TERRITORY IS THE SOCIALLY BUILT SPACE
Milton Santos
Where we live, where we build, where we operate. Where, with whom and how we establish identity and belonging. How the Territory conditions our initiatives, engagements and adhesions, that is, everything we do together, in our homes, backyards and neighborhood.
Below we briefly present our city and some of its villages that we inhabit or attend, as well as projects carried out, projects in activity and eventual campaigns for which we seek support and resources, whether our own campaigns or others of local initiative.
Palmeiras Town
(Bahia-Brazil)
Eldorado Film Club; InComTato Festival.
Palmeiras is a city of about 9,000 inhabitants, located in the center of the State of Bahia, 439km from the capital. The Chapada Diamantina National Park extends over part of its territory, making the municipality of tourist interest. However, the seat of the municipality is a small city with daily life characteristic of simple cities in the countryside of Bahia, subject to many social and economic difficulties aggravated by constant periods of drought.
With a history that goes back to the heyday of diamond mining in the 19th century, Palmeiras has interesting features of colonial architecture. Currently, the municipality has been economically and socially transformed by the fact that it is a gateway to small villages in its jurisdiction privileged with natural attractions, such as Capão Valley (district of Caeté-Açú), 23km distant, a nucleus of intense emigration in recent years
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Our first socio-cultural achievement in the city was the holding of a dance festival, the III EmComTato Festival of Contact Improvisation, in 2013, an immersive event that lasted for a month of intense contact with the city and their people - also bringing together people from other municipalities, states and countries - and that has proved to be an especially inspiring and determining context for the directions and interests in Art and Life to which we have dedicated ourselves since then.
In the following years, we also held two other editions of the EmComTato Festival in the city and, currently, we are dedicated to the Cineclube Eldorado project.
Volta da Serra
Nau´s rural settlement; school and community center reconstrution.
It is a village with a small number of family nuclei reminiscent of previous times of greater population and which is currently experiencing the beginning of a repopulation process, with the return of former inhabitants or their descendants, together with the arrival of new residents, such as we.
It spreads over a large area of very degraded land, so that the local community is limited to small subsistence agricultural production.
There is our Nau Nascente de Artes e Utopia , a five-hectare site where, little by little, we build physical structures and a way to bring together creative people of the most diverse abilities, to nurture utopian visions manifested in environmental, social and cultural projects .
As a community structure, the village today has only a rustic flour-house for the artisanal manufacture of manioc flour. An old school building has become a ruin, leaving only a solid foundation. In 2017, together with the community, we started a process of discussion and motivation for the reconstruction of the building, which could once again serve as a school and multipurpose community center.
Matão Rural Village
Cineclube Eldorado; EmComTato Festival; Christmas of Solidarity; building of a communitary kitchen.
There are about 60 families spread over a wide region where some archaeological sites with rock paintings are embedded. Our relationship with Matão was established through the farmer and community leader Laura Maria who, with her generous family, we can find each week in her stall at the street fair on Saturdays in the city of Palmeiras.
There are many initiatives by Laura and the Matão community that we feel invited to participate and support, such as the annual Christmas of Solidarity , involving not only her Matão community but also the neighboring communities, to mobilize the collection of resources and gifts for the Christmas celebration with hundreds of children in the region.
For Matão, we took activities from our EmComTato Festival in 2018 and we will take artistic-educational activities from the Cineclube Eldorado in 2020. With this same Cineclub, we worked on the documentary Mulher de Chão (2019), by Larissa Leão, which brings Laura as just one. of the two protagonists.
Matão has a Community Center currently provided by the city to be administered locally and which houses school activities. At this time, the community sttrugle for the construction of a community kitchen , which will also benefit small producers in the neighboring towns of Corcovado and Taquari.
Corcovado Rural Village
Manifestation of popular culture; building of the church; artesian well drilling .
Small quilombola* community with 12 families, with poor infrastructure and access, markedly Catholic and devoted to Santa Irmã Dulce dos Pobres, for whom they build a church in the village, little by little and with limited resources. And also from Whom the inhabitants ask for blessings and permission for popular celebrations.
The samba de chula is a tradition of popular music and dance supported by the elders of the community. Younger community leaders, such as Milena Damacena and Vilma Novais, strive to prevent this tradition, as well as that of the Festa de Reis (the Holy Kings celebration), from disappearing, either because of the lack of enthusiasm among the youngest, nor because of the lack of resources.
In January 2019, using kinship ties, they sought and received the support and visit of the Reisado group of the Barriguda Rural Village to be able to hold their Festa de Reis. We were present almost by chance, and with a camera in hand and audio recorders on the cell phone, we carried out the DOC-REGISTRATION which can be accessed HERE . . .
In 2020, they are mobilized to raise funds for the drilling and installation of an artesian well that can solve the chronic problem of water supply for the families of the village.
* "quilombola" means a community officially recognized as a territory inhabited by descendants of freed or escaped black slaves.
Tejuco Rural Village
Communitary kitchen; manifestation of popular culture.
We recently met this village - located on the border between the municipalities of Palmeiras and Mucugê - to take some photos and videos in support of the Tejuco Women's Group, which in 2019 improvised a community kitchen in the modest parish house of the local church, ceded by the priest, to move the Quilombola Doces e Salgados initiative of those women, producing artisanal culinary products that seek to sell at fairs in the region to generate a supplement for family income. The initiative has been successful and is already making the Group mobilize to conquer an effective community kitchen properly structured for this and other community projects and events.
Tejuco is neighboring and, in fact, inseparable from the village of Barriguda, already in the municipality of Mucugê, where the Manifestation of Popular Culture of Reisado is vigorously sustained, which we know and record in celebration at the village of Corcovado, earlier this year 2019.
