Objetivos e público alvo
Women have become the key players in the pursuit of solving existing conflicts and as victims of all forms of discrimination. Given this reality, the project aims to enhance the institutional organization of the women babassu coconut breakers in quilombola communities, through the achievement of social, environmental and economic rights. The association also offers trainings to 100 multiplier agents on sustainable rural development with a focus on gender, race and ethnicity.
In addition to the participants of the training activities, 150 other members of partner groups, such as rural workers’ unions, associations of settlements, women, youth and other informal groups may be benefited by the project.
Contexto
AMTQC acts against the occupation process of the traditional lands in the State of Maranhão, which has occurred through relations of cooptation of rights, in which Afro-descendants did not understand the new slavery relations that non Afro-descendants had established with them. In the 70s and 80s, the State’s official policy ordered the fencing of natural fields and clearing of extractivist forests (babassu, açaí and buriti trees and others), which were before owned by the families of growers under the common enjoyment regime, to give way to cattle raising and monocultures.
In the Médio Mearim, more precisely in the municipality of São Luís Gonzaga, several communities have faced violent land conflicts that resulted in about 90 houses burned and deaths of growers and union delegates.
Sobre a Organização
The association fights for social, political and environmental rights of women rural workers who are babassu (1) coconut breakers in the municipality of São Luís Gonzaga. The work is done through the organization and training of women leaders to act in communities as multiplier agents of knowledge regarding gender and ethnicity. Also discussing public policies and strengthening the extraction of babassu coconut and family agriculture in view of production and income generation.
Founded in 2008 by women leaders babassu coconut breakers, the association works with 15 rural communities, mostly quilombolas (2). AMTQC has been working with the purpose of intervening in policies directed to the defense of babassu trees and in the fight for compliance with Environmental Law and the Municipal Law ‘Babassu Free’. The latter establishes free access of coconut breakers to public and private lands.
(1) N.T.: Babaçu is an economically important oil palm found in abundance in the state of Maranhão.
(2) N.T.: Quilombola is a person who lives in a quilombo. Quilombo is a century-old community set up by former slaves in Brazil. ‘The contemporary concept of the remaining communities of quilombos encompasses the prevalence of an autonomous process of production within the communities, based on specific territorialities socially established as a result of acts of resistance.’ (ALMEIDA, Alfredo Wagner. ‘Os quilombolas e a Base de Lançamentos de Foguetes de Alcântara’. Ministry of Environment, Brasília, 2006.)
Parcerias
The group is a partner of the Association of Settlement Areas in the State of Maranhão – Assema. It directly advises women breakers’ organizations of traditional and quilombola communities in their political, social and training actions. The group also has the support of local organizations and communities such as Paraná Association of Rural Women Workers (AMTR) and Interstate Movement of women babassu coconut breakers (MIQCB).
