2023-12-19 19:45:00
Recognized as Brazilian Cultural Heritage by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (Iphan) since 2018, the Traditional Agricultural System of the Quilombola Communities of Vale do Ribeira (SP) has now obtained symbolic recognition from the Government of the State of São Paulo.
The act of appreciation took place following the nomination of the Traditional Seed and Seedling Exchange Fair of the Quilombola Communities of Vale do Ribeira for the 2023 edition of the São Paulo State Governor’s Award, in which it was a finalist in the Cultural Heritage category.
Dona Leonila Pontes, leader of Quilombo Abobral Margem Esquerda, located in the municipality of Eldorado, was the one who represented the 19 quilombola communities that are part of the heritage recognized at the award ceremony, which took place in the city of São Paulo, where she walked through the halls with distrust and skepticism. of the sumptuous Palácio dos Bandeirantes.
Leonila Pontes and Virgínia da Costa, from Quilombo Abobral Margem Esquerda, and Raquel Pasinato, technical advisor at ISA|Taynara Borges/ISA
In the interviews she gave as the only representative of the Vale do Ribeira region among the Prize finalists, Leonila clearly explained that she did not believe that the Fair would come away with the trophy, taking into account the various manifestations of institutional racism that permeate all relations between the devices. state-owned companies with quilombola communities in the region.
However, he stated that he recognized the representativeness of the recognition, by the Government of São Paulo, of the Seed and Seedling Exchange Fair as a cultural manifestation of quilombola communities and also as a strategy for safeguarding the Traditional Quilombola Agricultural System that brings together knowledge that dates back to your ancestry. “A people without culture is a people without history”, says Dona Leonila.
For her, the occasion was still important for the region as a whole, which is so separated from the rest of the state. “For me it was important because at least we had a representative here, since Vale do Ribeira is so forgotten. When I come to São Paulo for some reason and say I live there, no one knows where it is.”
Technical advisor at the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), Raquel Pasinato also understands the moment from the perspective of recognition. “It is a 15-year-old project built by quilombola communities, rural black communities in a region of the State of São Paulo with a very low Human Development Index, but which has this wealth of cultural heritage and which, finally, for the first time , the State Government manages to recognize and value it in some way”.
The Governor of the State of São Paulo Award was created in the 1950s with the aim of valuing and encouraging São Paulo culture and is now under the supervision of the Secretariat of Culture, Economy and Creative Industry.
What the quilombola communities of Vale do Ribeira now await is for this recognition to materialize in public policies, affirmative actions and in a state machine that removes itself from the role of oppressor and assumes its role as a promoter of citizenship.
For around 30 years, quilombos in the region have been waiting for titles that do not progress even without bureaucratic obstacles. Where centuries-old occupied territories are overlapped by Conservation Units that make it difficult to produce food and generate income for families to live well. And finally, where traditional ways of life are violently challenged by the police force. These are actions of erasure and violence that denote the institutional racism that permeates the Brazilian state apparatus.
About the Fair
The Traditional Seed and Seedling Exchange Fair of the Quilombola Communities of Vale do Ribeira began in 2008 following a demand from farmers to maintain agricultural varieties that were being lost due to the restrictions of environmental legislation for the creation of gardens.
Thus, the Fair became a moment for the exchange of seeds and the circulation of species between territories, in other words, a tool for celebrating and maintaining a secular culture.
But in addition to exchanging and selling products, the Fair celebrates meetings, reunions and affection, bringing presentations of traditional cultural events from the region’s communities.
Each year, a moment is reserved for discussion, with organized civil society and public authorities, about the demands and needs that exist in the territories, often neglected by the State, also becoming a space for struggle and resistance.
In 2023, in the 14th edition of the event, participants discussed the criminalization of traditional practices and the difficulties in obtaining licenses for perennial crops. Check the records!
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