Uma escola do quilombo : a história da educação, das lutas e das resistências na Comunidade Quilombola de Mata Cavalo

Abstract

This research sought to understand the relationships and importance that a quilombo school has for the strengthening of identity, resistance and struggles for recognition of ancestral rights, the territory and preserved environments. The research was developed in the Quilombola Community of Mata Cavalo, which is located in the municity of Nossa Senhora do Livramento, Mato Grosso, distant about sixty kilometers from the state capital, Cuiabá. Aproximal four hundred families live in the community, organized in six associations, which form the Quilombo Boa Vida Mata Cavalo complex. The residents of Mata Cavalo Community struggle for their territory and the right of access to basic public policies, such as education, health, transportation and basic sanitation. This is a qualitative research, anchored in the methodology of the participant research, methodology that allows to the researcher to have a relationship with the researched object, giving access to the quilombola culture, since all cultures are sources of knowledge and lore. The research recorded the history of the struggle for school education in Quilombo de Mata Cavalo, from the creation of the first schools, the implantation of new institutions over the years, to the current Quilombola State School Tereza Conceição de Arruda. It was in this process of education and the struggle for recognition that quilombolas of Mata Cavalo strengthened and renified their identity. The importance of having a school in the quilombo, with quilombola school education, with own specific curriculum and not just a schooling ready that does not meet the desires of these communities, strengthens the identity of the quilombolas. The conquest of the school for the quilombo, in addition to strengthening the school-community link, by having a curriculum that ressignifies aspects of the quilombola culture, contributed, in a significant way, in the strengthening of identities, struggles for territory and resistances.