2023-06-30 15:04:38
Collector Maria Tereza Vieira, from Quilombo Nhunguara, during the Governance Meeting of Collectors from Vale do Ribeira, in 2019|Claudio Tavares/ISA
From early childhood, Maria Tereza Vieira sowed the future of her people. In the community where she was born, Quilombo Sapatu, in the municipality of Eldorado (SP), children accompanied their parents in planting traditional gardens. Seed by seed, she contributed to the work of her mother, who raised and supported the family on her own.
After the food was harvested, she and her siblings helped prepare the meal. She remembers what she learned threshing beans and pounding rice with her family.
“It’s different than now. Now everything is there for our children, just take it and do it. […] All this made us grow stronger, all this learning back then helped me, today, to handle many things”, he says.
When she got married, she moved to Quilombo Nhunguara, where her ex-husband’s family lives. The knowledge transmitted by previous generations became inspiration when, a few years after the birth of her youngest daughter, she went through a separation.
“This image of my mother, of how she did it, stuck in my head. […] I managed to fulfill my role [de mãe], but that’s why I learned back there. I didn’t freak out and think ‘if things get a little tougher around here, I know how to do it’.”
Being a Quilombola in the 21st Century
Still full of nostalgia for her childhood in the quilombo, Maria Tereza points out that a lot has changed in the routine of the quilombos in Vale do Ribeira, mainly due to the arrival of new technologies. “Many times I would go out to work and leave the beans there cooking on the wood stove, taking care of that pan not to burn, controlling it with the firewood and not with the gas. Nowadays everyone has a stove”.
This new scenario allows for more time to be devoted to caring for the forest and political articulation, so that the culture and ancestral knowledge of the quilombola populations in Brazil can strengthen the fight for rights outside the communities as well.
Maria Tereza Vieira processes native seeds|Bianca Lanu
The farmer recalls that she has already been questioned about her light eyes, from the point of view of someone who believes there is a common aesthetic standard for the quilombola population. “There were people who asked me this question, if I really am a quilombola. I answer them that I’m sure I’m a quilombola, because everything is a quilombola. My relatives, great-grandparents, they are all Quilombo family, they all lived in this region of ours and they are Quilombolas. At no time did I consider myself a quilombola for that reason.”
These spaces, initially occupied as resistance against slavery and colonization, are today the place of freedom and justice, marked by ancestral knowledge in caring for people and the land. “Usually those who don’t know that world, imagine that the quilombo is that thing of a hundred years ago”, he says.
The fight is collective Seed collectors Maria Tereza Vieira and João da Mota, at the launch of the book ‘Do Quilombo à Floresta’, in São Paulo|Claudio Tavares / ISA
As her children grew up, Maria Tereza Vieira woke up to the fight for the rights of the quilombola communities of Vale do Ribeira.
The farmer decided to finish her studies in high school and started to participate actively in the meetings of the association of residents of the community where she lives and the Rede de Sementes do Vale do Ribeira.
Know more:
By collecting seeds, quilombolas work to restore the Atlantic Forest
Discover the Vale do Ribeira Seed Network
Life in the midst of one of the largest preserved Atlantic Forest massifs in the country is marked by the diversity of the biome. In Vale do Ribeira, Maria Tereza collects and processes native forest seeds with other quilombola families.
“Wherever we go there is a lot of seed. Everywhere we look, we see the seeds. They are easy to collect the seeds, so this is attracting a lot of attention from women”.
In 2022, Maria Tereza participated, in São Paulo and Registro, in the events to launch the book “From the Quilombo to the Forest: a guide to plants in the Atlantic Forest in the Ribeira Valley”, published by Rede de Sementes do Vale do Ribeira.
“We can live with the forest standing and that’s what we want. The Quilombola people know very well how to do this, we have a lot of wisdom and with this guide we want everyone to understand this: how to know how to respect each species”, he commented on the occasion.
Read also: Guide to plants in the Atlantic Forest, ‘From Quilombo to the Forest’ is launched at Sesc Registro (SP).
The work of 60 quilombola collectors contributes to the preservation of degraded areas in the Atlantic Forest, income generation for communities and greater financial autonomy for women, who today represent 60% of the members of the Vale do Ribeira Seed Network.
“We see that this is making a lot of difference in their lives, because selling these seeds, [elas] have extra money.”
In 2023, the leadership of the Nhunguara quilombo became deputy coordinator of the Vale do Ribeira Quilombola Farmers Cooperative (Cooperquivale), which assists with the sale and marketing of food produced by Quilombola farmers in the Ribeira Valley (SP).
This network and association articulation strengthens the political struggle of the quilombola communities of the Ribeira Valley for the right to the gardens, the territory and the fight against environmental racism.
“A work, to work, involves other people together with us, for the work to progress, walk, expand. And that’s what we want. We have to fight, we have to challenge, we have to unite. And that’s what we do when we see that things are going to get complicated, we meet with the other communities, moving around the place and if necessary even in Brasília”.
The resistance continues
When remembering her childhood in Quilombo Sapatu, Maria Tereza Vieira points out that today young people have access to technologies and study opportunities that contribute to territorial protection, to the organization of communities and to guarantee the rights guaranteed by the Federal Constitution.
“The college is really aimed at descendants of the quilombo. Then, they return to the territory and begin to value our place, our coexistence: ‘it was through the quilombo that I was able to study. So I have to do something for these people’”.
There is still a long way to go for youth to actually engage in the struggle of the communities, but the participation of this population already contributes to the daily life of the quilombos of Vale do Ribeira.
Maria Tereza takes her daughter, Liliane, as an example, who graduated in Biology and now works at Cooperquivale. “I’m sure there will be many others like her from now on and things will only multiply. I think it will strengthen communities a lot because of that.”
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