinar um papel pra dizer que tava confirmando a frequência a presença, mas o povo também tem dúvida, então assim o processo é meio conturbado e os estudos estão sendo refeitos, a própria, os 402 próprios consórcios, cada vez que eles são questionados, refazem os estudos, então não há mermo segurança” Diálogo com Antonio Bispo, trajeto de Floriano a Periperi, junho de 2013. xli. In the original: “Na verdade, nós não sabemos quase nada. Tá havendo é muito falatório, muito discurso, muita tese pra pouca ação. Na verdade, vocês são os primeiros a vir aqui pra tocar nesse assunto. É óbvio que eu acho que as comunidades todas já externaram isso na audiência pública. É óbvio que nessa audiência pública foi dito assim abertamente com as pessoas, os profissionais, os técnicos que tavam vendo isso. Foi dito assim abertamente da insatisfação, tá entendendo? Embora, a gente também saiba que só a insatisfação não vai dizer nada a esse país, porque inclusive Belo Monte taí pra mostrar pra todo Brasil e nessa audiência foi dito inclusive para esses técnicos que estavam lá defendendo essa causa, pra eles mostrarem em algum caso do Brasil que atingiu com as barragens, alguém satisfeito? Porque se ia buscar [...] A gente nota que existem associações, existe movimento e o que a gente sabe agora por último que já foi colocado diversas vezes em leilão e não consegue nenhum consórcio. Por quê? O gasto é tão grande pra uma produção mínima, inclusive tá com duas semanas atrás, que eu vi na televisão, políticos dizendo que não conseguiu e nem vai conseguir porque o investimento é tão grande, inclusive essa daqui que é o nosso aqui, porque são 5 barragens aqui no Rio Parnaíba. Essa nossa aqui seria a de menor produção de todas as cinco. Então, taí o dito pelo não dito, ou pelo sim ou não. A gente até acha que ou mais cedo ou mais tarde isso aí não sei. Nós não sabemos” Conversa com Socorro Leal Paixão, Fazenda Araras, Amarante, PI, junho de 2013. xlii. In the original: “O quilombo, por sua vez, era uma reafirmação da cultura e do estilo de vida africanos. [...] um fenômeno contra-aculturativo, de rebeldia contra os padrões de vida impostos pela sociedade oficial e de restauração dos valores antigos” (Carneiro, 2011 [1958]: XXXVI). xliii. In the original: “O quilombo foi, portanto, um acontecimento singular na vida nacional, seja qual for o angulo porque o encaramos. Como forma de luta contra a escravidão, como estabelecimento humano, como organização social, como reafirmação de valores das culturas africanas, sob todos esses aspectos o quilombo revela-se como um fato novo, único, peculiar – uma síntese dialética (Carneiro, 2011 [1958]: XVL). xliv. In the original: “‘carabalí’ como se ha dado a llamar al conjunto de etnias que poblaban la actual provincia sureste de la República de Nigeria, territorio conocido como ‘Viejo Calabar’ [...] El ñañiguismo constituye un singularísimo fenómeno etnográfico y antropológico que, fuera de África, solo puede ser observado en Cuba” (Quiñones, 2014: 69). xlv. In the original: “Pero las cosas se han ido sabiendo porque los más viejos nos las contaban a los más jóvenes, como ahora yo las cuento a ti. Así es como se han ido conociendo las cosas; pero no hay Historia, o sí la hay, hay una Historia, lo que pasa es que no está escrita” (Quiñones, 2014: 106). “[...] las organizaciones religiosas de los africanos en Cuba no solo fueron eficaces instrumentos para la conservación y transmisión de sus culturas, sino, además, ejercían funciones de organizaciones políticas para combatir la esclavitud. El carácter clandestino ocultaba su verdadero rol político” (Quiñones, 2014: 106). xlvi. In the original: “’momentos de transição’ ou a situações históricas peculiares em que grupos sociais e povos percebem que há “condições de possibilidade” para encaminhar suas reivindicações básicas, para reconhecer suas identidades coletivas e mobilizar forças em torno delas e ainda para tornar seus saberes práticos um vigoroso instrumento jurídico-formal” (Almeida, 2008: 17) xlvii. In the original: “[...] o acesso aos recursos naturais para o exercício de atividades produtivas, se dá não apenas através das tradicionais estruturas intermediárias do grupo étnico, dos grupos de parentes, da família, do povoado ou da aldeia, mas também por um certo grau de coesão e solidariedade obtido face a antagonistas e em situações de extrema adversidade e de conflito, que reforçam politicamente as redes de solidariedade. [...] O critério político-organizativo sobressai combinado com uma “política de identidades”, da qual lançam mão os agentes sociais objetivados em movimento para fazer frente aos seus antagonistas e aos aparatos de estado”. (Almeida, 2008: 29-30) 403 xlviii. In the original: “rapaz é uma história, que fiz o apanhado todinho só que não está no livro não, eu tenho o apanhado da história em cabeça. Foi o seguinte: essa bisavô meu quando chegou de Portugal para cá, eu peguei a história da vinda dele. E que foi, eu nem sei nem que era, foi 1700 e pouco, por aí assim né. Aí quando ele vei pra cá pro Brasil, que portaram aí, o navi porto aí, é, em Parnaíba, aí disseram, assim, disse pronto cheguemo no Brasil, ele disse pois eu quero í, em qual estado, no estado do Piauí que dizer que nesse tempo os estado já era dividido, né, aí ele disse eu quero ir para a capital do estado do Piauí. Pois agora você passa a sua mercadoria pra uma barca pequena, porque só no rio Parnaíba uns vapô pequeno e uma lancha que arrasta cinco ou seis barca, tamain de uma casa assim. Uma barca monstra. Eu ainda alcancei as barca né. Você aluga uma barca dessa transfire as suas mercadoria, aí você pega um vapô com a sua famía e aí sobe até chegá no porto, que chamam porto de São Gonçalo, que ra aqui o Amarante. Chegá no porto de São Gonçalo você sai e procura como é que manda informação para Oeiras, que a capital. Não tinha estrada de carro, não tinha avião, não tinha nada né, pa seu governo não tinha nem carro de mão. Aí ele veio, quando chegou aqui, porto aqui disse: aqui é o porto de São Gonçalo? Disse é, disse e como é que eu faço para chegar pra capital, pra Oeiras, que vem vindo uma mercadoria minha aí. Ele disse agora você aluga uma casa dessa, aí passa um telegrama, telegrama é véi né, haí passa um telegrama para Oeiras pedindo um tropa de animal de burro pra levar sua mercadoria e sua famía de burro. E daqui pra Oeiras não é muito longe não. É hoje tá bem pertinho por causa das estradas, mas antes era três dias de viagem, em animal, né. Saia daqui pra Oeiras em animal era três dias de viage. Aí ele passou o telegrama e o telegrama chegou aí com a mercadoria dele chegou e a tropa de animal chegou, ele deu umas duas viage, ouvi fala que ele deu umas duas viage transportando o meu bisavô, o meu avô, já sendo um dos mais véi, já casado, trazendo dois fi de lá de Portugal, um homem e uma mulhé e aí eles foram pra Oeiras” Dió Veloso, em entrevista, em sua casa em Amarante, novembro de 2014. xlix. In the original: “Então quando eu fui perceber essa diferença, que não uma diferença do meio que eu vivi, foi quando eu cheguei na questão sindical, já com meus 30 anos de idade. Aí eu resolvi compreender isso por outro lado, porque eu compreendi pelo lado que eu fui formado. Então fui encontrar uma relação parecida com a minha formação, nas comunidades tradicionais, comunidades negras, nas comunidades indígenas, nesse meio, aí fui andando por esse lado aí. E aí foi quando eu vi que dentro no movimento sindical tinha essa distinção, tinha o povo tradicional, que era um povo com quem eu dialogava bem e tinha um povo da luta de classes que é um povo da organização socioeconômica do país, aí eu optei por discutir aquilo que era da minha formação, da minha tradição. Isso foi 89, 90, início da década de 90 até a metade, até 98” Diálogo com Antonio Bispo, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, Piauí, junho de 2013. l. In the original: “[...] Aí é bom você ouvir várias pessoas que você vai ouvir várias versões e todas as versões [Daniel: se encontram] é, são uma realidade, uma situação. Mas é assim, no meu caso, como é que eu avanço nessa discussão? Em 90, eu vou para o Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais e aí quando eu chego no Sindicato o que é o que eu encontro, eu encontro, uma estrutura de classe, de uma categoria, mas onde as direções, as pessoas que formam opinião, que tão mais na linha de frente, na sua maioria são pessoas de pele clara. Embora a maioria da população rural no Piauí são de pessoas negras, mas as pessoas que assume a direção do Sindicato são pessoas de pele clara. Sim. Aí, eu sou uma das pessoas de pele negra que vai entrando. Então no sindicato o primeiro presidente lá do município onde eu nasci é de pele negra, mas era uma pessoa que tinha uma certa atuação, um envolvimento com o poder público municipal, e que foi, que tinha uma relação com o povo branco, muito diferente da minha. Quando eu chego na Federação, aí é que eu vejo diferente, né, na Federação aí que eu vejo uma clareamento maior. Eu entro na Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura que nós somos seis na diretoria, duas pessoas de pele escura, quatro pessoas de pele mais clara. E das duas pessoas de pele escura, na verdade uma pessoa de pele escura como efetivo e cinco pessoas de pele mais clara, quando sai uma das pessoas de pele mais clara é que fica uma pessoa, mas uma pessoa de pele escura, mas enfim, e que também não fica, porque a situação não permite. E aí eu sempre 404 vou dialogando com essas situações” Diálogo com Antonio Bispo, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, Piauí, junho de 2013). li. In the original: “Aí quando eu vou pra discutir a questão da reforma agrária, aí eu vejo uma outra situação delicada que é as pessoas negras estão em determinadas áreas que são tratados de posseiros históricos, outras pessoas chamam de moradores, de enfim foreiros e outras denominações, e as pessoas de pele branca são as que mais têm o domínio da terra. Então se vai encontrar agricultores familiares de pele branca que são proprietários e você vai encontrar agricultores negros que são moradores ou são posseiros ou vivem em terras devolutas do Estado, mas que não são a maioria proprietários. Ou na grande maioria são pessoas com, é, que a gente diz que vive no espólio, que herdaram a terra dos avós, dos pais, mas não fizerem arrolamento nem nada, aí começa a perceber, assim, as diferenças nessa relação com o documento e que é a mesma coisa que tem também na minha comunidade, eu também fui criado desse jeito. [...] No Piauí, nós tínhamos no meio rural, nós tínhamos uma infinidade de categorias, nós tínhamos o posseiro, o meeiro, o foreiro, o vaqueiro, o morador, o arrendatário, enfim, o caboclo, tinha várias denominações, não tinha agricultor familiar, e nem tinha trabalhador rural, porque quando cê usa trabalhador rural cê tá indo para uma categoria capitalista ou uma categoria maxista, enfim cê tá indo para uma categoria da luta de classes, aí ocê diz trabalhador. É isso, quando cê vai classificar o pessoal trabalhador rural, que mora na zona rural, por uma lógica do trabalho, aí você começa a estabelecer: trabalhador rural, agricultor não sei o que, aí você começa segmentar os grupos, as categorias numa lógica do trabalho, que não era assim, as identidades não eram, as identidades eram pela relação com o espaço. É o morador, é o foreiro, é o posseiro, é o arrendatário, enfim, é o caboclo, e vai andando, é o mestre de ofício, aí a outra coisa, às vezes nem tinha, por esse lado as vezes diz é o vaqueiro, é o pescador, é o artesão, é o ferreiro, era muito mais nessa lógica, é o ferreiro, é a parteira, é o benzedor, é o raizeiro, é o oleiro, é o carpinteiro, é o marceneiro, então na verdade, a organização era diferente, era o espaço e a relação com o espaço. Então você tinha o camarada que era o sapateiro, o fazedor de jacá, o fazedor de silla, o amansador de burro. Então você tinha muita gente, as categorias eram distribuídas por ofício. Então com relação a seu ofício, você era denominado, não interessava se você morava na cidade ou no campo. Cê podia morar na cidade e ser o sapateiro, cê podia morar na roça e ser o sapateiro. Cê podia morar na roça e ser o marceneiro, e cê podia morar na..., não tinha distinção, o marceneiro na cidade ou o marceneiro na roça, era tudo marceneiro. Não era um marceneiro rural e um marceneiro urbano. Entendeu? Então essa denominação de rural e urbano é uma denominação que veio com a economia, da divisão do trabalho, da segmentação da humanidade em categorias do trabalho, para poder o mercado dominar” Diálogo com Antonio Bispo, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, Piauí, junho de 2013. lii. In the original: “[…] identificar a figura do vaqueiro – aquele homem que aboiava e conduzia as “reses” campo a fora, montado em cavalos, trajando terno de couro, perneiras, peitoral, chinelos e chapéu também em couro, com chicote sempre em punho e acompanhado pelo amigo e indispensável cachorro. Hoje, observamos que estas imagens não condizem com as representações contemporâneas, que evidenciam o vaqueiro “montado” em motocicletas “tocando” o rebanho” (Tapety, 2007: 10-11). liii. In the original “As práticas de curar no rastro do boi, com embira de mororó, rituais para fazer com que bezerros se tornem bravos e velozes; crenças em bois encantados, fazem reconhecer uma identidade do vaqueiro piauiense, assegurando-lhe um modo especifico de estar no mundo”. (Tapety, 2007:8) liv. In the original: “Só o vaqueiro-chefe recebia a quarta parte dos bezerros nascidos. Além do vaqueiro-chefe, livre, os outros vaqueiro-auxiliares escravos recebiam pequenos valores, como uma porca, um carneiro, o que vai explicar, por sua vez, a maior possibilidade desse “escravo-vaqueiro auxiliar” conseguir fazer um pecúlio e, que sabe, adquirir a sua alforria”. (Falci, 1995: 161) lv. In the original: Mas nós pode fazer uma proximidade, eles deve ter chegado aqui nesse povoado em 1880, é aproximadamente de 1880, 1890, 1870, é aí nessa fase. Porque a família 405 dele começou a gerar depois de 1880. A vozinha era de quanto? Era de, não sei se era de 1 ou se era de 2, ou 1890 e pouco. Ela era a primeira. Aí a chegada deles de lá pra cá, ela já nasceu aqui. Essa menina já nasceu aqui. Diálogo com Antonio Soares, Periperi, Amarante, junho de 2013. lvi. In the original: “A minha avó, Maria Vaqueira, porque o esposo dela era Manoel Vaqueiro, porque Manoel Vaqueiro era vaqueiro da fazenda, daí ele ficou e foi titulado como Manoel Vaqueiro e deram apelido da profissão. Hoje ta começando coisá porque essa questão dos nomes ta quase acabando. Essa terceira geração que somos nós, a partir de meu avô minha avó, ele aqui [Antônio] já é bem a quinta. [...] É uma comunidade que tem origem quilombola forte, por parte de meu avô e de minha avó, mas principalmente do meu avô. [...] Nós somos em duas etnias, essa daqui e do Angical. [...] O pai do meu avô veio nos porões dos navios da África, de lá desceram ele na Bahia, de lá venderam, transmitiram para as fazendas. De lá, eles foram gerando as famílias, e acho que forma começando ver esse negócio da escravaturas doente demais e foram começando a se desfazerem e abrirem porque não era só um conjunto. E esse grupo veio direto de lá passando aí por Picos e Valença e caiu aqui no Angical. Lá esse grupo que ficou lá, que é um primo legítimo dele, desse meu tio, que era irmão do meu avó, e ele tinha uma apelido que agora eu me esqueci do apelido, lá batizaram ele, rapaz vamo tirar esse nome, e lá botaram Zarió. Até a Família lá até hoje Zarió por causa desse negócio. Só que é tudo da mesma etnia. Aí meu avô foi ficava ali pantado no pai dele, no Tabuleiro do Couro que é alí perto de Angical tomando de conta lá de uma fazenda”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, Periperi, Amarante, junho de 2013. lvii. In the original: “Aí meu avô vai lá e casa e aí ele casou e a esposa dele morreu e ficou com o filho. Ele trabalhava nessa fazenda [no município de Angical] e a mulher que era dona dessa fazenda era dona também de uma fazenda aqui no município de Amarante. Aqui no Amarante ali no rumo do São José. Trabalhava [o avô dele] como vaqueiro na fazenda. Fugiu escravo de lá, de Valença dessa região pra cá. Quando chegou aqui [Amarante] já era rapaz. Casou aqui mesmo no Angical. Só que ele aqui casou e a mulher morre de parto, alguma coisa assim. Mas ele já trabalhava na profissão, aprendeu com o pai, né. Ficou trabalhando lá [na fazenda]. [...] Parece que ele tirava a sorte. No gado ele trabalhava e tirava a sorte. Ninguém é burro não, num sabe, e ele esperto foi acumulando as coisas os seus bens né. Aí de lá, não Manoel agora tu vai tomar conta das fazenda lá no município de Amarante, lá no São José. Aí veio pra cá, aí trabalhou na fazenda, aí minha vó, essa Maria Vaqueira, neguinha bonita, pense numa mulhé ajeitada. Aí o neguin [o avô dele] se agrassou dela e terminaram casando. Aí trabalharam um tempo aí e apareceu essa propriedade pra cá. E ela muito trabalhadeira, juntaram os bens, aí chegaram aqui e compraram [terra]. Ela comprou essa área aqui. Daqui pra li, mais ou menos uns 50 hectares de largura, que era a propriedade deles. [...] Aí meu avô comprou essa outra daqui, mas o cunhado até chegar no Riachão. De lá do Riachão até topáno Riacho fundo lá na outra, o outro irmão dela, da minha vó, comprou essa área. Quer dizer esses três cidadões irmão cunhado pegaram essa área aqui que dá uma légua, mais de légua, só de largura. Todinha era da nossa família”. Diálogo entre Raimundo Vaqueiro e Antônio Soares, junho de 2013. lviii. In the original: “Essa área que era do João Paulino. Já essa do João Paulino tinha um negócio que ele vendeu uma parte era pra branco, inclusive esses branco que compraram essa terra aqui eles vei duma herança dum cidadão do Portugal que passaram essa Data, uma Data todinha para essa família, mas aí aí lá ele era o dono, naquela época as autoridades aqui, ele entrou como uma autoridade. Inclusive a Igreja da nossa cidade quem doou a terra foi o avó deles o bisavô deles aqui, né que compraram essa terras, só que aí ele não teve como dê sustentabilidade dentro de sustentar a Data e aí foi folgando o povo foram entrando foram entrando que eles terminaram já quando chegou na ponta, já aí foi ficaram sem terra. Mas aí eles foram em cartório, o rapaz me amostrou outro dia, eles foram em cartório e pegaram a certidão do bisavô deles. Como o nosso bisavô veio da África, o bisavô deles vieram de Portugal. Tá entendendo? A contradição né. Esse cara de Portugal que pegou a Data Muquila tinha a outra banda da região de Amarante, alí da cidade e aí pertencia tudo a eles, a esse grupo, que bisavô desse grupo que comprou aqui uma parte. Os Veloso pegaram e doaram aonde é a matriz nossa 406 foi eles que doaram a área que pertencia a esse grupo. Mas Amarante foi dividido em umas facção dos pessoal português cada um ficava com a Data tal a Data tal, que naquele tempo era a Data né. Eles dizia vou botar para desenvolver aquela Data ali. As Datas principais era Lyra, era Ayres, era Veloso, dos autores que pegaram a cidade de Amarante como dono. Depois disso, acho que eles são o piloto da fundação da cidade de Amarante. Tão já acabando. Ainda tem um risquicizinho, mas ta bem fraquinho, mas existe. Ainda querendo predominar mas não tem mais força para isso”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lix. In the original: “em situações frequentes, mesmo os grupos étnica e socialmente diferenciados terem cumprido as prerrogativas legais ocorre a negação e ususpação de direitos à terra adquirida por herança, doação, compra, registro de posse” (Acevedo Marin, 2009: 1). lx. In the original: “Essa daqui ela comprou separado, essa daqui pro Riachão eles compraram em parceria, os dois, só que aí depois brigaram, os dois cunhado, aí separaram, da nossa terra pra cá, que é o contexto mesmo do Periperi, chamado, que ficou para Manoel Vaqueiro, e de lá para o Riachão ficou para esse Timóteo, outro cunhado do meu avô. Aí saiu e vendeu lá e dividiram em duas propriedades e aí eles venderam pra essa pessoas que ninguém sabe hoje quem é essas pessoas que principal comprarem, se é os autores ainda que hoje são herdeiros ou se era outras pessoas que depois venderam para outras. Isso aí ninguém tá sabendo. Só que no princípio essa área que hoje vendeu para lá pertenceu a essas pessoas da mesma família quilombolas que vieram de fora. Quando ele vendeu essa área lá ela vendeu para gente que não era da família. Vendeu pra branco. O de lá do Riachão para o Riacho Fundo, que é mais ou menos quatro quilômetros de largura, a gente sabe pra quem ele vendeu. Foi Veloso, que ainda tem um insquistozinho [parentesco], Teodoro Veloso, que comprou direto da viúva do João Firmino. Ele morreu e ela pegou e repassou, que era o titular o dono. João Firmino era irmão da minha vó [O irmão que ficou com o Riacho Fundo]. Essa daqui 50 hectares, a outra 200”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxi. In the original: “Tiveram bem doze ou foi treze filhos. Porque quando deu a partilha foi nove e já tinha morrido dois. Aí já deu doze né, se teve perda, aí já de treze pra quatorze. Teve um, depois da partilha, ele depois da partilha. [...] eu nasci 1945, ela morreu em 1946, bem em janeiro, ainda fiquei seis meses, depois de seis meses ela morreu. Só tinha já o Zé Vaqueiro que morava em Caxias. Porque que ele morava lá, porque ele teve vocação de comerciante, ele não tinha muito de roça não. Ele era ambulante naquelas épocas. Aí saiu ambulando daqui pra Caxias e terminou ficando lá e lá casou e constitui toda a família lá. Ficou lá pra Caxias. Os outros todos ficaram aqui. Dois morreram antes de que ela morresse. Mas um ficou herdeiro, Vicente. Um deixou filho. Outro deixou quatro filhos, mas deserdaram eles também. Não tiraram a herança deles. Foi uma injustiça. Tinha os filhos, tinha não, hoje acho que já morreram quase tudo. Mas tem neto, esse Vicente já tem bisneto. Ficaram aqui por esse trecho. E deserdaram eles, aí ficou só os nove, com o de Caxias. Era oito aqui e nove com o de Caxias. O de Caxias tirou a fatia dele, e vendeu para o irmão Rafael, que ficou com duas glebas. Aí ficou Cândida com uma gleba, Tonha com outra gleba, Balduíno com outra gleba, Luiz Vaqueiro com a outra, Antonio Vaqueiro com a outra, Lúcia com outra, e Roberto com outra. Depois que minha vó morreu, em 46 pra 47. Olegário e Vicente que morreram. Zé Vaqueiro em Caxias. Ah porque teve uma menina que morreu com dez anos, que era a caçula. [...] Nas escrituras, nas divisão, são mesmo os nove. [...] Até eu dizia pra mesmo primo, esse que foram deserdados, que se eles quisessem comprar briga, eu era de acordo, porque direito não se apaga. Direito é direito. Porque a nossa, se fosse aqui dez braça, cinco braça, nós abria porque aqui era uma injustiça, nós tamo em cima do que é deles, não é nossa. Mas eles nunca quiseram. Por último, esses meninos deserdado, tem muita relação com nós, ainda hoje os filhos deles andaram esses feriado grande, porque o coito deles é aqui. E ainda se quiser dizer aqui fazer uma casa, qualquer um desses pedaço aqui. Como é, pode montar uma casa aí? Pois pronto, quando vocês vié de lá pra cá já tem o espaço de vocês. Porque eles se sentem daqui, agora injustiçado, porque tiraram o pedacinho deles. É injustiça. Porque o direito não se acaba e fica na eternidade. Então aconteceu isso”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. 407 lxii. In the original: “O resumo dessa daqui que ficou de Manoel Vaqueiro, foi 220 hectares. A outra que era do Timóteo que faz parte da outra gleba que era dos sócio que dividiram em duas é aproximadamente 200 e poucas hectares, umas duzentas e 230, 250 hectares, que é do Riachão para chegar aqui na nossa extrema. A outra de lá, uma parte, é lá da ermeia do Balbino pra cá, que a outra ele já tinha vendido para lá mas pra outro, que pode ter sido o Vitorino mas o Vitorino já comprou na mão de outro que também era tudo dele mais João Firmiano. Eu não sei eu sei que de cá dá o quê, dá umas 150, óia dá também quase 300 hectares a que era de João Firmiano, que é lá do Riacho Fundo aqui pra chegar nas nossas. [...] que só as do véi Teodoro, praticamente tinha 150 hectares, que tinha a do Deó mais 60 hectares. Então é para isso mesmo 200 hectares. Vai dá quase 400 hectares”. Diálogo Antonio Soares, junho de 2013. lxiii. In the original: “a estrutura básica, a base da estratificação social, é derivada do sistema legal, que distribui poder” (Acevedo Marin, 2009: 10). lxiv. In the original: “Eles dizem que tem mestificação, porque até os nomes são compatíveis, mas se tiver negócio de branco é bem pouco, porque a origem mesmo é negro e índio, porque sai tudo moreno, mameluco. Esses de João Paulino no começo era tudo louro, hoje já tem mistificação, mas no começo os bicho era tudo louro mesmo”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, Periperi, Amarante, junho de 2013. lxv. In the original: “Nenhuma designação podia ser mais apropriada. O termo originalmente se referia a uma casta de escravos que os árabes tomavam de seus pais para criar e adestrar em suas casas‐criatórios, onde desenvolviam o talento que acaso tivessem” (Ribeiro, 1995: 107). lxvi. In the original: “As outras áreas foram repassados para terceiros. Timóteo, que era cunhado do meu avô, que era irmão da minha avó e João Firmiano que era cunhado também do meu avô, eles pegaram e seguraram essa légua de terra. Só que no final, só ficou essa de Manoel Vaqueiro que segurou esses quilômetro de terra aqui de extensão. Os outros abriram tudo mão para terceiros, venderam tudo.[...] Hoje foi passando, foi passando, já ta bem mestificado. Já tem mais de que Veloso. Tem empresa , tem tudo. Os que ficaram não tem mais nada de terra. Não dá dois hectare. Que ta em nome assim da raça deles. Mas o resto passaram para frente”. Conversa com Antonio Soares, 12 de junho de 2013. lxvii. In the original: “Porque hoje tá só separado assim, mas as famílias. Eles fizeram um acordo, os nove irmãos, que a referência da propriedade de limite, pra que cada um cultivasse sem mete a mão um no outro, da estrada, que era bem qui a estrada antiga, daqui para o rio todo mundo tinha seu limite. Da chapada não, podia botar roça em qualquer um da frente. Não tinha essa questão não, ah ta em minha frente, não bote. [...] da família não tinha nenhum problema. Agora de fora não, tinha de pedir licença. E se alguém quisesse botar uma tarefa de fora também não tinha problema, porque era consentimento dos donos. Nada disso é cercado. Continua aberto. O caba quando faz uma roça, às vezes cerca só enquanto é o tempo de tirar o produto, uns dois anos”. [...] Então essa área do Periperi de 220 hectares pertence a todos nós porque os outros também já tão também tudo carimbado. Essa área aí na pista de um quilômetro de largura, de extensão da mais de dois mil metros, porque só daqui para o rio dá mil metros e pra fora dá mais de mil”. Diálogo com Antonio Soares, junho de 2013. lxviii. In the original: “São 23 hectares em cada gleba. Aqui aconteceu assim. Essa gleba aqui de Lúcia, eles acharam que foram embora daqui caçando melhora de vida, pó ali para São Pedro e tal e terminaram e queriam vender a propriedade. Papai tendo dois cunhados, interessados em morar aqui na beira-rio, aí, nesse momento, ele pediu a preferência pra vender pra esses cunhados, minha tia e minha madrinha pra vender pra esses cunhados e ela cedeu. Então essa gleba aqui, ligada a nós aqui é de Claudino Veloso e Cícero Veloso, que era da irmã da minha mãe, da gleba de Lúcia. As pessoas que tem fora hoje, do sangue de Manoel e Maria Vaqueiro, são esses dois, que já vieram através do cunhado que é meu pai. [...] Naquelas épocas eles conseguiram registro de imóvel pra cada um. Agora sem fazer o rolamento. Lá no cartório eles mediram de vara, de braça, daqui pra acolá não foi medido, eles mediram só da estrada pra cá, que é essa questão da referência, que é esse negócio dos mil metros, e pra acolá eles calcularam, 408 porque o topógrafo na época disse que ia dá 23 hectare pra cada um. Isso vai 65 anos. Isso foi na época da partilha deles. Eles tinham muito bom relacionamento com os poder lá dos políticos daquela época e chegava lá e mandava no cartório. E dizia rapaz é o seguinte nós tamo aqui precisando resolver os problema aqui desses menino e aí eu quero o registro de imóveis desses menino e aí fizeram. 23 hectares. Tantas áreas. E aí eles fizeram lá, tantos metros, tal, tal, tal. E botaram no papel e deram a escritura com registro de imóveis para cada um deles. Só que quando eles morreram, esses herdeiros já de terceiro e quarto grau, inquirindo e saber, porque vende, passa pra um e passa um e quebra a propriedade. Quando chega pra fazer o rolamento tem de começar da pessoa que vendeu pra Maria Vaqueira, porque na época não foi feito nada de rolamento. Aí tem de parar tudo. Então é um titulado que não ta valendo nada hoje. [...] então se chegá hoje se vender todo o pedaço de terra não dá pra fazer, porque aqui tirou muito né, porque vai pegar todos esses detalhes de lá pra cá. É por isso ta aqui, todo mundo é dono, a gente usa, e ninguém mete a mão e tá acabada a confusão. Termina quase voltando para o comunitário”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxix. In the original: “Nesse caso eles prá fazer, como é que chama, um levantamento histórico, tem que pagar uma taxa lá, uma taxa bem boa. Tem uma taxa lá pra pegar essa informações. Pra dá a busca. No cartório, eles cobram uma taxa lá, às vezes não dá no mesmo dia, mas há a possibilidade de se encontrar isso aí lá. Num é, porque é propriedade, foi cadastrado, o livro acho que não queimaram, porque tem alguns por aí que foi queimado, mas eu acho que de Amarante não foi não”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro e Antônio Soares, junho de 2013. lxx. In the original: “– Aqui em Periperi, não. Sabe por que? E pode, nada é impossível. Mas, esse menino aqui, pra ele achar 10 pessoas, é meia louca. Eu que tô no jogo, dos do meu tempo ninguém confia mais no outro. Não tá não, Seu Zé Filho? Pra Zé Filho, os filhos de Raimundo é da idade dele aí. Entonces, ele não confia no outro. Entendeu como é? Com a associação é confiança, não é? O Zé Filho, o Raimundinho não confia no Zé Filho. O Zé Filho (risos), não é verdade? Será que vai? Entonces a Associação de Periperi aqui acabou, porque o povo tão tudo, como é que vou dizer. – Descabriado. – Tão tudo descabriado também. – É o que eu vivo falando pra ele. – Não tem mais associação. – com nova direção! E a nova direção, o Zé Filho não vai. Por que que o Zé Filho não vai, porque o Zé Filho tem medo, porque vai ser monitorado pelos outros. Porque Zé Filho não tem conhecimento das coisas. Aí fica como o mostrador do rio. – Aí não funciona. – Aí não funciona. – Ou você tem a voz ativa, ou não serve pra administrar nada. Eu te falei as mesmas coisas. Dá pra você um exemplo, nós somos nós 3, aí eu sou o cumple, né? Aí você tem que me valorizar. O João Vaqueiro é o presidente da associação, você o tesoureiro e esse aqui é o secretário. Aí, quando chegar lá, Seu Daniel, o senhor confia no Seu João? (Risos) Não é desse jeito? É desse jeito! – Pra funcionar, tem que ser com confiança! – Aí se você disser que confia, o problema é seu! – Aqui, não tá acabado, como tô falando. Tem assim, os mais velhos já tão tudo; já está tudo descabriado! – Inadimplente!” Diálogo com João Vaqueiro e Zé Filho, Periperi, Amarante, agosto de 2003. lxxi. In the original: “Uma comunidade me chama pra um debate eu vou, se o debate chegar a contento ela chama de novo, se não chegar, não chama mais. Esse foi o caso lá em Periperi. É como seu fosse mesmo um informante, eu levo a informação e a comunidade pega e usa como que lhe convém. E outra coisa, sendo a partir de uma questão interna. A gente não chega numa comunidade porque a gente ouviu falar não, a gente chega numa comunidade a partir de uma situação que ela tá vivendo, e a partir de uma experiência parecida que a gente viveu. [...] A partir de então a comunidade pode tomar um rumo outro rumo. Até porque nós nõa temos condição de fazer mais do que isso. Porque cada pessoa no Piauí atua de acordo com as suas condições reais, por exemplo eu sobrevivo da minha roça, dos meus ofícios, dos meus afazeres. Então eu vou pra comunidade, mas numa ação solidária. O que tenho pra oferecer pra a comunidade é apenas o meu tempo. Periperi chama e nós dizemos, olha, dia tal tem uma carona, que casar a agenda com essa carona, ok, nós vamos chegar aí sem custo de deslocamento, mas a hospedagem e a alimentação é por conta de vocês. Não há um outro meio. Não é essa história, 409 não, todo mês dá uma contribuição, e presta conta e contabilidade, burocrática, não existe” Conversa com Antonio Bispo, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São joão do Piauí, junho 2013. lxxii. In the original: “A Coordenação Nacional de Articulação das Comunidades Quilombolas (CONAQ) foi fundada em 16 de maio de 1996 em Bom Jesus da Lapa - BA. “A CONAQ é uma organização de âmbito nacional que representa os quilombolas do Brasil. Dela participam representantes das comunidades quilombolas de 22 estados da federação. [...] A CONAQ tem como objetivos lutar pela garantia de propriedade de terra, pela implantação de projetos de desenvolvimento sustentável e pela implementação de políticas públicas levando em consideração a organização pré-existente das comunidades de quilombo”. Artigo de Ivan Rodrigues Costa – Coordenador do Projeto Vida de Negro (PVN/CCN-MA) http://www.institutobuzios.org.br/documentos/CONAQ_UM%20MOVIMENTO%20NACIONAL%20DOS%20QUILOMBOLAS.pdf, 11.9.15. lxxiii. In the original: “A grande questão é que quilombo não é um movimento é uma articulação. A questão quilombola é uma articulação entre as comunidades. Quilombo é uma comunidade e o movimento quilombola não é um movimento é uma articulação entre as comunidades. E não é um movimento nacional. Cada comunidade é uma comunidade, e é uma unidade política. Não tem quem represente os quilombos no Brasil. Cada quilombo se apresenta e se articula com aqueles que lhe interessa. Não tem e talvez nunca tenha uma articulação nacional entre os quilombos. Cada um segue o seu caminho e quando convém anda junto, quando não convém se separa. [...] eu participo da CONAQ mas a CONAQ não representa os quilombos, a CONAQ articula os quilombos. [...] Cada comunidade tradicional é uma comunidade tradicional. A comunidade não entra na lógica do Estado Nacional, apesar do Estado querer, os partidos querer, algumas pessoas da CONAQ querem, sofrem por isso, acham que vai chegar um dia mas não vai. Se chegar quebra. No dia que as comunidades quilombola um dia virar um movimento nacional, não é mais um quilombo” Diálogo com Antonio Bispo dos Santos, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, junho 2013. lxxiv. In the original: “Tem projeto de 84, nós fizemos uma irrigação aqui, né? Parece que era 12 hectares de rio, no leito da lagoa. Aí até o dreno, né? Fizemos os coisa. Era carnaubal, fizemos uma drenação, foi pagado não sei quantas horas de patrola, fizemos o processo todinho, fizemos, aí Deus mandou um grande inverno e que essa represa chegou a dar uns 3 km. Foi lá em cima, em cima lá, aí o povo vizinho aqui, vizinho né, se deram mal. E à meia noite, eles só vieram à noite, rebentaram a parede, que eles rebentaram a primeira vez, não foi lá no meio da lagoa, rebentaram a parede aqui perto aqui do mangal, aí quando nós cheguemos de manhã, o arroz todo mó, parede virando cacho. Aí quando o cabra furou, nós tampemos. Mas, aí, Seu Daniel, as águas lá, o povo só dizendo, “nós vamos rebentar, nós vamos rebentar”. [...] Aí a água só tava era crescendo pra cima, porque o certo é ter chegado lá, pra chegar no baixão, perto do rio, aí, não. Aí, a água não chegou lá. E pra chegar lá, não tinha como, né? Lá é alto. Aí ficou um marzão d’água aí. Um marzão d’água aí e o povo lá fazendo nada, maldizendo que ia estourar a parede, estourar a parede [...] E chegaram aí e meteram a chibanca e rebentaram e foram de novo de motor. Aí quando amanhecemos o dia, tava o paredão lá, a água lá chega correndo sereno. O rio tava todo tomado. Aí a água desceu e os cabra batendo palma, quer dizer que, a gente ta errado, porque a gente fez o dreno, [...] aí o projeto acabou! Entonces de 84, 94, 2004, 2014. Quanto é que dá? [...] 30 anos, a Associação tá com 30 anos” Conversa com João Vaqueiro, Periperi, Amarante, agosto de 2013. lxxv. In the original: “- Eu beneficiava naquele tempo, por mês, 3 vezes 4000 quilos de arroz. Aí, não vou evaluar, porque agora tá diferente, né? Mas, boto na base de 5 centavos o Kilo. Depois passei pra 10, tá com uns 3 anos passei pra 10. Aí, dinheiro, entra lá um tesoureiro, 180 Reais livre. Aí dinheiro livre, você podia pegar, rasgar e tocar fogo. [...] Era pra benefício da comunidade, pra mantimento da máquina, porque ela fura peneira, ela fura, acaba a borracha debaixo, tudo gasta. – Vinha lá das Pedras, Palmeirais pra cá, de São João, até da barragem da Muquila vinha. – Amigo, o primeiro ano, eu cortei e beneficiei, o primeiro ano de início, foi 80 mil quilos de arroz! Rapaz, as vezes dava meia noite, o cara chegava. Ei! Eu cortava o sono” Conversa com João Vaqueiro e Zé Filho, Periperi, Amarante, agosto de 2013. 410 lxxvi. In the original: “Aí a gente se juntou e o grupo de coordenação, fomos a EMATER e fizemos o convite para a EMATER, Banco do Nordeste e a comunidade. E nessa hora tava todo mundo e nós apresentamos o projeto, a proposta nossa. E o Banco foi muito favorável. Se o problema é esse resolve agora. Aí pediu à EMATER que cadastrasse todo mundo. Baseado em quantos hectare. Ó porque quem pode botar dez, bota, quem pode botar um, bota, proporcional à capacidade de cada um. Pra não dizer, só não deu certo porque me deu ou me deram uma coisa que eu não tinha condição de botar. Pra não alegar que a coordenação não tava pressionado pra ele fazer uma coisa que não podia. Mais ou menos 60 dias o Banco já tava no ponto. Veio o técnico com uma bolsa cheia de dinheiro. Aí quando chegou lá todo mundo sorrindo. O caba beio aí com uma bolsa cheia de dinheiro. Projeto de custeio de roça. Mandioca, arroz. Isso tá com que Antônio, 97, 96 pra 97. Aí pegamo o dinheiro todo mundo, proporcionalmente. O dinheiro era dado na mão. O projeto era dividido em três parcelas, uma era o preparo do solo, outra pra plantio e a outra pra colheita. Passou a primeira, passou a segunda e até a terceira saiu. Só que quando foi no outro ano, quando era pagar o custeio, aí já não apareceu mais. Mau investimento. Foi desviado, e de acordo com aquilo não chegou a fazer o que tava no projeto. Aí desviou dalí não funciona. Essa conta ainda tá hoje lá para se pagar. E ela tá alta. Agora mesmo quinta-feira tem audiência. Aí o banco botou na Justiça. É todo mundo. Tá todo mundo envolvido”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxxvii. In the original: “Em 1962-61 ganhamo o sindicato dos trabalhadores rurais de Amarante. Primeiros associados, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 10, tudo aqui da comunidade. O autor aqui da comunidade. Era chamado o rapaz intelectual, que sabia elaborar as idéia e outros sabia sugerir as idéia, daí levaram a proposta para alguns que tinha coragem na cidade, e dalí implantava aquela obra no movimento sindical. E aí quando o pessoal se reuniam lá no sindicato, os burguês se enciumava, porque o povo não pode ta se unido, mas o que eles querem mesmo? Que que eles querem com isso? Será que não para nos atormentar? Aí um dizia: esse negos tão bom de pegar uma lapada, negócio de reunião aí, negócio de querer ser alguma coisa. Mas aí não intimidou não. 64 veio a revolução, por conta da ditadura militar, e o nosso sindicato foi a quinto sindicato, que ajudou a criar, tinham cinco sindicato registrado naquela época na região, e esses cinco, Água Branca, Amarante, São Pedro, Campo Maior, e Teresina. E foi criada essa adesão dos trabalhadores rurais de Amarante. E aí já participamo da fundação da Federação dos Trabalhadores Rurais na Agricultura. Amarante do Piauí. A Polícia Federal veio aí averigou, mas nós não tinha nada de perigo para a sociedade. Porque era um sindicato autêntico e registrado, então como foi que criaram essa idéia né? Vieram por por vir, mas constaram que a gente tava dentro do estatuto fazendo as coisas normais”. Conversa com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxxviii. In the original: “O negócio é complicado. A comunidade ficou inadimplente com essas situações e a gente não soube gerenciar e hoje estamos pendentes, sem poder fazer, principalmente as pessoas que coordenaram os projetos, sem poder fazer qualquer coisa, em relação a bancos pra poder melhorar as coisas. A gente tá assistindo o desenvolvimento só de televisão, mas não chega na comunidade por causa dessa coisas. O governo já fez várias propostas mas não tem como a gente pagar de acordo com o projeto do governo. E aí agora estamos pelejando para ver se desenvolve esse negócio, apesar de já tá na Justiça... o Wellington Dias teve aqui agora no dia 27 de fevereiro e eu fiz uma proposta pra ver se eles tinham como organizar e renegociar essas dívidas, como o Estado faz, a União faz, o município faz, tai com o FMI, o Banco Mundial, aí não cumpriu as parcelas e tal, e renegocia, passa para 20 anos, para 30 anos, e fica pagando aquelas parcelas e fica com o caminho livre pra fazer as coisas. Se tinha esse meio pra a gente fazer isso, primeiro porque a gente não tá se sentindo bem, porque tá sabendo que fez as coisas erradas, segundo porque a gente tá impedido de participar dessas questões do desenvolvimento do País. Aí tamo escravo de nós mesmo e das situações que a gente tem. Aí ele disse que tinha brecha pra nós resolver os problemas e disse que era pra nós se organizar na comunidade e que depois de produzido e organizado eles podia mandar a assessoria deles pra ver como é que resolvia. [...] Lá de Teresina, depois ele disse, ó Raimundo já tudo resolvido. O que tiver em cartório, pode requerer e vai ao banco e o banco negocia com 85% de perda, o 411 governo anistia 85%, em forma de subsídio, e o produtor paga 15%. Se puder pagar logo à vista, paga logo à vista, Se não, renegocia em 10 anos. Fomos na EMATER e pedimos o demonstrativo de três produtores, que tem uma divída em média de 150 mil, que pegaram o empréstimo de uns 30 mil, 15 mil. Aí disseram a mesma coisa. Contanto que tamo agora nesse processo”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxxix. In the original: “As gerações foram gerando e aí chega bem qui e isso aqui pertence ao meu vô, vô botar uma casa aqui. E aí a roça planeia como botar. Se não der para botar aqui, bota fora. Mas a morada tá seguro. Aí lá no Antonio [Soares], no contexto ali, já tem gentes que não só da família, mas que é semelhante, não tem gente assim fora do sangue, no sangue eu digo no sangue de quilombolas. São tudo pessoas simples, humilde, que às vezes chega assim, faz amizade e diz rapaz bota tua casa aí, aí ele faz. Então lá tem gente que não é da família no sangue assim, mas é pobre que chega faz a casinha dele e fica lá. Quem também às vezes ou tá junto, ou casa, e já fica ali também. Porque aqui no nosso caso, aqui não. Bem ali da Jesus, do compadre Santo não. Aqui só mesmo a tradição do herdeiro”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxxx. In the original: “[…] consideradas as características do antigo Parque Estadual de Jacupiranga, como os equívocos da sobreposição em áreas com comunidades residentes, a falta de manejo adequado, os conflitos socioambientais, a falta de recursos financeiros e humanos - características comumente detectadas nas Áreas Protegidas do Brasil e agravadas no PEJ pela presença de 8.000 habitantes em mais de 30 bairros rurais existentes – constata-se que a criação do Mosaico foi, em conjunto com a participação das comunidades envolvidas, a melhor estratégia adotada para mediar conflitos e desenvolver estratégias de conservação” (Bim, 2012). lxxxi. In the original: “Nesta região a questão da recategorização foi muito questionada pela comunidade quilombola. Foi um dos debates mais ricos e controversos do processo, pois os quilombolas, a princípio, não aceitaram a proposta de transformar o seu território que ainda estava sobreposto pelo antigo PEJ em RDS, pois não compreendiam o significado de uma Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentável, além de estarem naquele momento discutindo o reconhecimento do território quilombola. As discussões foram sendo encaminhadas e chegou- se a um consenso. Porém ainda há questionamentos sobre a recategorização.” (Bim, 2012: 110). lxxxii. In the original: “Consigo vender no informal. Por exemplo, rapaz como é que eu faço pra fazer uma casa aqui. Rapaz eu posso é num vender mais eu compro. Aí o caba pode comprar, porque isso ta acontecendo não é só aqui não são todas essa propriedades, as outras tudinho ta desse modo. O caba compra sabendo que o caba tinha o direito de herança do pai. Só que ele não pode fazer sem documento. Ali no Riachão, por exemplo, ali ta tudo retalhado, mas não pode dar documento. Aquele balneário ta vendido tudinho, mas o caba não tem o título. Ele compra porque ali eu quero fazer a minha chácara, mas não tem documento. Por aqui no Periperi é só família. Aqui tem a morada, as casas, mas é concedido, que vem quando concede, porque faz parte do vínculo de amizade, ou faz a casa ligada a um parente, alguma coisa assim. Poe exemplo, ali eu tenho a minha casa, tem o valor pra mim morar. A gente pode melhorar a casa, mas valor de título, de documento, não tem”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxxxiii. In the original: “A gente é quilombola. Só que ninguém tinha ainda se visto como quilombola. Com o incentivo dos companheiro que veio vendo a história das comunidades, aí nós fomos caçar nossas raízes e achamos que somos quilombolas mesmo de verdade. Por isso a gente começou a se organizar, mas muito atrasado nós também. O negócio da Certificação nós tinha até deixado de mão, então Bispo veio, e é um caboco que tem ajudado nós muito. Nós fizemos um plano porque são as comunidades vizinhas de Riachão e São João, por sempre foi assim. Mas nós estamos estudando aqui no nosso setor aqui de começar pelo Periperi. Então a gente tá aqui nesse estudo, buscando essa identidade, [...] e a gente tá nesse processo de certificação da comunidade quilombola. Ou comunidade quilombola ou a comunidade tradicional, mas o que nós somos mesmo é quilombola. Bispo veio, tá com uns dois anos três anos veio, achando que nós era mesmo quilombola. Aí nós fizemos aqui um trabalho de base. Reunimos lá no Riachão com as famílias, e fizemos o levantamento das origens, não tem um que 412 não tenha uma banda de negro, ou de índio, todos eles. Fizemos aqui no São João também, todo mundo se identifica com uma banda de negros legítimo e outros que são como índios e essa coisa e tal”. Diálogo com Antonio Soares, junho de 2013. lxxxiv. In the original: “A história sempre foi assim. Conhecido mesmo como os negos do Periperi. Nós que nunca quisemos apartar né. São João e pessoal do Riachão. Mas somos conhecidos como os negos do Periperi. Tem inveja, porque nós se organiza melhor. Então eles não engole assim pra dizer assim somos nós. É porque a gente nunca quis só pra gente. Os negos nós queríamos pra nós. A gente tenta a gente se reúne, na hora da reunião tudo bem, mas na identificação mesmo...porque se olhá os descendentes deles são os negos, não tem pra onde correr, mas carrega aquela coisa dentro de si, qualquer coisinha é os negos do Periperi. Desde o princípio nós já mexemo com todo mundo, porque conhecemos a origem de todo mundo, e todo mundo se assumiu, na reunião grande que fizemos. Mas aí vem essa questão muito lenta. Mas aqui nós não deixemos ninguém de fora para quando for amanhã ou depois, quando der resultado, não vir dizer que deixemo ninguém de fora. [...] Porque tem a maneira do caba se sentir quilombola, se sentir nego, e tem maneira do incentivo. Quando fala que o quilombola tem um certo direito, diferenciado, aí sim, aí a coisa muda, só que dentro do peito, no coração mesmo, eles não conseguem engolir, se sentir nego, mas não tem pra onde, são nego, só não quer se sentir. Por isso que o centro mesmo nós vamos trabalhar daqui, do Periperi. Nessa questão da comunidade quilombola, o eixo mesmo é o Periperi. [...] No São João, por exemplo, a mãe deles tudo era negra, negra, e a avó dela mais negra ainda. São que casou com os Gabriel, que eram mais vermelho, branco mesmo, e os filhos deles já saíram mais branco. Então, na verdade, nessa questão das raízes, não tem jeito de não ser 60%, todo mundo é negro. [...] Lá no Riachão, são poucos que atrapalham. O Adonias nem fede e nem cheira. O outro que não é em parte é o Garimpeiro [João Gualberto], que é uma banda é dos branco, mas a outra banda é dos negos. O Manuca que a avó dele também é negra, de origem negra e pobre. Eles tem um terço de nego e dois terço de branco. A origem deles, eles diz que de portugueses” . Diálogo com Antonio Soares, junho de 2013. lxxxv. In the original: “Ele faz fronteira lá na outra extrema com João Paulino, João Francisco dos Reis, que foi outro já arrumou a área através da família. Porque naquele tempo ele não tinha a posse de adquirir a terra, porque tinha que ter uma posse lá econômica para adquirir a terra. Como ele não tinha e a minha avó era solidária, deu o poder da posse para que ele pegasse a propriedade. Mas ele já não era do sangue. Na outra extrema, nós temos ele como Antônio Ribeiro. Ribeiro é a família. É branco. Branco e é orgulhoso. Esse aí é mestiço, não é branco e nem é preto. Só que nunca quis misturar. Eles achavam que nós os negros, eles se sentiam branco pra nós”. Diálogo com Antonio Soares, junho de 2013. lxxxvi. In the original: “não lá é negro e índio. Minha mãe era cabocla se você vê. Ela ta ali. Ela ta acamada. Mas se vc vê o cabelo dela é liso, liso, impressionante. Mestiço, mameluco quase, pois é negro e índio, ela, e a família toda. A minha vó por parte dela, a minha bisavó, naquele tempo eu chamava pregadeira de cachorro. Como também a minha avó, também aqui por parte dos Vaqueiro, minha bisavó, ela viveu 120 anos, índia legítima. Então a minha vó era mestiça de negro, índio, não sei se tem branco não, na família tinha, mas aquele negócio de casou uma vez, não sei se casou com outro, com as primas tinha, mas a minha vó mesmo a origem é negro e índio.” Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxxxvii. In the original: “Conversando assim eles [a família de Antonio Ribeiro] se diz que são branco, mas quando vai mermo eles dizem que são quilombola, porque diz que não tem jeito, não tem jeito mesmo. Mas porque a cultura nossa é assim. [...] Nunca um nego pego uma nega do mesmo jeito. Esses nove, nenhum trouxe uma prima pra casar com prima. Sempre de fora. Não de jeito nenhum. Tem que ser uma de fora. Ou um macho ou uma fêmea. Tá entendendo? [...] Por isso aqui nós tem essa dificuldade. E os outros que tem uma cultura mais vaidosa, querendo ser mais orgulhoso, esse aí é que quando nós trouxe essa história de quilombola, começaram a eu sou mais branco que esse ou esse outro. Sempre por essa comparação”. Diálogo com Antonio Soares, junho de 2013. 413 lxxxviii. In the original: “Por isso que nesse contexto a gente tinha aqui como uma comunidade tradicional e não quilombola. Agora com a palavra quilombola, nego pra engolir é luta. Por que não tá no sangue não tá na cultura. Quer dizer de 1800 e pouco para 2014, já vai dando né, são quase 130, 140 anos, e nunca foi endossado, a gente ouvia falar de quilombola assim nos livros, assim muito longe da realidade, mas dentro do sangue, da etnia, isso nunca chegou associado à gente mesmo. Então esse é a dificuldade que a gente tem encontrado que no aspecto dentro de nós aqui mesmo de adotar a palavra quilombola. Agora uns que já tem começado a se conscientizar a gente já sabe que não tem pra onde correr, já tem uns que já aceita de bem. Agora no primeiro momento, quando falou de quilombola o pulo foi dez metros pra trás. Porque achava que quilombola era desfazer do meio social evoluído e tal”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. lxxxix. In the original: “Porque a gente sabe que a gente ainda tem o preconceito, a nossa sociedade ainda tem o preconceito do negro. Isso aí não tem quem tire, é difícil tirar isso aí mesmo. Cêta numa reunião e tal, mesmo as pessoas que tá lá no meio social, nego, eles olha assim pra pessoa com desprezo. A gente vê, ah o caba é inteligente, mas quando eles querem botar o cara eles chamam de nego ou negrinho, pra dizer que é inteligente mas ainda é negro. É uma cultura, é racismo mesmo. Por isso tem dificuldade o pessoal, por não conhecer não se assumir”. Diálogo com Raimundo Vaqueiro, junho de 2013. xc. In the original “mais interessados em subir na vida a qualquer preço, suportando a humilhação por sua origem ‘impura’, buscando evitar as referências a sua condiçãoo de mestiço e servindo às necessidades de controle do negro na sociedade”. (Araújo, 2008, 981) xci. In the original: “el negro es una raza y el mulato ni raza es” (Couceiro Rodríguez, 2009: 134) xcii. In the original: “Más allá de la multidirecionalidad del racismo, aquellos blancos que, por mostrarse antirracistas o por puro esnobismo, de alguna manera se pretenden negros o, al menos, mulatos; así como aquellos negros y sobre todo mestizos que con mayor riesgo de ridículo, se pretenden blancos por complejo racista incluso contra sí mismos” (Couceiro Rodríguez, 2009: 135). xciii. In the original: “En este estudio afloraron quienes insisten (aun de forma inconfesa) en ganar espacios para el negro por el mero hecho de ser negro y no por sus valores humanos y sociales como individuo, o fundamentan su color de la piel para desmanes personales (y acusan de racista a todo el que no se los permite) […] Destáquense aquellas influencias aún más negativas del virulento racismo norteamericano por las vertientes de la négritude caribeña, más que del Rastafari en sí, culturas de difícil inserción en la historia del racismo cubano. […] siempre enfatizo las diferencias entre el racismo cubano y el estadounidense, menos traumático el caso de Cuba donde, por fortuna y lógicamente, su importación no promete perspectivas. […] Es un error determinar tales raíces solo por los parámetros de la antropología física, cuando la cultura va mucho más allá de la sangre y del biotipo, y hay que evaluar factores que van desde la convivencia hasta los medios de difusión masiva. El mestizaje cultural, al menos en comunidades como las que nos ocupan, justamente por su esencia cosmopolita y metropolitana, es mucho mayor y más complejo y rico que el mestizaje étnico, y este mucho mayor, complejo y rico que el racial, que ya es mucho decir. De aquí que estas comunidades resuman magistralmente la nueva identidad que aporta el etnos cubano, definido por Jesus Guanche (1996). Es cierto que en Cuba como se dice popularmente, ‘quien no tiene de congo tiene de carabalí’; pero falta agregar que quien no tiene de canario tiene de gallego, o de chino, o de precolombiano, árabe, hebreo, francés…. Rasgos de intolerancia se evidencian dentro de las comunidades cuando supuestos promotores pretenden realizar actividades ‘africanas’ más que cubanas en detrimento de otras […] y pretenden excluir de la cubanía. […] hasta negros participan en proyectos dedicados a las raíces hispanas, aunque raramente rebasen el exotismo folclorista, diversidad que también se aprecia en exponentes de raíces africanas nunca exclusivos, aunque que algunos se muestran racistamente exclusivistas.” (Couceiro Rodríguez, 2009: 139-141) xciv. In the original: “pero el análisis del fenómeno fue siendo postergado como lo han sido otras cosas que merecían discutirse, y por el mismo motivo: para no poner en peligro la unidad. 414 […] Qué tenía que ver un fenómeno tan profundo [La Revolución], que realmente había cambiado la vida de millones de personas, que había alfabetizado a los analfabetos y alimentado a los hambrientos, que no dejaba a un solo niño sin escuela, que prometía barrer con la discriminación racial y el machismo, que ponía en las librerías, al precio de cincuenta centavos o un peso, toda la literatura universal […] qué tenía que ver un hecho de esas dimensiones con mis preferencias sexuales o con la peregrina imagen de un artista virtuoso y viril, siempre dispuesto a cantar las glorias patrias? […] puesto que en los círculos dogmáticos venía cobrando fuerza la idea de que las discrepancias estéticas ocultaban discrepancias políticas. El realismo socialista no era ‘intrínsecamente perverso’; lo intrínsecamente perverso fue la imposición de esa fórmula en la URSS, donde lo que pudo haber sido una escuela, una corriente literaria y artística más, se convirtió de pronto en doctrina oficial, de obligatorio cumplimiento” (Fornet, 2006: 3-4). xcv. In the original: “[...] En su discurso de clausura [Primer Congreso de Educación y Cultura, La Habana, 1968], Fidel acusaría de arrogantes y prepotentes a aquellos ‘liberales burgueses’, instrumentos del colonialismo cultural, que intervenían en nuestros asuntos internos sin tener la menor idea de lo que eran nuestros verdaderos problemas: la necesidad de defendernos del imperialismo, la obligación de atender y abastecer a millones de niños en las escuelas... El país atravesaba entonces un período de tensiones acumuladas, entre las que sobresalían la muerte del Che, la intervención soviética en Checoslovaquia —que el gobierno cubano aprobó, aunque con mucha reticencia—, la llamada Ofensiva Revolucionaria de 1968 —un proceso tal vez prematuro, tal vez incluso innecesario de expropiación de los pequeños comercios y negocios privados—, y la frustrada zafra del 70 o Zafra de los Diez Millones, que pese a ser ‘la más grande de nuestra historia’ —como proclamaron los periódicos— dejó al país exhausto. Sometida al bloqueo económico imperialista, necesitada de un mercado estable para sus productos —el azúcar, en especial—, Cuba tuvo que definir radicalmente sus alianzas. Hubo un acercamiento mayor a la Unión Soviética y a los países socialistas europeos. En 1972 el país ingresaría al Consejo de Ayuda Mutua Económica (CAME), lo que vincularía estructuralmente nuestra economía a la del campo socialista” (Fornet, 2006: 13-14). xcvi. In the original: “[…] caprichosa ubicación del pueblo como trampolín entre la ciudad y la playa, el cresciente arribo de cruceros turísticos que ha trasfigurado las funciones originarias del puerto y esa fiebre de hostales y paladares, que ya suman más de 80 en una comunidad acostumbrada a vivir del mar y para el mar”. Artigo en el Granma, 23 de junio de 2015. xcvii. In the original: “Entendo o campo semântico da etnicidade como um conjunto de enunciados, juízos, relatos, narrativas orais e lendas, que são emitidos e reformulados criativamente no presente pelos Tremembé, considerando sua diversidade interna. Podiam ser também comentários, anedotas e provérbios. busquei circunscrever um horizonte discursivo e simbólico no qual os diversos atores sociais conseguem entender, descrever e interpretar, por processos estruturados ao nível consciente e inconsciente, a vida social, os fatos e fenômenos sociais, como também as suas próprias ações e as práticas de outros atores e agentes, todos dotados de conteúdos originados na dinâmica das relações interétnicas. Esse campo semântico não se estrutura por si só, pois requer operações sintéticas de apreensão dos fatos e questões de perfil étnico por parte dos mais diversos atores sociais. Nesse sentido, o campo semântico está “aberto” a produzir interpretações étnicas díspares e até mesmo antagônicas, tomando em consideração os atores e grupos sociais que as fazem, afinal eles o aproveitam de maneira diferencial” (Valle, 2011: 49). xcviii. In the original: “parece constituir somente uma possibilidade teórica, uma vez que empiricamente não se pode dizer que ele se manifeste” (Cardoso de Oliveira, 1976: 58) xcix. In the original: “promovió la centalización en la toma de las decisiones, y revitalizió las movilizaciones de masas y trabajo voluntario como forma de organización del trabajo” (De la Fuente, 2014: 406) c. In the original: “Es más, después de 1993, el gobierno se vio obligado a tomar medidas con el objetivo de fomentar la productividad y estimular la estancada economía: legalizó el dólar norteamericano, permitió diferentes formas de empleo por cuenta propria, promovió la inservisión extranjera y la ‘liberalización de los mercados agrícolas’. El programa produjo una 415 modesta recuperación después de 1995, pero las autoridades cubanas reconocieron que el éxito tuvo cierto costo social.” (De la Fuente, 2014: 407). ci. In the original: “las evidencias disponibles indican que en el llamado periodo especial, la desigualdad racial y las tensiones sociales racialmente definidas aumentaron” (De la Fuente, 2014: 407). cii. In the original: “traz à tona uma ideia híbrida de pertencimento que coloca em primeiro plano a necessidade da tradução cultural e, principalmente, a dúvida permanente quanto à possibilidade de se ‘estar em casa’" (Florencio, 2014: 67-68). ciii. In the original: “Como situar-se no tempo e no espaço quando se convive com o sentimento da contínua passagem? Como se fazer presente? [...] precisava atualizar a sensação de estar continuamente transitando no entre-lugar das línguas, dos tempos e dos territórios. (Florencio, 2014: 69) civ. In the original: “quizás la singularidad de ser le unico país socialista del heminsferio nos haya hecho pensar que escapamos de la sólida estructura geopolítica de la colonialidad, gracias a nuestra osada e inevitable conversión al socialismo. Esta no deja de ser una razón de suma importancia que nos diferencia ante los demás países del Caribe y Latinoamérica; sin embargo, no debemos olvidar que nuestro socialismo ha sido periférico, subdesarrollado y económicamente dependiente, sin olvidar todas las limitaciones internas con que hemos sobrepasado medio siglo de socialismo en el Caribe”. (Zurbano, 2014: 17) cv. In the original: “desidealizar las prácticas hegemónicas del socialismo como sistema político e introducir la posibilidad de que, desde adentro y a pesar de sus esfuerzos emancipatorios, el socialismo también genera su propio colonialismo interno, propicia un espacio colonial al interior de sus estructuras, desde el cual se oprime o excluye (conscientemente o no) a grupos específicos” (Zurbano, 2015: 18). cvi. In the original: “Quilombo não é uma questão socialista, não é uma questão comunista, é uma questão comunitária. A questão quilombola não pode ser lida a partir da lógica , ou da leitura, da luta de classes. Porque o quilombo surge a partir de um processo de colonização. Não é a partir do processo de escravização. O processo de escravização é uma consequência do processo de colonização. E o processo de colonização é uma luta de uma nação contra outras nações, não é uma luta de classes, é uma luta de nações. Uma nação quer colonizar a outras nações. E ela não quer colonizar o trabalhador ela quer colonizar o povo. […] Aí esse povo não tem personalidade jurídica, e esse povo não é objeto de direito, eles não podem nem ser julgado pela legislação do colonizador. Então se ele não é um objeto de direito, ele é uma coisa. Então se ele é uma coisa ele não cabe na luta de classes,. Porque o que é a luta de classes? É o enfrentamento entre dois grupos de direito, o direito do patrão e o direito do trabalhador. [...] Então o escravo não é um ente de direito, então o escravo não é uma categoria da luta de classes, ele não é classe, ele é coisa. [...] então você pegar o Marxismo para entender os quilombos, não cabe. Você vai inclusive recolonizar, agredir, fragmentar” Diálogo com Antonio Bispo dos Santos, Quilombo do Saco do Curtume, São João do Piauí, junho de 2013. cvii. In the original: “No es muy complicado para un cubano del último medio siglo en la isla reconocer que durante los años de Revolución existió en Cuba el colonialismo interno a la soviética, pues el sujeto popular tomó cuenta de él y lo fustigó en un largo catálogo de chistes y críticas que llegan a nuestros días. Dicho colonialismo interno comenzó luego de la adscripción de Cuba al mundo socialista. No lo identifico con esa idea maniquea de Cuba como satélite militar de la antigua Unión Soviética, sino con una idea mucho más compleja que explica la sinuosa manera en que una parte del pensamiento académico e ideológico del país se puso al servicio de los presupuestos normativos de un bloque político-económico que apoyaba y compartía el proyecto anticapitalista de la revolución (Zurbano, 2015: 20). cviii. In the original: “La Cofradía surge en el año 1998 [...] el documento fundacional de la Cofradía que salió publicado en Méjico, todavía no existía la impresora, había un teletipo, rollo para un papiro, leí aquello y estaba perfectamente de acuerdo con todo lo que decía allí, entonces nos reuníamos donde está La Madriguera eso sería ese lugar ahí en Carlos Tercero, [...] nos reunimos un grupo de gente, de los que estaba Gisela Arandia, estaba Tomasito, estaba 416 Gerardo otros compañeros más veteranos, nos reuníamos a debatir los problemas de la cuestión racial. Andando el tiempo en el ICAIC [...] conozco al hombre que había fundado la Cofradía que es Norberto Mesa Carbonell [...] una reunión en casa de alguien que no me acuerdo donde fue que Tomasito Rodríguez Robaina y yo tomamos la decisión de que había que apoyar la Cofradía de la Negritud, ya llevaba años de fundada la Cofradía y Norberto haciendo lo que podía él solo con alguna gente, y Tomasito y yo la apoyamos. [...] Entonces inmediatamente la gente, digamos que la derecha cubana desde el momento que estábamos Tomasito y yo empezó a decir que eso era oficialista, nada más lejos de un oficialista que yo, toda mi vida. Y mucha gente empezó a decir que nosotros éramos disidentes [...] Nosotros empezamos a trabajar y hacer cosas y sobre todo a esto que paso hoy de reunión de intelectuales en una comunidad para discutir, para debatir, intelectuales gente de la academia, periodistas, profesores, que llevábamos al barrio de La Ceiba, mi barrio donde yo vivo hace muchos años donde hay una casa comunitaria y ahí nos reuníamos y hicimos algunos actos de calle en un homenaje público, y eso le fue dando a la Cofradía un cierto espacio, una cierta legitimidad y es la que tiene en estos momentos, que sin estar reconocida oficialmente en estos momentos, tiene un espacio ganado como sociedad civil sin compromisos políticos, partidista ni nada por el estilo sino ese mismo compromiso con la Revolución Cubana […] porque en el caso de Cuba el Partido no llevo a la Revolución al poder y es todo lo contrario , la Revolución en el poder es la que creo el Partido. [...] ¿O sea, que está pasando en ese momento?, ¿Que ha ocurrido en los años 90 en Cuba?, ¿Cómo esas desigualdades se han multiplicado?, se han hecho cada vez más evidente y la discriminación, la exclusión que está ocurriendo en los centros de trabajo y como el racismo ha rebotado en Cuba con una fuerza realmente inusitada. O sea lo que demuestra que la hipótesis de los años 60 estaba equivocada, mira lo que está pasando ahora; pero no solamente el racismo, los años 90 fueron devastadores para la realidad cubana, yo creo que no hay un espacio de la realidad cubana que no haya sido de alguna manera afectada o desbastada por esta situación que ha habido en Cuba, esta situación insólita donde no aparece en ningún país del mundo. Es cierto que cuando se fue por el caño la Unión Soviética y todo este mundo de la Europa del Este que se suponía que Cuba se iría también, Cuba no se fue, pero el precio que tuvimos que pagar es elevadísimo, elevadísimo, un precio muy alto en desigualdades en pérdidas de lo alcanzado y sobre todo en el rebrote de males sociales que creíamos definitivamente muertos y que están hoy más vivos que nunca, el racismo es uno, la prostitución, la corrupción, puedo seguirte enumerando, crear ataduras de la desesperanza, la frustración eso está en la realidad cubana actual, ese el precio que hemos pagado por no habernos ido por el caño de Unión Soviética. Entrevista con Tato Quiñones, concedida a la antropóloga Bárbara Oliveira Souza, La Habana, 29.05.14. cix. In the original: “Desde el punto de vista de la ciencia más general, todos los seres humanos somos afrodescendientes con lo que el término envuelve a toda la humanidad y no se encuentra circunscrita a una parte de ella. Nuestra acepción es inclusiva, antirracista y antidiscriminatoria y es la acepción que menos se emplea por las personas que obviamente reclaman derechos. Ahí se emplea con una combinación muy particular que sustituye al término negro o negra en Estados Unidos, que son los que promovieron con su carácter de influencia global, sin termino, donde se le da una connotación despectiva al termino anterior y luego el termino adquiere una connotación positiva e dignadora y diferenciadora de una agrupación humana. También se ha sido interpretado como un tipo de racismo en dirección contraria, como un rechazo al acervo cultural presentado en ese país [...] Y ellos son los que se abrogan el derecho de dar unas clases de democracia y el antirracismo, sobretodo en el territorio cubano, que le siguen la rima que constantemente se están haciendo eso sin ningún tipo de asesoramiento, sin problemas. Sabemos perfectamente quiénes son estos intelectuales cubanos, a quien se dedican, a partir de las motivaciones de quien. La anterior acepción, consciente o inconsciente niega, neutraliza, silencia o sustituye las denominaciones nacionales y el reconocimiento de la formación de estados nacionales históricamente nuevos, brasileño por afrobrasileño, uruguayo por afrouruguayo, por ejemplo, cubano por afrocubano, dominicano por 417 afrodominicano, es decir un discurso diferenciador y separatista en un contexto regional que atenta la integración” (Intervención en el Seminario Origenes, Matanzas, Octubre 2014). cx. In the original: “[…] por supuesto tuvieron desde su aparición los mismos fines mutualistas de los cabildos, pero sus propósitos trascendieron los de estos, ya que llegaron a constituirse en verdaderas hermandades gremiales aún antes de la abolición de la esclavitud, que agruparon trabajadores de los puertos, las tabaquerías y los mataderos, entre otros sectores laborales”. (Quiñones, 2014: 72) cxi. In the original: “en el ámbito de la religiosidad, de las influencias reciprocas entre las culturas de las distintas etnias africanas que nos nutrieron mientras duró la trata esclavista, y entre estas y la cultura dominante surgieron los llamados ‘cultos sincréticos cubanos’, religiones populares entre las que se destacan la Regla de Ocha – Ifá o Santería, de origen yoruba; la de Palo o Palo Monte, de raíz bantú, y las asociaciones abacuá o ñañigas – suerte de sociedades secretas, hermandades para la ayuda y el socorro mutuos, exclusivas para hombres, de las que sobreviven más de un centenar en ciudades - puertos de La Habana, Matanzas y Cárdenas -, de nítida oriundez ‘carabali’, como se ha dado en llamar al conjunto de etnias que pueblan el actual sureste de la República Federativa de Nigeria, territorio conocido como ‘Viejo Calabar’, según la división administrativa impuesta en su tiempo, por el colonialismo inglés. El ñañiguismo constituye un singularísimo fenómeno etnográfico y antropológico que, fuera de África, solo puede ser observado en Cuba”. (Quiñones, 2014: 68) cxii. In the orginal: “[...] Los abacuá crearon en Cuba la ‘plaza’ o cargo dignatario de ‘Abasi’, Dios Supremos para los Ibibios y los Efik. ‘Este título honorífico –argumenta Lydia Cabrera [(Cabrera, 1998: 18)] – se concedió a algunos obonekues por sus méritos personales y sus servicios a la Potencia y jamás existió en el Calabar’” (Quiñones, 2014: 94). cxiii. In the original: “no te olvides que en mi caso en la investigación que yo hice sobre los abacuá toda la información que yo encontré, la que utilice en mi trabajo y otras que tengo en mi archivo las encontré en las actas policiales, en las crónicas policiacas de los periódicos, y en las actas policiales, y en las actas judiciales de las sanciones, los juicios, ahí es donde está la información, no está en otra parte, porque eso forma parte de la cotidianidad, la no existencia, la negación en el ámbito social abierto, llamémoslo así para entendernos, pero hay información que queda en la memoria de la gente y en el caso de negros en Cuba por lo menos”. Entrevista con Tato Quiñones, Altos, Playa, La Habana, Setiembre, 2014. cxiv. In the original: “una figura antropomorfa, con la cabeza cubierta por una manera de capuchón de tela rustica, terminado en punta, y sin más detalles faciales que un par de ojos bordados o sobreimpuestos. Llevan una vestimenta de vistosos colores y caprichosos dibujos; detrás de la cabeza, una sombreta circular en la que pueden aparecer diseños emblemáticos; al cuello, rodillhas, bocamangas y bocapies, sendos festones de soga deshilachada; colgados de la cintura, varios cencerros de metal que suenan al andar, bailar, y cuando se agitan. En las manos, un trozo de caña de azúcar y una rama de ‘escoba amarga’”. (Quiñones, 2104: 73) cxv. In the original: “la religion, la forma que al parecer está más desvinculada de los intereses materiales, fue defensora eficaz del regimen esclavista” (Bonilla, 1971:29) cxvi. In the original: “Durante los muchísimos años que trabajé en el puerto de La Habana por mis manos pasarán millones de pesos en mercancías de todos tipo, antes y después de la Revolución, y jamás en la vida he estado en una estación de policía. Más de cincuenta años trabajando de obrero portuario y setenta y pico de jurado abacuá con una conducta intachable en la sociedad y, sin embargo, hay mucha gente que cuando sabe que soy ñáñigo enseguida me cuelga el san Benedito de delincuente y bandolero”. (Quiñones, 2014: 44) cxvii. In the original: Pero las asociaciones abacuá, que desde mediados del siglo XIX fueron oficialmente prohibidas por las autoridades españolas, siempre tuvieron que celebrar sus juntas de asociados y sus ceremonias rituales de manera oculta, clandestinas. (Quiñones, 2014: 72) […] la fusión entre juegos abacuá y sindicatos, tendencia creciente a lo largo de la primera mitad del siglo XIX, como una de las señas de su identidad popular que se dio particularmente entre los trabajadores portuarios y de la construcción. (Quiñones, 2014: 16) 418 cxviii. In the original: “[…] soy jefe de grupo de estibadores aquí en el puerto, los portuarios, nosotros los religiosos nos halamos, yo soy hermano del Kimbo y le digo ven a trabajar conmigo, para ayudarlo, cualquier hermano mío que no tenga trabajo yo lo traigo para acá. Se va manteniendo la tradición. Sí, más o menos aquí en el puerto de Matanzas se ha mantenido eso, a casi, todos los capataces, los jefes de brigadas, casi todos son…, también vienen muchos más negros que blancos, todos los capataces, los jefes de brigadas, todos somos negros. Porque ahora yo soy hermano del Kimbo y le digo ven, y Kimbo, mi hermano, mi primo, la familia la vamos halando me entiendes, y ya y como somos, se va quedando la familia y es por eso. […] Bueno sí, más o menos, porque aquí los estibadores son casi todos de LM, de Versalles aquí, pero por eso, nos vamos llamando así, viene la convocatoria y casi todos los vienen son gente de poco nivel, que no son licenciados, a estibar vienen esa gente. Dialogo con Valentín Olivera, Jefe de Grupo de Estibadores, Puerto de Matanzas, Matanzas, febrero, 2015.”. Dialogo con Valentín Olivera, Jefe de Grupo de Estibadores, Puerto de Matanzas, Matanzas, febrero, 2015. cxix. In the original: […] las organizaciones religiosas de los africanos en Cuba no solo fueran instrumentos para la conservación y transmission de sus culturas, sino, además ejercián funciones de organizaciones políticas para combater la esclavitud. El carácter clandestino ocultaba su verdadero rol politico. (Quiñones, 2014: 108). cxx. In the original: “Hoy en día […] casi todos los juegos son mezclados aunque se han fundados como de blancos o de negros. […] Que yo conozca, existen en actualidad tres juegos que no juran blancos, son: Ekerewá Momí, del barrio de Jesús Maria; Orú Abakuá Endure, de Guanabacoa, y Efori Buma, del barrio de Atarés, que tiene la tradicón de iniciar somente un blanco y no juran otro hasta que ese se muera”. (Quiñones, 2014: 116) cxxi. In the original: “Andrés Petit veía mucho más lejos que sus Ecobios de Bococó. El comprendió que la que dominaba aquí en aquellos tiempos era la raza blanca y que había que hacer negociaciones con ella para que las instituciones pudieran afianzarse y perdurar. (Quiñones, 2014: 114). Lo que si creo poder afirmar con don Fernando Ortiz es que la ‘Reforma’ iniciada por Isué de Bacocó Efó contribuyó en alguna medida al arduo y complejo proceso de integración de la nación cubana, al enlazar negros, blancos y mulatos en un mismo conjunto de creencias, ritos, intereses y solidariedades, con lo cual el ñáñiguismo, que hasta entonces era solo ‘cosa de negros’ pasó a ser lo que desde entonces es: cosa de cubanos”. (Quiñones, 2014: 121) cxxii. In the original: “La voluntad de la otra, en primer lugar de evitar la mescolanza de nacionalidades africanas diferentes […] a los congós allí y a los lucumís aquí, a los carabalí allí, tenías una posibilidad de mantenerlos divididos y evitar la unión, la comunicación y la posible conspiración, la posible rebeldía, la posible insurrección, eso tenía ese sentido y por otro lado siempre los colonizadores tanto portugueses como españoles siempre tuvieron esa voluntad de permitir que la cultura del africano sobreviviera, no acabar la cultura al negro africano como ocurrió en Estados Unidos por ejemplo con algunos Sajones y en todas las islas del Caribe que fueron colonizadas por los Sajones o por los franceses, en Jamaica no quedo vestigio de cultura africana ninguno, tuvieron que inventarse después los rastafares, la vuelta a África porque allí no quedo nada, en cuanto a África tenían que inventarla porque no estaba, como no estaba en Martinica, ahora si estaba en Santo Domingo, eran franceses, si esta en Cuba, está en Brasil, que también existieron Cabildos de Nación en Brasil”. Dialogo con Tato Quiñones, Setiembre, 2014. cxxiii. In the original: “en las sociedades esclavistas ibéricas, negros, esclavos, y libres estaban autorizados por el regimen colonial para crear sus proprias asociaciones y generalmente eran organizadas, al menos de nombre, basando en el origen étnico” (Wade, 1997: 125). cxxiv. In the original: “O espaço do terreiro vai ser o lugar de reterritorialização de uma cultura fragmentada, de uma cultura de exílio. É ali que o indivíduo vai reviver, vai tentar refazer a sua família, e o seu clã, que tal como na África, são formados independentemente de laços sangüíneos. No espaço do terreiro, o indivíduo buscará o sentido de pertencimento a uma coletividade e ritualisticamente vai reencontrar a sua nação” (Muniz Sodré, 1988: 50). 419 cxxv. In the original: “agrupaciones de base étnica, para personas de ambos os sexos pertenecientes a una misma nación africana, que se congregaban para actividades religiosas, mutualistas y de espaciamiento siendo dependientes de la autoridad civil” (Castañeda, 2002: 22). cxxvi. In the original “un capataz, rey, o presidente, tres vicepresidentes o segundos capataces, tres matronas, un secretario, un tesorero, dos vicetesoreros, tres vocales y un número indeterminado de miembros no menos de 70 e ni más de 350” (Castañeda, 2002: 35). cxxvii. In the original: “división y el control de la población negra y mestiza de la isla para impedir una integración en sí misma y con una gran mayoría de la raza blanca con ideas afines. Retardar más posible la inevitable integración multiétnica y el lógico resultado: el surgimiento de la cubanidad” (Castañeda, 2002: 32). cxxviii. In the original: “más importantes razones para la ausencia de insurrecciones esclavas en Rio” (Karasch, 1987: 47). cxxix. In the original: “Un gobernador de Rio, en 1725, atribuiría a la “Torre de Babel” africana la falta de dicho levante, y el Conde dos Arcos hizo del incentivo a la división étnica, en Bahia que gobernó entre 1810 e 1818, un expediente de control esclavo” (Reis, 1995/1996: 24). cxxx. In the original: “hubo más actividad de cabildo en las ciudades que en las áreas rurales por la concentración de esclavos allí, y especialmente en las ciudades puerto como Montevideo, Lima, Buenos Aires, y Cartegena, a donde llegaron grandes cantidades de ‘bozales’, o esclavos nacidos en Africa” (Bastide, 1971: 99 apud Wade, 1997: 126) cxxxi. n the original: “ellos fueron traídos en diferentes remesas que dependían de las variaciones del comercio negrero, y eran agrupados en dotaciones de esclavos rurales o urbanos, independientemente de su origen étnico”. Reyes, Andrés Rodríguez. Religiones de origen africano y turismo en Matanzas, Cuba. http://www.archivocubano.org/religiones_turismo.html, acesso em 13/10/14. cxxxii. In the original: “Todo cambio de cultura, o como diremos desde ahora en lo adelante, toda transculturación, es un proceso en el cual siempre se da algo a cambio de lo que se recibe; es un “toma y daca”, como dicen los castellanos. Es un proceso en el cual ambas partes de la ecuación resultan modificadas. Un proceso en el cual emerge una nueva realidad, compuesta y compleja; una realidad que no es una aglomeración mecánica de caracteres, ni siquiera un mosaico, sino un fenómeno nuevo, original e independiente. Para describir tal proceso el vocablo de latinas raíces transculturación proporciona un término que no contiene la implicación de una cierta cultura hacia la cuál tiene que tender la otra, sino una transición entre dos culturas, ambas activas, ambas contribuyentes con sendos aportes, y ambas cooperantes al advenimiento de una nueva realidad de civilización”. (Malinowski en Ortiz, 1963, 3-4) cxxxiii. In the original: “Así, la santería en La Habana y en algunas localidades de la provincia de Matanzas, presenta una tendencia a conserver los rasgos yoruba, mientras que al leste de la Isla, en Santiago de Cuba y Guantánamo, por ejemplo, se nota cómo los cultos responden fundamentalmente a la influencia de creencias procedentes del Congo, y la Yoruba, simper manifestada en el tipo de crencia afrocubana, desmaya para cederle prepoderancia a los mencionados rasgos procedentes del Congo y otras culturas de África Occidental, posibilitando que se encuentren influencias voduistas traídas por esclavos provenientes de Haití” (Lachatañeré, 2011: 140). cxxxiv. In the original: “A su juicio [Ortiz], la ciencia antropológica debía contribuir a la asimilación positiva de los mestizajes culturales y a la superación de los desgarramientos étnicos, en virtud de la comprensión y del rescate creador de aquellas esencias de valor sustantivo de la cubanidad, en las que podría ser reconocida la raíz ontológica de todos sus orígenes”. (Portuondo 1999, 2) cxxxv. In the original: “En Cuba, los negros tuvieron que abstenerse, aceptando, a la vez de grado y de fuerza, la posición distinta que el sojuzgamiento les señaló en la estratificación social que los explotaba. Pero el mestizo sufrió más, sufrió la presión centrífuga de dos mundos, del futuro que aún no lo aceptaba y del pasado que ya no lo reconocía. Y el alma mulata padeció la vida de lo inadaptado. El tenía que manifestarse ante el mundo como un negro, sin serlo; o como un blanco, sin serlo tampoco. En cualquiera de las dos posiciones, su expresión emocional 420 hallaba obstáculos [...], uno de los obstáculos más resistentes [...] ha debido ser la resistencia despreciativa del blanco, debida en parte a los ancestrales prejuicios étnicos, reforzados por los privilegios económicos” (Ortiz, 1949, XXXII-XXXIII) cxxxvi. In the original: “En África, Eleggua es el dios erótico, pero en Cuba parece haber olvidado ese carácter. Acaso porque ya su ritualismo de fertilización ha perdido su función social, dado el régimen de vida económica a que tuvo que ajustarse el negro africano, tan distinta de la de allende [...] En Cuba hubo que prescindir de la pantomima copular, como de los ritos judiciarios, la circuncisión, el sacrificio humano y otros elementos de la ritualidad religiosa y social que no se podían amalgamar con el sistema de la sociedad cubana. Proceso necesario y simultáneo de desculturación o abandono de ciertos elementos de las culturas afrooccidentales o negras y de aculturación o acomodamiento a ciertas exigencias de las culturas eurooccidentales o blancas para lograr por síncresis la transculturación, o proceso de transición, readapatación o reajuste en otra cultura, la cubana o mulata, de nueva creación” (Ortiz, 1945-46, 222-225) cxxxvii. In the original: “resistencia de los dominados ante las imposiciones de la cultura dominante […] “ir liberando a los miembros que permanecían en cautiverio, así como para el auxilio de los más menesterosos” (Castañeda, 2002: 33). cxxxviii. In the original: “En menos de 500 metros se concentran las más diversas culturas de raíz africana, las cuales ocupan los barrios de Simpson y La Marina. […] por ello se alaban y conservan vivas las memorias de aquellos individuos cuyas aptitudes sobresalientes garantizaron un mejoramiento de sus condiciones de vida. Ante las dificultades de la vida cotidiana se invoca a los antepasados que solucionaron problemas similares a los que se enfrentan en la actualidad. En el intuitivo escenario de una nación incipiente, este poblador desarrolla en su comunidad refundadas fórmulas rituales cuya reiteración crea significados comunes, modos de comunicación, lenguaje propio, sentido espacial, territorial y de identidad, elementos que contribuyen a establecer bases culturales comunitarias a partir de la praxis mágico-religiosa” (Barredo; García, 2015). cxxxix. In the original: “En el año 1986 el III Congreso del PCCse pronunció recomendando la constitución de un nuevo elemento del sistema de Gobierno cubano. Esta recomendación fue recogida e iniciada su implementación por la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular a partir de la Ley Nro. 56 del 4 de Julio de 1986” (Brigos, 2000) cxl. In the original: “Hay varios barrios coloniales en Matanzas, esta San Sebastián, el barrio del Teatro, el barrio de Simpson, La Marina, Bachicha, está el barrio Cárcel que es este, este es el barrio Cárcel, está el barrio del Mercado, está el barrio de San Severino, está el barrio del Ángel y esta el barrio de San Juan. Esos son los barrios que tiene la ciudad, pero esos barrios surgieron a partir de una división política administrativa que se hace en Cuba, en la primera mitad del siglo XIX. O sea hasta el año 1873 se conocían barrios, pero no eran exactamente oficiales, o sea, Matanzas estaba dividida por sectores administrativos, pero no tenían una legalidad esos barrios, es a partir de 1873 con la nueva división política administrativa que se establece en Cuba que entonces se divide el país en 6 provincias y las ciudades en barrios y distritos, entonces los distritos eran Matanzas, Pueblo Nuevo, Versalles y la Calzada de Buitravo que era la Playa, y dentro de esos distritos se establecieron entonces los barrios. Entonces a partir de 1873 cada barrio tuvo se alcalde, y ese alcalde estuvo representado en el gobierno”. Entrevista a Leonel Orozco, Conservador de la Ciudad, Matanzas, 28 de febrero de 2015. cxli. In the original: “el Gobierno, el Partido, vecinas y vecinos, instituiciones de orientación científico-técnica, agentes pastorales, ONGs, comenzan a desarrollar el proyecto ‘Mejoramiento de la calidad de vida en el barrio de La Marina” (Daniel, 2007: 129) cxlii. In the original: “reconstrucción de algunas ciudadelas y locales cociales, sin poder atender aspectos psico-sociales y culturales del barrio” (Daniel, 2007: 130). cxliii. In the original: “Bueno yo me llamo Raúl Domínguez Valdés me dicen Kimbo actualmente vivo en el barrio de La Marina soy Educador Popular de Centro Memorial Martin Luther King y coordinador del proyecto de La Marina [Socio Cultural] […] en el año 1999. Cuando se empieza a crear ese proyecto, casualmente entro a este proyecto por un juego de pelota, 421 porque antes de entrar a este proyecto yo era jinetero, me dedicaba al jineterismo porque vivía alquilado. En el parque La Libertad como se dice vulgarmente cazando a los turistas, los extranjeros, para pagar mi alquiler y poder sobrevivir, cuando a los extranjeros yo los llevaba a casas particulares para que se alquilaran y comieran y ahí me daban una propina donde yo podía sobrevivir con ese dinero. […] me llaman la gente del barrio que faltaba un short stop […] desde que entre me dijeron usted es el capitán de este equipo es el que tiene la llave aquí y por ahí empezó mi vida a vincularme dentro del proyecto […] yo iba a las reuniones me reunía pero el fin mío era la pelota ya yo ser el capitán del equipo era el que tenía que ir a las reuniones ahí empezaron prácticamente hacer talleres de género, de familia, talleres de Educación popular, talleres de conflictos […] después hicimos dentro del taller participativo, porque la gente del barrio querían estar, hicimos el diagnostico del barrio qué quería el barrio. El barrio qué quería, rescatar su tradición , el barrio qué quería, cambiar la imagen que tenia el barrio porque era un barrio que prácticamente siempre ha tenido la mala fama, un barrio marginal donde existía en aquel entonces la prostitución, el juego, mucha guapería, muchos hechos de sangre, muchos problemas”. Dialogo con Kimbo, La Marina, Matanzas, 13 de setiembre de 2014. cxliv. In the original” “el reestablecimiento total del alumbrado público, dragado del río Yumuri, reparación del malecón que bordea al barrio y reorganización de los medicos de familia entre otras acciones” (Daniel, 2007: 139) cxlv. In the original: “Realmente hasta donde yo sé del muñeco, aquí en el río Yurumí había un grupo de religiosos que eran abacua algunos, otros Santeros y entonces habían hecho una casita ahí en el río que todavía creo que hay, […] ahí se fumaba droga, se bebía mucho ron, mucha aguardiente, se tocaba rumba, y eso estaba aislado, quiere decir que para llegar había un puentecito, […] se metían ahí, empezaban a tocar rumba y ahí estaban, actitud frenética y siguieron ahí con la tradición, y de ahí surgió el muñeco, el muñeco surge por una necesidad […] Estoy hablando de año 50, 51, en la década del 50 al 60, eso se pierde con la revolución, porque la mayoría de esa gente que estaban ahí, la mayoría se integraron a la revolución, ya esos que eran marginales o marginados se integran a la revolución”. Conversación con Fedor Monet, La Marina, 28 de Febrero de 2015. cxlvi. In the original: “Bueno el muñeco lo hago yo con mi hermano y hay otras gentes que son colaboradores, pero eso es colectivo, ya cuando va a comenzar por ejemplo el mes de junio que es cuando se vela el muñeco que es el 23, yo comienzo por aquí por el barrio a pedir la ropa, porque yo les pido la ropa, el que tenga una camisa vieja, pantalón, zapatos viejos, cualquier cosa, una corbata, un saco, entonces toda la comunidad, toda, porque no es que sea aquí en la cuadra, todo el que me pueda aportar empiezan a traerme cosas y yo voy depurando, lo que no sirve lo boto o me quedo con lo principal, lo que más me sirve del muñeco, el muñeco no puede ser bonito, porque eso es malo, el muñeco se va a quemar todo lo malo, todo lo feo, todo lo que represente miseria, […] porque yo puedo hacer el muñeco bonito, yo le puedo hacer una carita bonita como un santo, pero él no radica en eso, porque como se va a quemar todo lo malo, todo lo feo se hace lo más malo posible […] armamos el muñeco, ya yo tengo unos sacos que me dio la bodeguera, de arroz, vació, qué hago, le confecciono un pantalón y el cuerpo con las manos, […] le hago el cuerpo y la cabeza la hago aquí mismo con papel mache, que se hace con engrudo, pegamento con harina de castilla, un engrudo es hacer como una mezcla, entonces la voy pegando pedacito a pedacito y cuando no hago una bola de papel y le voy dando en la cara, haciendo la carita y eso, y la cabeza, el pelo se lo hago hay veces de soga, hay veces de tela, hay veces de nylon que lo pico en pedacitos, le busco un sombrero, siempre tiene que tener sombrero, siempre tiene que tener sombrero, un par de espejuelos, tiene que tener gafas, una cachimba, porque es fumador también, para la gente que son fumadores” Dialogo con Fedor Monet, La Marina, Matanzas, marzo de 2015. cxlvii. In the original: “con el proyecto se hace la quema del muñeco San Juan, desde un punto de vista diferente aquí, por qué, porque allí [en La Marina] ellos vinculan cada una de las casas templos y los cabildos que hay y pasan el muñeco bendiciéndolo y demás. Qué pasa, que Pueblo Nuevo era un barrio que hacía su quema de muñeco hace muchísimo tiempo, casi, casi que al mismo punto que se fundó, o sea para el año mil ochocientos cuarenta y pico aproximadamente, 422 porque era un barrio donde habían españoles y demás que tenían que ver con esta tradición, pero canaria, era un muñeco diferente, porque este muñeco se llevaba a la iglesia, se bendecía y junto a la imagen del San Juan católico de la iglesia, […] lo hacían las familias, entonces era el muñeco que se quemaba lo mismo en las 4 esquinas, que a la orilla del río, que al lado de la iglesia, la quema que hacemos hoy es totalmente diferente, porque aquella quema se suspendió porque un día pegaron mucho el muñeco a las cuatro esquinas y cogió candela completo todas las cuatro esquinas y nuestros queridos bomberos suspendieron la tradición completa en el barrio, y si tu quemabas un muñeco te metían una multa o te hacían no sé qué […] surgió el proyecto y un año después de que surgiera el proyecto, pensamos en rescatar la quema del muñeco, eso fue una cosa improvisada totalmente, habíamos investigado, habíamos hecho preguntas de por dónde pasaba el muñeco, como se hacía y de qué manera lo hacían y enseguida chocamos con lo siguiente, de que los muñecos lo hacían las familias, no lo hacía la comunidad, y dije: con esto vamos a chocar, […] los niños hicieron su muñeco, por su puesto nosotros después lo arreglamos porque no quedo un muñeco muy bonito que digamos, y sacamos el muñeco por primera vez, lo sacamos de la casa de cultura, entrando aquí […] porque esta calle que está aquí se llama San Juan Bautista, y entonces por esa misma calle sacamos al muñeco de San Juan, nunca lo pudimos llevar a la iglesia, porque la iglesia, el cura que esta es Guatemalteco, no es ni tan siquiera cubano, y eso para el cura es cosa del diablo, tampoco pudimos responder a la tradición con el tema porque imagínate tú, ya teníamos un ente negativo y dijimos: vamos a sacar la procesión por otro lado por donde también pasaba pero de otra manera. Entrevista al promotor cultural Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, febrero 2015. cxlviii. In the original: “salimos, increíblemente cerramos la calzada de Tirre, […] llegamos al puente de Tirre […] cruzamos y del lado de allá del río que era donde tradicionalmente se quemaba el muñeco y posteriormente se hacia la fiesta del trébol, quemamos el muñeco por primera vez, y en la misma Vigía hicimos una actividad cultural, o sea, ya era para aprovechar todo el grupo y que se centraran, y con eso hicimos que también desde Versalles, o sea ahí ves la articulación de nosotros con el barrio, hicimos que Versalles también sacara su muñeco y entonces que los dos grupos se juntaran en el mismo lugar para quemar los dos muñecos y la misma actividad para los dos barrios, Versalles y Pueblo Nuevo, porque La Marina lo saca a las 12 de la noche, entonces hicimos eso y funciono, y así lo hemos venido haciendo todos estos años […] la sátira también del cubano, porque disfrazaron al muñeco de Pánfilo, le pusieron de todo hasta un pan en bolsillo con tarjeta de la bodega y todo, le pudieron un puerco asado y todo a la parte de adelante del muñeco, llenaron el muñeco de abundancia, porque también está el tema de que aquí en el barrio esta de que cuando tu botas arroz, o sea estas cosas tradicionales, siempre está el tema de abundancia, entonces era el tema de que vamos a quemar en el San Juan muchas cosas para que el año que viene venga con comida y venga con no sé qué y esas cosas. Entrevista a Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, Matanzas, Febrero 2015. cxlix. In the original: “Nosotros cuando empezamos, quisimos hacer esto en La Marina, por qué, porque La Marina tenía una fuerza con respecto al tema, ya tenía un proyecto con anterioridad y demás, pero ellos mismos no dejaron, o sea ellos mismos no dejaron que se le hiciera un cambio a su lugar, ellos querían seguir teniendo su Marina así, a como es. Más sin embargo aquí, dependiendo de la propia condición que había, cuando uno dijo: vamos hacer esto, vamos hacer lo otro y lo demás, todo el mundo sí, si y qué más hay que hacer, ve, porque las cuestiones son diferentes. […] Sí, es otra idiosincrasia también, por ejemplo: La Marina es un barrio que hay mucha bronca, ha habido muchas puñaladas, esas cosas, en todas las actividades que se hacen, en La Marina no hay una actividad que se haga que no haya un botellazo, que no haya una bronca y esas cosas. Nosotros llevamos aquí desde el 2011 haciendo actividades y aquí nunca se ha formado una bronca […] Dentro de Pueblo Nuevo y la ciudad de Matanzas siempre ha existido rivalidad, por qué, porque es la rivalidad identitaria, el nuevo pueblano siempre dice: yo soy de Pueblo Nuevo y el de La Marina dice: yo soy de La Marina, y el de Simpson dice lo mismo […] ya la gente de Pueblo Nuevo decían, está bien, ustedes tienen un lugar, pero es de ustedes, se inunda, siempre están con tremenda bronca, y nosotros tenemos el callejón de las tradiciones, que esta fino, o sea, también esto fue un barrio de negros más elegantes por decirlo 423 de alguna manera, y además siempre se miran por encima del hombro, ustedes están ahí tocando su rumba ahí en la cosa esa que se inunda y nosotros aquí estamos tranquilitos lindísimo, mucha cultura, nosotros somos de la cultura, o sea, tú ves la bronca entre los dos, aunque cuando hay rumba aquí los de allá vienen para acá y los de aquí van para allá, o sea que ellos se mueven” Interview with Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, Matanzas, febrero 2015. Entrevista a Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, Matanzas, Febrero 2015. cl. In the original: “Sí, el dinero está ahí en el gobierno ese dinero no se toca a no ser por nosotros […] ahora cual es el tema, de que si es un poco difícil acceder a los fondos, o sea, a las convocatorias de los fondos, porque como no es una cosa que se conozca, es una cosa de que aunque en Cuba tengan muchos años de experiencia, […]no se reproduce, o sea, no se lleva a los lugares donde son necesarios, […] mira aquí tienes 5 convocatorias de personas que te están ofreciendo fondos, tienes tú que al buen cubano como nosotros decimos, regatearla y ponerte averiguar en Internet u otros sitios […] Nosotros somos emprendedores, nos metemos por cualquier lugar y dale, yo me entere que COSUDE Entrevista a Yodekis, Pueblo Nuevo, Matanzas, Febrero 2015. cli. In the original: “porque las mismas personas que sacaban a la virgen, son las gentes del muñeco, coinciden, porque este barrio es fundamentalmente de estibadores, de puerto, y esos mismos que sacaban a la virgen de allí del sindicato del puerto, que era el sindicato del puerto, porque era una organización muy fuerte que había en el puerto. […] no eran vagos, eran marginales o marginados, pero tenían su trabajo y muchos trabajaban, que son los mismos portuarios, quiere decir que ese se inserta los dos en el mismo tiempo, porque la virgen me acuerdo que salían los lanchones del río San Juan porque era de donde salían, porque todos los almacenes que estaban ahí, estaban llenos de azúcar y de ahí salían los lanchones y cuando no podían atracar al puerto por el calado del barco, que se yo, sacábamos los lanchones y llevábamos el azúcar hasta el medio de la bahía, esa misma gente… que era otro sindicato, que era el sindicato de carretilleros, que estaba en Pueblo Nuevo […] Y había otro sindicato portuario, eran dos sindicatos” Fedor Monet, La Marina, Matanzas, febrero de 2015. clii. In the original: “Y antiguamente se paseaba por el mar por el rio aquí la virgen del puerto, yo me recuerdo que un año vinieron la gente del folclórico Nacional a trabajar con eso que se hizo y ponían en la acera laticas con luz brillante encendían como una antorchita así, entonces paseaban la virgen, yo creo que fue el último año que se le hizo eso a la virgen que después murió Alfonso Elecua porque el puerto no quiso más la virgen Alfonso Elecua la recogió y era el que se dedicaba hacerle la fiesta a la virgen de Regla, después al morir Alfonso lo hacia su hija Elena con su marido el Chino, hoy Elena es fallecida pero el Chino está ahí, creo que virgen no la tiene él la tiene un hijo, no sé si siguen las tradiciones esas porque no lo he oído más nunca y esas cosas se han ido perdiendo” Entrevista a Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, al lado del Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, octubre 2014. cliii. In the original: “Chico la virgen de los portuarios, eso era lo más grande que había aquí en Matanzas, los días que le llegaban que era siete, paraban, se llevaba la virgen esa, lo que no se ha hecho en Cuba, hasta el mar con los tambores batá de Chá-Chá, se sacaban los barcos de la parte de allá de San Juan de la orilla del rio para acá y eso era un festival en el mar. Luego llegó la Revolución y pusieron la virgen en la calle, la virgen la pusieron en la calle, en la calle pusieron la virgen la botaron de donde estaba, entonces un compañero que le decían Alfonso Elecua, se llamaba Alfonso Elecua se la llevo para su casa y allá se mantiene todavía. Esa virgen caminaba para Matanzas y para Cárdenas, a Cárdenas se la llevaban, la traían otra vez se la volvían a llevar para allá y la volvían a traer, la tenían de fiesta en fiesta y ahí se sigue velando la virgen, la tiene un compañero ahí se llama el Chino cuando llega su fecha la arregla y nosotros vamos, el otro, el otro, el otro, y ahí esta se mantiene la virgen” Entrevista a Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, La Marina. Octubre 2014. cliv. In the original: “No, el cabildo es allá enfrente, donde primero mi abuela vivió fue en el solar. El uno, allí fue donde ella vivió que empezaba su fiesta desde el 9 de octubre hasta el 15 de octubre. […] Ese cabildo empezó en el año 1814 con Blas Cárdenas que era el abuelo de mi abuela, nació en Pueblo Nuevo, el vino con los esclavos, el entro con los primeros babalawos que 424 entraron en Cuba, […] ya después mi abuela y eso se mudaron para acá para la cuadrita de mi difunto abuelo Juan Villamil, […] es que mi abuela vuelve a retomar el cabildo Santa Teresa que ya mas nunca nosotros lo hemos dejado caer. […] No, en el 63 yo nací, en el 64 mi abuela me hizo santo de diez meses de nacida, […] Yo tengo 50 años de santo y para mi es un placer tener 51 años. Blas Cárdenas era el abuelo de mi abuela, él era el papa de la mama de mi abuela y Juan Villamil era el papa de mi abuela. […] Mi abuela se llamaba Tomasa Villamil Cárdenas” Entrevista a Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, moradora de La Marina, al lado del Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, Octubre 2014. clv. In the original: “Si, mi mama vino a vivir para este pasillo en el año 44, ellos vivían en Pueblo Nuevo, mi familia es de Sumidero pero ya en el año 44 mi mama vino para acá, mi abuela le alquilo, porque antes se alquilaba, un cuarto aquí en el pasillo y ya se quedo allí y mi abuela hizo su casita para acá y ya nos quedamos aquí. Nosotros éramos siete hermanos, hoy quedamos seis. Nosotros somos siete hermanos pero la familia de nosotros es inmensa, la familia Villamil, aquí en cualquier cuadra te encuentras un Villamil. Entrevista a Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, moradora de La Marina, al lado del Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, Octubre 2014. clvi. In the original: “El 14 de octubre se le hace la procesión todos los años, este año yo la hice a las seis de la tarde pero mi familia, después que mi abuela murió, decidieron sacarla como mi abuela la sacaba antes porque antes mi abuela la sacaba con la banda y todas esas cosas entonces a partir de las once de la noche salimos con ella para hacer la procesión y la subimos a las doce con el tambor atrás. A Oyá, es santa Teresita de Jesús. Oggún, San Juan. Y debe de tener lo que nosotros decimos carnero, un becerro y mas bien no es la cruz es el palo con que va, es como un cetro. […] Porque los patrones de nosotros, la familia Villamil es Oggún, el primero es Oggún, Oyá es la segunda, Oggún es el santo que heredaba Juan Villamil del papa de mi abuela sin hacerse santo él nunca se hizo santo, y nosotros nacimos bajo ese mando, y después mi abuela monta Oyá. Y hay quien le da Ogún, ahora porque se usa esto pero le daba porque le daba, le daba Ogún y le daba Oyá. […] Además el cabildo de nosotros no solo es el día de Oyá, el cabildo de nosotros es el día de San Juan porque nosotros le tocamos a Oggún de herencia de mi abuelo que todavía existe […], todavía nosotros mantenemos eso y el 31 de diciembre nosotros también tenemos la trascendencia de la prenda que nos dejo Juan Villamil”. Dialogo com Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, La Marina, al lado del Cabildo de Santa Teresa, Matanzas, Octubre 2014. clvii. In the original: “fue creada en 1952 por un grupo de pobladores encabezados por un músico notable de La Marina, tras el triunfo de la Revolución, se mantuvo activa hasta 1983, en que desaparece hasta el 2001, cuando reaparece gracias a los esfuerzos de los vecinos organizados por un líder natural [Kimbo]” (García Rodríguez, inédito). clviii. In the original: “Bueno mi hermana era fundadora de Imaliana ella salía en la Imaliana, mi hermano Gustavo también, yo salí en la Imaliana, salí como bailarina de Imaliana pero salí dirigiendo la Imaliana, Gallego y Jorge me buscaron para ser coreógrafa de la Imaliana, yo fui coreógrafa de la Imaliana. […] se formaba de ahora para ahorita una rumba, y los Muñequitos que salieron de La Marina, salieron de este solar, hoy no lo dicen pero salieron de este solar del cuarto del director de Muñequitos Florencio Caes Peraza alias Catalino, de este solar” Dialogo con Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, al lado del Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, Octubre 2014. clix. In the original: “el margen sur del río Yumuri, hasta su desembocadura en la bahía yumurina, colinda con una de las calles más transitadas de la ciudad ‘Contreras’” (Daniel, 2006: 125). clx. In the original: “Se debe aclarar que "lucumí" era una denominación étnica utilizada por los esclavistas, la cual agrupaba a diversos pueblos de la familia lingüística africana kwa, tales como los yoruba (oyó, egbá, ilesha, ifé, etc.), los nupe (conocidos como takua en Cuba), los mossí, además de los warí (de Burkina Faso)” (Guanche, 1996: 51). clxi. In the original: “La presencia negra en Matanzas antecede la habilitación portuaria e incluso la fundación de la ciudad. Desde 1555, ella puede contabilizarse, en ese entonces 425 constituía 23,0% del total, siendo cobriza o la indígena el 48,1%, los blancos el 22,2% y los mestizos el 6,7%. A partir de entonces la población negra irá incrementándose, pero siempre en desventaja numérica en relación a la blanca, hasta 1817 en que comienza a revertirse el proceso” (Escalona, 2008:20). clxii. In the original: “Desde el punto de vista histórico este barrio [San Sebastián] es el origen del que lleva el nombre de La Marina, donde con mayor fuerza, en la actualidad, se preservan los cultos de origen africano en la ciudad de Matanzas, junto a los barrios Simpson y Pueblo Nuevo. A fines del siglo XVIII fue caracterizado como un barrio de negros por un capitán del batallón de pardos y morenos que pidió una merced de tierra para se asentarse con su familia en la zona. El siglo XIX su población y su espacio territorial se ampliaron al confluir con la zona inmediata al puerto, que popularmente era denominada La Marina, por quedarse entre río y la bahía. Queda ubicado al lado de la margen norte del río Yumuri” (Escalona, 2008: 151-152). clxiii. In the original: “Antiguamente La Marina era desde río a río, porque andan las barracas en el rio San Juan donde metían a los esclavos, hoy por hoy esa zona ahí no tiene nombre, cuando te digo que no tiene nombre porque está La Marina, está Playa, está Simpson, ¿cómo se llama esa pedazo? De Contreras para acá le dicen centro, centro histórico. ¿Centro qué? […] El centro debería de quedar dentro de La Marina, porque La Marina es desde el Yumurí hasta el San Juan que son siete cuadras, de río a río. […] Bueno te voy a explicar, en la investigación que nosotros hicimos La Marina es desde Ayuntamiento bajando, bajando Ayuntamiento derecha, izquierda, le dicen Ojo de agua del Popó, el famoso Popó que es de aquí de Ojo de agua, derecha para abajo hasta el puente de La Marina, Manzano hasta donde se llegue ahí al virar de la esquina. […] Porque hoy por hoy la gente en Contreras no se sienten [marineros] porque es la calle central, piensan que ellos son el centro, y lo que no saben que la Marina es la entrada de Matanzas el símbolo de Matanzas es el puente de La Marina que es el río Yumuri y los dos bastones grandes que simboliza Matanzas el puente y un tramo de La Habana para acá, a mano derecha, esa es La Marina”. Dialogo con Kimbo, La Marina, Matanzas. 13 de setiembre de 2014. clxiv. In the original: “Vale subrayar que el concepto Atenas de Cuba respondió a una voluntad puramente elitista. Fue el proyecto de una clase que se creía el ombligo de la colonia, y para expresar toda su fuerza, alzó con orgullo el pendón de la cultura. Ajenas a ese clamor estaban, por supuesto, las manifestaciones populares y folklóricas. El epíteto suntuoso no tenía en cuenta para nada el aporte de los negros” (Martínez Carmenate, 2000). clxv. In the original: “¿El barrio de La Marina es la otra historia de Matanzas o la otra cara de la moneda de Matanzas? El barrio de La Marina surge conjuntamente con el barrio del Ojo del Agua y Yumuri, justamente es la falda costera de Matanzas. Esta población es una población humilde, esta población es evidentemente negra, descendiente de los esclavos africanos”. (Juan García Fernández. Director artístico, investigador, y etnólogo. Documental Bendita Sea La Marina, CMMLK, 2009). clxvi. In the original: “Resulta interesante constatar que en pleno auge plantacionista el porciento de asentamiento en la ciudad fue superior, aunque ligeramente, al asentamiento en ingenios” (Escalona, 2008: 21). clxvii. In the original: “La población cubana estaba formada, fundamentalmente, por dos grande grupos raciales: blancos y negros. Los negros se dividían en morenos y pardos, que eran hombres libres, y los esclavos, luego patrocinados. Entre los negros había que distinguir los que habían nascido libres y los que habían obtenido su libertad. Entre los libres había una minoría que tenía su propio taller, estos se dedicaban a las artes mecánicas o artes y oficios: cocheros, sastres, carpinteros, músicos, albañiles, cocineros, actividades despreciadas por los blancos criollos. Había otra pequeña minoría de negros que tenían amplia cultura y gran talento artístico. […] Si es bien verdad que una gran mayoría era analfabeta, no toda lo era […] En la Isla siempre había existido una población negra mestiza que tenía varias generaciones libres y estaba tan capacitada para la vida pública como cualquier peninsular que llegaba de España o muchos blancos criollos, debido a que, al tener cierta posición económica su familia, habían podido estudiar en Europa, o eran excelentes artesanos” (Arrechea, 2004: 53-54). 426 clxviii. In the original: “Hay gente que tenían plazas fijas. Yo llegue a trabajar en el muelle a principio de la Revolución, […] a mí me nombraban en las 2 listas del día, y yo cogí, me cantaban y yo iba, como yo era delgadito y flaquito lo que hacían era que me tenían en el tape y retape y de aguatero, pero yo cogí una plaza allí que era caballo, […] me cantaban la lista y yo me montaba en la lanchita, iba allá […] Ese mismo hombre pagaba todos los días […] así que todo eso se concatena la virgen, las costumbres, los portuarios, la gente de los carretilleros del río San Juan, todo eso tiene alguna religión, los bares, las prostitutas”. Fedor Monet, La Marina, Matanzas, Febrero de 2015. clxix. In the original: “Sí yo trabaje en el puerto, trabaje en barco también, trabaje en el muelle […] Eso en ese tiempo se llamaba caballo. Yo era fijo y usted trabajaba por mí, me daba la mitad eso se llamaba caballo, pasaba porque la gente tenía su necesidad y como yo era fijo me buscaban a mí, bueno tú vas a trabajar, coño déjame ir por ti, está bien ve, él cobraba y me daba la mitad. Eso se llamaba caballo, de eso vivían unas cuantas personas aquí que se vestían de eso y comían de eso, […] os caballos casi casi se vestían mejor los caballos y vivían mejor los caballos que los fijos porque el caballo trabajaba hoy por mí y mañana por el otro y yo no trabajaba todos los días y el caballo trabajaba todos los días porque iba por mí, por el otro, por el otro, por el otro, por el otro, yo no yo solo iba un solo día” Dialogo con Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, morador de La Marina, Matanzas. Octubre 2014. clxx. In the original: “Aunque la resistencia de los siervos había tenido una presencia constante y diversa en la isla de Cuba, sus manifestaciones más significativas habían sido las frecuentes sublevaciones ocurridas en las plantaciones azucareras y cafetaleras desde los años veinte del siglo XIX. A partir de 1843 estas rebeliones comenzaron a caracterizarse por su vastedad y organización. En ese año se alzaron las dotaciones de los ingenios Alcancía, La Luisa, La Trinidad, Las Nieves, La Aurora, el cafetal Moscú y el potrero Ranchuelo; también se amotinaron los forzados que construían el ferrocarril que iba de Cárdenas a Bemba, y por último se sublevaron los esclavos de los ingenios Triunvirato y Ácana. La oleada del movimiento sedicioso se extendió por toda la llanura de Colón cuando los esclavos invadieron los ingenios La Concepción, San Miguel, San Lorenzo y San Rafael”. (Zequeira; Barcia Paz, 2001). clxxi. In the original: “[…] los criterios sobre la existencia de las plantaciones como enclaves cerrados, con esclavos imposibilitados de tener conexiones con el exterior, constituye una construcción histórica que no resiste el análisis científico del problema. El microcosmos social de la plantación - avizorado en múltiples documentos - muestra diversos tipos de relaciones entre amos y esclavos, entre trabajadores forzados y empleados libres, entre siervos y vendedores ambulantes o taberneros, y también entre los miembros de las dotaciones de diferentes ingenios o cafetales. Si estas formas de sociabilidad no hubiesen existido, la rápida dispersión del movimiento sedicioso hubiese sido imposible” (Zequeira; Barcia Paz, 2001). clxxii. In the original: “Esa quema fue ahí, fue una botica que hubo ahí. Aquí hubo otra quema, ‘Tamborín’ quemó porque le dio la gana quemar, frente a la jabonería, donde está el almacén, ahí mismo quemo, le decíamos ‘Tamborín’, no sabemos su nombre, ese es un apodo que el tenia, fuego grande fue en esa esquina, una botica que la quemaron, lo quemo el pueblo. […] Lo que sé es que el pueblo fue quien dio candela a botica […]. Los dueños eran contrarroneros. […] El pueblo fue quien le dio candela. No me acuerdo quien vivía ahí” Dialogo con Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, morador de La Marina. Octubre 2014. clxxiii. In the original: “Porque eso se creó, es una creación porque La Marina era mangle y después empezaron de poquito a poquito a crear un barrio, toda La Marina era mangle y poco a poco empezaron hacer viviendas pero ya después antes de hacer las viviendas ya estaba Simpson, ya estaba la creación de Simpson, después fueron bajando empiezan a fabricar, hicieron ese barrio ese barrio nada mas era prostitución y bares, en todas las esquinas había un bar” Dialogo con Kimbo, La Marina, Matanzas, Setiembre 2014. clxxiv. In the original: “De negros, aquí había más negros que, aunque se han ido mezclando sigue predominando el color negro, aquí había unos cuantos chinos, tenían negocio y todo, de tintorería, se llevaban bien con todo el mundo” Dialogo con Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, morador de La Marina. Octubre 2014. 427 clxxv. In the original: “En Cuba, tal vez el origen más influyente de tal postura frente a la fraternidad africana sea a partir del 19 de diciembre de 1884, cuando el gobierno colonial español prohibió que los cabildos de nación salieran a la calle el Día de Reyes, y cuatro años después, el 4 de abril de 1888, cuando los obligó a que se transformasen en cofradías católicas, haciéndolos desaparecer casi virtualmente como herramienta de gobernabilidad esclavista del estado colonial. […] la abolición de la esclavitud en Cuba será también el inicio de la inhabilitación por las elites y el estado colonial de las formas asociativas fraternales y de ayuda mutuas autónomas que de manera prodigiosa se desarrollaron a la sombra de los cabildos de nación” (Quiñones, 2014: 8). clxxvi. In the original: “pedirle España al elemento de color que convirtieran sus cabildos y cofradías en sociedades de instrucción y recreo, pero tomando como patrón las sociedades blancas, obliga a tener consideraciones sobre cuáles fueron los propósitos que perseguía la Metrópoli al formular esa petición; vale decir, precisar qué esperaba entonces de los negros, y que beneficios tendrían con aquella política estando a las puertas de la abolición total de la esclavitud y en pleno proceso de un cambio radical del régimen económico”. (Arrechea, 2004: 8) clxxvii. In the original: “[…] muchas de las nuevas sociedades de pardos y morenos no van a ser otra cosa que los antiguos cabildos disfrazados, a gusto del gobierno con el propósito que tuvieron desde el siglo XIX de encubrir y preservar ricos y dinámicos elementos culturales de origen africano” (Arrechea, 2004: 14). clxxviii. In the original: “Yo vivía dentro del sindicato de los estibadores, eso estaba en Daoiz 8 entre Callejón de Mala y Magdalena. […] allá dentro había unos cuantos sindicatos, mi papa pertenecía a la gente del rio San Juan, los estibadores pertenecían aquí, entonces yo vivía allá dentro, todos se llevaban bien como cada quien tenía su sindicato en su departamento” Dialogo con Raimundo Rodríguez Samá, La Marina, Matanzas, Octubre 2014. clxxix. In the original: “Bueno yo tengo entendido que La Marina es la parte de Daoiz, no puedo discutir algo que yo no sé, la parte más caliente era la parte de Daoiz, la esquina del Gallo era la parte más caliente, para acá atrás no era tan” Dialogo con Clara Urrutia Noriega, Ochun Taguarde, al lado del Cabildo de Santa Teresa, La Marina, Matanzas, Octubre 2014. clxxx. In the original: “– Todavía hay estigma en la idea de que tú vives en el barrio de La Marina, incluso la gente que vive en el barrio de La Marina te dicen: no imagínate que yo vivo en La Marina, que te voy a decir si yo vivo en La Marina, o sea, detrás de esas palabras está el estigma de la región, del lugar, de la mala fama precedente del barrio, eso queda. – Ahí es donde está el cuento del programa de radio que yo te digo de frecuencia abierta, que cuando buscan permutas […] pero siempre decían para cualquier lugar de Matanzas menos para La Marina. – Nadie quiere vivir en LM. El consejo popular no, administrativamente el barrio no existe, administrativamente, el barrio existe físicamente por lo que fue, la gente sabe dónde está el barrio de La Marina, la gente sabe cuáles son las calles que ya tú estás dentro del barrio de La Marina. – Pero ni adentro de sus propios pobladores ahí, algunas veces hay conflictos, es saber a dónde va, por dónde va. – Sí, porque claro eso administrativamente en el pasado ya no hay quien haga una delimitación real del barrio, pero si te dije, te dije las calles, ese es el barrio de La Marina, cuando tú te sales de ese núcleo ya estás en La Marina” Dialogo con Orozco, Conservador de la Ciudad, y Diana Rosa, miembro del grupo gestor del proyecto “Identidad y Barrio La Marina, Matanzas, Febrero de 2015. clxxxi. the original: “Ahora Matanzas tiene una característica muy interesante y contradictoria a la vez, nosotros somos una ciudad de mar, una ciudad de puerto, tenemos unas de las bahías más importantes del país, pero el matancero vive de espalda a la bahía, no le importan las actividades que pueden desarrollarse en la bahía, esa la actividad de la pesca para los matanceros de la época, era una actividad pobre, Matanzas era una ciudad de elite, en Matanzas vivían hacendados de los más ricos de Cuba, familias de la clase media, pero también de las más ricas del país, la ciudad se desarrolló en un ambiente de prosperidad muy elevado durante el siglo XIX, […] estaban el colegio La Empresa, estaba el periódico La Aurora, estaban las imprentas, estaban los escritores, los poetas, los músicos, o sea, ves, es una ciudad que adquiere el nombre de Atenas de Cuba precisamente por ese desarrollo de la cultura y de la sociedad colonial de la 428 época a un nivel muy, muy elevado, entonces esa población era mayoritaria desprecia esas actividades como la pesca, la pesca es de pobres, y a ellos no les interesa la pesca, por tanto ni la fomentan, ni la adquieren, ni siquiera, fíjate cuantos poetas le cantaron a los ríos, le cantaron a la naturaleza, le cantaron a la ciudad, y nadie le cantó a los pescadores, […] porque eso es una actividad de pobres y esa herencia, fíjate, esa herencia ha llegado hasta hoy […]Ahora nos vamos a la otra parte la literatura, la poesía, hay 50 millones de poetas en Matanzas, Matanzas es la ciudad de los poetas, pero Matanzas no la ciudad ni de los portuarios, ni de los estibadores, ni de los pescadores, teniendo una de las bahías más grandes que tenemos en Cuba con todas esas bondades, por qué no, porque fueron actividades pobres, nacieron como actividades pobres, y se quedó en la mente del matancero, no hay una relación importante con maestra bahía, eso es paradójico” Entrevista a Leonel Orozco, Conservador de la Ciudad, Matanzas, Febrero de 2015. 429 Bibliography ACEVEDO MARIN, Rosa Elizabeth 2010 Estratégias dos Quilombolas de Jambuaçu e Projetos da Vale S.A. no Moju, Pará. 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CARTA DE APRESENTAÇÃO DA PESQUISA Prezado(a): Esta pesquisa, “O processo de modificação do rios São Francisco e Parnaíba, no Brasil, e do rio Fraser, no Canadá: comunidades quilombolas do sertão central nordestino e povos indígenas Salish na Columbia Britânica.”, será desenvolvida por meio da aplicação da realização de entrevistas, questionários, e trabalhos em grupo, com os envolvidos no tema. A pesquisa se vincula ao Doutorado Conjunto dos Programa Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa sobre as Américas da Universidade de Brasília (CEPPAC/UNB), no Brasil, e de Doutorado do Departamento de Antropologia da Universidade da Columbia Britânica, no Canadá. Estas informações estão sendo fornecidas para subsidiar sua participação voluntária neste estudo que visa analisar as relações entre Estado, sociedade e projetos de vida de comunidades quilombolas e povos indígenas, em contextos de implementação de projetos de desenvolvimento no Brasil e no Canadá. Em qualquer etapa do estudo, você terá acesso ao investigador para esclarecimento de eventuais dúvidas. Contato: Daniel Brasil, telefone (61) 81857122, endereço eletrônico: drbrasil@gmail.com É garantida aos participantes da pesquisa a liberdade da retirada de consentimento e o abandono do estudo a qualquer momento. As informações obtidas serão analisadas em conjunto com outros participantes da pesquisa, não sendo divulgada a identificação de nenhum participante, sem sua autorização expressa. Fica assegurado, também, o direito de ser mantido atualizado sobre os resultados parciais da pesquisa, assim que esses resultados chegarem ao conhecimento do pesquisador. Não há despesas pessoais para o participante em qualquer fase do estudo. Também não há compensação financeira relacionada à sua participação. Se existir qualquer despesa adicional, ela será absorvida pelo orçamento da pesquisa.Comprometo-me, como pesquisador principal, a utilizar os dados e o material coletados somente para esta pesquisa. Daniel Rodrigues Brasil Doutorando CEPPAC/UnB Stephen Grant BainesProfessor Orientador CEPPAC/UnB 453 Appendix 2- Authorization Letter for Research in Cuba, Issued by the ICIC. 454 Appendix 3 – Amarante Public Notary’s Records =Mentioning Land Related to Periperi. 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 Source: Author’s Reap, Amarante, Piauí, Brazil, November 2014. 463 Appendix 4 – Situational Map of the Quilombola Community of Santana, Salgueiro, Pernambuco, Brazil, in 2007. Source: Author’s Reap (Members of the Quilombo of Santana, 2007) 464 Appendix 5 - Situational Map of the Quilombola Community of Santana, Salgueiro, Pernambuco, Brazil, in 2009. Source: Author’s Reap (Members of the Quilombo of Santana, 2009 465 Appendix 6 - Physicians per 100,000 People, by Country. Highest number of physicians per 100,000 Lowest number of physicians per 100,000 Cuba 591 Armenia 359 Tanzania 2 Burkina Faso 5 Saint Lucia 517 Bulgaria 356 Malawi 2 Senegal 6 Belarus 455 Azerbaijan 355 Niger 2 Uganda 8 Belgium 449 Kazakhstan 354 Burundi 3 Angola 8 Estonia 448 Czech Republic 351 Ethiopia 3 Central African Republic 8 Greece 438 Portugal 342 Sierra Leone 3 Mali 8 Russian Federation 425 Austria 338 Mozambique 3 East Timor 10 Italy 420 France 337 Togo 4 Congo, Dem. Rep. of the 11 Turkmenistan 418 Germany 337 Benin 4 Gambia 11 Georgia 409 Hungary 333 Chad 4 Guinea 11 Lithuania 397 Spain 330 Bhutan 5 Mauritania 11 Israel 382 Sweden 328 Papua New Guinea 5 Vanuatu 11 Uruguay 365 Lebanon 325 Lesotho 5 Côte d'Ivoire 12 Iceland 362 Malta 318 Eritrea 5 Guinea-Bissau 12 Switzerland 361 Slovakia 318 Rwanda 5 Zambia 12 Source: Human Development Report, 2007, United Nations. hdr.undp.org. 466 Appendix 7 – La Calle del Medio Newspaper Interview with Kimbo, Matanzas, Cuba, June 2015. Source: Author´s Reap, June 2015. 467 Appendix 8 – Black Riverside Communities along the Parnaíba River in between Floriano, Amarante and Teresina, Piauí, Brazil. Source: Picture of the Drawing made by Amarante’s Secretary of Education, Amarante, Piauí, Brazil, November 2014.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Anthropology
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada
Graduate
The underdog world
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