2023-07-25 14:00:00
** This content is part of the #OCaminhoProQuilombo series, which features reports on the challenges and beauties of life in Quilombo Bombas. Follow the release on July 31st!
Suzana Pedroso do Carmo, leader of Quilombo Bombas de Cima and member of Ribeira Valley Seed Network|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
Since childhood, Suzana Pedroso do Carmo has lived in the Quilombola Territory of Bombas, in the municipality of Iporanga (SP), with her father, João Fortes do Carmo, her mother and three brothers, and there she grew up surrounded by one of the largest Atlantic Forest massifs in the country. “Here there is no noise, it’s just quiet, everything is natural. The way you get up in the morning and see things is completely different. Here we feel far from danger”.
From living with the elderly and with other residents of the quilombo, he collected ancestral knowledge about soil management, in addition to centuries-old cultural practices, which today help support his family and preserve the biome. “We learn little by little, day by day teaches us how to do a lot. Make a stove, make a pestle, these things that we use here on the farm”.
For some time now, work in the fields has shared space with raising animals, caring for children and collecting seeds. “I always liked to collect seeds, I collected them to keep and for the children to play with, especially the Guapuruvu, which the children threw in the air”.
About three years ago, an opportunity allowed her to turn her knowledge about the region’s trees into an alternative source of income. Today, Suzana is one of the approximately 60 quilombola collectors in Ribeira Valley Seed Networkan initiative that contributes to the protection of the Atlantic Forest and the work of traditional communities.
Women represent more than half of the quilombola collectors in the Vale do Ribeira Seed Network|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
“I know where there are trees and each one has the right time to collect. If I’m in the way [de casa], I’m collecting. If I walk along the path to the fields and I find an interesting seed, I start collecting it”.
Read also: Vale do Ribeira Quilombolas launch guide to plants in the Atlantic Forest
In his wanderings through the territory in search of seeds, he has the company of his youngest son, who learns, from an early age, about taking care of the forest. “He too, since he was a little boy, he already collects seeds. If you go into the woods with it, you’ll find seeds on the ground. Sometimes it’s not even to collect, but I encourage it, the kids like it”.
After collection, the seeds are separated and undergo a cleaning process. Transport to the nearest town is done by donkey, because the 10km trail that leads to the Quilombo is precarious and narrow.
In 2015, a lawsuit determined that the State of São Paulo build an alternative access road to Quilombo Bombas, however, eight years later, the work has still not left the drawing board.
Know more: TJ maintains an injunction determining the construction of a road in the Bombas Quilombo
“You have to take it to the animal, because on the back there is no way. We also know that he hates him, because he gets tired, but we have no other recourse”.
In 2022, the community of Bombas delivered more than 220 kg of seeds to the Vale do Ribeira Seed Network. In just one delivery, made in March of this year, 40 kg of seeds were transported by donkeys on the trail.
“If you need anything in the city, you have to take the animal. If there was this road, [ele] I didn’t have to suffer.”
In addition to tiring the animals, the existing trail puts the lives of residents at risk, especially pregnant women, the elderly and children. During her pregnancy, Suzana took eight hours to cross the path. At the end, she covered another 5 km on foot to reach the city’s health center.
After giving birth, she had to stay at a relative’s house, because the excessive effort to return home could jeopardize her post-operative recovery. “She reached half a height, her legs couldn’t take it anymore. I walked a little bit and stopped. The child started to get hard in the belly, he had to sit down to rest”.
She also says that, without support from the government, residents need to rely on each other to carry out the removal of pregnant women on stretchers made from sheets along the precarious path. “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 ”.
When remembering the day a snake bit his son, he said he was afraid. For her, surviving in the quilombo in emergency situations is a matter of luck. “The city hall doesn’t help, it’s totally isolated. There’s no time to get there, luckily God is good. […] When the snake bit my son, I called the ambulance and nothing. Lucky my sister found out and came to get it.”
Education and quilombola territorial titling The Quilombola Territory of Bombas has two multi-grade schools: one in Bombas de Baixo (photo) and the other in Bombas de Cima|Júlio César Almeida/ISA
In the fight for the construction of the road and in the defense of many other rights, Suzana is moved by the care for the future of the children. In 2018, she was actively involved in mobilizing the community for an ancestral and differentiated quilombola education, carried out within the traditional territory, in accordance with the guidelines of the National Curriculum Guidelines for Quilombola School Education.
“It was a struggle for us. We went to court to bring this class here, from the state, for the children. They wanted to stop even the municipal. Then I said ‘the school here will never be closed, because we won’t let it. Ours are not going to leave here to study in the city’”.
Currently, the Bombas Quilombola Territory has two multi-grade schools: one in the Bombas de Baixo community and the other in the Bombas de Cima community, separated by about an hour and a half of walking on a steep trail with bogs, which makes it difficult for teachers and students to access, as well as for the arrival of teaching materials.
“We managed (the school) down here and only then up there. Things get done kind of anyway. I even wrote it down, sent it to São Paulo, because last year, it was the middle of the year and the children didn’t have books. Neither municipal nor state.
At the age of 37, Suzana sees the fight for rights going beyond a single achievement. For her, the construction of the road provides much more than access for people: it paves the way for so many other dreams of a better life. “Imagine a road here, the school would improve, [criava] a health center in the neighborhood. […] I’m defending my right, the right of my children and the children of others as well”.
In addition to building the road, Suzana is asking for the definitive titling of the territory and for the removal of the Alto Ribeira Tourist State Park (PETAR), superimposed on it. “I believe that if it was to benefit the park, or I don’t know, even a mining company, they would build a road up to the top of the trees, underneath the earth. They are increasingly oppressing us, so that we will give up. But we won’t give up.”
With a courageous posture, he recognizes that there is still a lot of struggle ahead and says that he does not intend to give up traditional territory. “I like it here, I can’t live anywhere else. Here we feel free. Here we plant our beans, our rice, cassava branches. Here I can have my vegetable garden. Our place is here”.
This content is part of the #OCaminhoProQuilombo series, which features reports on the challenges and beauties of life in Quilombo Bombas. Follow the ISA website and check out the complete series!
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