Black roots in the Lower Amazon: Identity and representation in quilombola public policies in Pacoval, Alenquer (PA)
Black Roots Encounter. Lower Amazon. Collective identification. Public policy.
This study is about the growing strength of the black movement in the Lower Amazon, specifically through the Encounters Raízes Negras (1988 – 2021), which in its thirty years of existence deliberate on issues of combating racism, problems related to education, health, infrastructure and environment. These Meetings seek to implement public policies for quilombola territories located in the Lower Amazon region, and are continually reinforced by processes of collective identification and by struggles to enforce acquired quilombola rights. The objective of this research is to gather, present, debate and analyze the so-called Black Roots Meetings of the Lower Amazon, in a time span of thirty years (1988 – 2018), and related documents entitled Open Letters where adversities are deliberate faced by quilombola communities in this portion of Brazilian territory. These documents were dispersed in the municipalities of Alenquer, Belém, Óbidos, Oriximiná and Santarém and there is a need to bring them together in a single study so that they are not forgotten, revised and debated again (for cases where the related setbacks persist to the quilombola territories of the Lower Amazon). The recovery, review and debate of these documents, in the present time, can serve as a paradigm to (re) seek the implementation of public policies for these quilombola territories, through new legal, political, economic, social, cultural and administrative tools.