2023-08-14 17:43:00
**This news is part of the #OCaminhoProQuilombo series, which features reports on the challenges and beauties of life in Quilombo Bombas.
In a swamp stretch, residents need to get people off donkeys to complete the access trail to Quilombo Bombas|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
In February 2022, Edmilson Furquim de Andrade carried, with his wife and two other residents of Quilombo Bombas, their teenage son, for about 6 km, to reach the nearest health center, in the municipality of Iporanga (SP). To cross the access trail to the community, sick people and pregnant women are transported on the back of animals or on the banguê, a kind of stretcher improvised with a sheet and pieces of wood.
“We made a system that we are used to, but it was very difficult. This happened in the afternoon and the staff was all out of place. At first, I thought he could handle going on horseback, but when things got really bad… he had to help very quickly. The saddest thing is when the person can’t take it anymore and falls to the ground, noticing a person there, leaving, and we can’t do anything…”, recalls the coordinator of the Associação de Remanescentes do Quilombo Bombas.
Know more: Without a road, a boy is transported by donkey before arriving at a hospital in the interior of SP
In February of this year, he relived what happened with his grandson, who had to be rushed to the city’s emergency room. After a bout of bronchitis, two-year-old Bruno had a cardiac arrest and had to be taken to a hospital in Registro, a municipality 126 km from Iporanga, where he was hospitalized for 13 days.
Edmilson also says that, in the last year, nothing has changed and residents have to live daily with the fear of not arriving in the city in time to be helped. “It wasn’t just with my son, with my grandson too. We are afraid of not being able to help at night because we don’t have the trail. […] I don’t want to go through that again.” “I called the post and no one wanted to come and pick it up, because they only looked for it if it was very urgent”, says Edilaine Ursulino, the child’s mother.
After a bout of bronchitis, Bruno had to be rushed along the Bombas trail to the emergency room in Registro (SP)|Júlio César Almeida/ISA8 years without complying with a court decision
For 300 years, this is the reality experienced in the Quilombola Territory of Bombas, in the Ribeira Valley. To get to the city center, quilombolas need to walk for almost two hours on steep terrain and dense forest. When it rains, the river that crosses the path fills up, making crossing over the rocks practically impossible.
The precariousness of the trail continues to put quilombolas in the Ribeira Valley at risk|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
Shackle placed by the State Government is insufficient for soil drainage|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
In one section, the narrow trail gives way to a large quagmire, nicknamed Barro Preto, where people need to be removed from the donkey that carries out the transport. The crossing is due to the efforts of the quilombolas, who carry sick people and pregnant women in their arms.
Without the road, the community is also deprived of the right to mourn and dignity. According to residents, they already had to carry the dead down the path in the banguê for burial in the city.
In 2015, a court decision determined that the Foundation for Forestry Conservation and Production of the State of São Paulo began building a road to facilitate residents’ access to health centers and hospitals, but the work never got off the ground.
Check out the full series:
‘The Way to the Quilombo’: in SP, quilombolas fight for a road that guarantees access to basic rights
Absence of road makes quilombolas of Bombas (SP) suffer from loss of food
Suzana Pedroso do Carmo: new quilombola generation paves the way against institutional racism
Former pump station, now deactivated. Quilombolas have to walk for hours on a precarious path to access health|Raquel Pasinato/ISA
Until 2014, health agents provided care in the quilombo, but a consensus between the Municipal Health Council, the Ministry of Health and the Regional Health Department suspended the work of health professionals in the territory because they considered the risk on the way to the community to be high . “I cannot put the team at risk. From the moment a car leaves the team at the door of the health unit, we go to work”, says Hélio Rodrigues Lopes, secretary of health for the municipality of Iporanga.
As a result, the responsibility for crossing the trail without adequate protective equipment and, consequently, the high risk to life was transferred to the quilombolas.
Access trail to Quilombo Bombas, in Iporanga (SP). Part of the route is done on donkeys and the other part is on foot|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
Service to the Bombas community began to take place monthly at the UBS Dr Thomaz Antonio Cunha Cardoso de Almeida, in Iporanga. In emergency cases, quilombolas need to travel up to 10km to be assisted at the Betary Reserve, where the trail starts.
Feeling of abandonment Trail to Quilombo Bombas has a crossing over an improvised and unprotected bridge, exposing people to serious risks|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
When walking through the territory, it is common to hear reports of people who barely survived the trail that gives access to the city. “My mother lost the child 15 days before completing eight months. She hemorrhaged and even went from house to house calling the people… she almost died too. There is no time to get there”, recalls Suzana Pedroso do Carmo, a resident of Quilombo Bombas, in an interview for the series Elas Que Lutam. “When the snake bit my son, I called the ambulance and nothing. Lucky my sister found out and came to get it, ”she completes her.
Laíde Ursulino, another resident of the community, says that, despite being in her eighth month of pregnancy, she had to return to Quilombo Bombas after a few days at her relatives’ house because she was unable to stay in Iporanga. For her, the feeling she gets is one of abandonment by the São Paulo government. “It’s hard to let go of everything, my children who are studying here. People feel abandoned. Nobody sees what we are going through in this place, without a road, without many things”.
“We feel abandoned. Nobody sees what we are going through in this place”, says the quilombola Laíde Ursulino|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
At the age of 69, João Fortes divides his routine between the city of Iporanga and the community of Bombas. He says that, for health reasons, he also needs to stay for long periods at the home of family members. “Actually, I’m more out there than here. When I get from here to there, I don’t even tell you. Just yesterday, I thought I wasn’t going to sleep at night. Cramp problems all over the body ”, he laments.
João Fortes, aged 69, says that, for health reasons, he needs to stay for long periods at family homes|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
In a public hearing, held in February this year, the Fundação Florestal committed to presenting a timetable for improvements to the existing trail. “With regard to human health, it is impossible to remove a patient. It takes four people to remove a sick resident from the place, at risk of death”, records the document from the Public Defender of the State of São Paulo.
In April, Fundação Florestal built a new access trail to the community. However, the new trail does not reach the Bombas de Baixo community, as it only serves about a third of the way. The Forestry Foundation has undertaken to make adjustments to the rest of the trail, but services have not yet started. These adjustments would be emergency measures to serve the community while the access road is not built.
Most quilombolas, however, continue using the original trail because the new path is smooth and steep, and the risk of slipping, even on dry ground, is great. In addition, the little vegetation cover makes the journey under strong sun even more arduous.
New road built by Fundação Florestal does not solve the difficulty of access for residents of Quilombo Bombas|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
Some types of vehicles, the so-called 4X4 or off-roadmanage to use access, but the community says that, even so, it is unusual to receive emergency care on the trail.
In a public hearing record, held in February this year, the State of São Paulo recognizes the risk to life associated with crossing the trail with sick people.
“The Foundation itself, which is a government agency, tells us ‘if you need a helicopter, we’ll send it’, but then they put a bunch of rules ‘it doesn’t work at night, with drizzle either, with cloudy weather too no,…’. […] They didn’t do a single inch of what they said within the community. Isn’t that a judge’s order? How can they not comply?”, asks the coordinator of the Association of Remnants of Quilombo Bombas.
“Worst of all is the distance that has been created between the [na figura da Fundação Florestal] and the municipality [representado pela prefeitura], because when you have the opportunity to act together, it is not what happens. And this is clear when we see what happened recently in the opening [da nova trilha]. Even the stretch that was structured and in good condition is now impassable,” says Isaías Santos, environmental monitor at the Betary Reserve.
Rodrigo Marinho, leader of Quilombo Ivaporunduva and representative of the Team for Articulation and Assistance to Black Communities (EAACONE), recalls that the long periods of struggle by Quilombo communities to ensure fundamental rights are not exclusive to the territory of Bombas.
“It is not normal. In Brazil, we have this thing that there is legislation, but if we don’t fight for the right, it ends up becoming invalid. The government is slow in all aspects when it comes to traditional quilombola communities,” he laments.
When he had the opportunity, Laíde was not exempt and asked a crucial question about the lack of a road and the situation of the community: why has the State been omitting the responsibility of removing Quilombo Bombas from isolation? Until when?
“I wanted to ask people to see what is happening to us. Why are you like this? Many places that are more difficult than ours have a road and here we don’t. What is happening is inhumane.”
**This news is part of the #OCaminhoProQuilombo series, which features reports on the challenges and beauties of life in Quilombo Bombas. Follow up on the ISA website.
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