Vivências, experiências e interculturalidade no contexto escolar e comunitário no Quilombo São Tomé de Tauçu no município de Portel/PA

Abstract

Quilombola School Education is an educational modality that emerged from intense social movements and struggles. Concurrently, education serves as a space marked by tensions and disputes, where resistance movements take shape as part of the historical struggles of Quilombola communities. Through these movements, communities have sought recognition and the fulfillment of rights denied for generations, reaffirming the school not only as a place of learning but also as a space of resistance. This dissertation focuses on lived experiences, community life, and interculturality within the school and community context of the São Tomé de Tauçú Quilombo in the municipality of Portel, Pará, Brazil. It seeks to answer the following research question: How are practices of intercultural resistance experienced within a Quilombola school context in Portel, Pará? The general objective is to analyze the practices of intercultural resistance experienced within a Quilombola school setting, based on the reality of a school in Portel, Pará. The specific objectives are to contextualize the historical development of Quilombola education in Brazil; discuss interculturality, its relationship with education, and its implications for Quilombola education in the Amazon region; and investigate experiences within the school environment that reveal practices of intercultural resistance. The study was conducted at Escola Deus Está Comigo, located in the São Tomé de Tauçú Quilombola community in the municipality of Portel, Pará. It is grounded in the perspective of critical interculturality (Walsh, 2005, 2009; Candau, 2013) and in theories addressing educational resistance practices (Heckert, 2004; Freire, 1987; hooks, 2017). Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative approach through a case study design (Yin, 2001; André, 2013). Data were generated through participant observation conducted over a five-month period (August to December 2025), as well as through informal conversations with teachers and Quilombola community leaders. Ginzburg’s evidential paradigm (1989) guided the investigation, drawing attention to subtle and seemingly secondary practices that reveal broader dynamics of resistance and coloniality. The practices of intercultural resistance identified in this study were expressed across multiple dimensions of everyday school and community life. They were evident in teachers’ pedagogical practices, in Black Awareness Day activities, and in Afro-Brazilian civilizational values—such as circularity, musicality, communitarianism, and orality—that permeate school routines. These values manifested through circle songs, shared meals, and the spatial organization of activities. Resistance practices also emerged through partnerships aimed at implementing the National Quilombola School Feeding Program (PNAE) and through income-generation initiatives designed to strengthen the connections among education, territory, and community autonomy. Ultimately, these forms of resistance unfold into ongoing demands for an education that values and affirms Quilombola identity and ancestry.