Lutas ontológicas indígenas Atikum – camponesas no oeste da Bahia

Abstract

The agro-energy business model of capitalist expansion and privatization of territories that has advanced over the West of Bahia in the last five decades has been based on the premise of “modernization” and “economic, political and social development”. However, what we see here is a tangle of strategies marked by violence and intense colonialism that result in territorial precariousness, marginalization, invisibility and subordination of the Atikum indigenous peoples in particular and peasants. In the midst of this scenario, these individuals organize themselves as groups to assert their rights to their territories. These struggles are based on the affirmation of their praxis of re-existence materialized in multiple territorialities as alternative projects of survival and local way of life in the face of neoliberal projects that exclude these populations. Thus, the objective of this research was to understand the ontologization process of the production of space – territories of the rural agrarian settlement of Benfica, by focusing on subaltern territorialities, uses and appropriation and how these characterize it in territories of difference, as well as analyzing the trenches of struggles for spaces, territories, autonomy, cognitive justice, ecological justice, social justice, gender justice and praxis of r-existences. To this end, I was guided by several methodological approaches in a way that allowed me to encompass the collective production of knowledge of the various subalternized subjects of the field, from listening to consider the place of enunciation of the Atikum indigenous people and peasants, interviews, field diaries, audios, photographic records as well as participatory investigation – action – by immersing myself in the community-based territorial practices of the subjects of this research. In this way, it was possible to verify that these diverse praxis based on other worlds, knowledge and rationalities promotes the capacity to re-exist in the face of regional/local neoliberal projects while providing these people with an intense uprising of demands for new political identities that go beyond the material base of territories and that are centered mainly on the ontological rights of BEING, existing and differences.