Cosmoperceptions and ways of caring for life: health, care, and food in a quilombola community in Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

The quilombo, while establishing itself as a locus of resistance and collective memory for the Brazilian Black population, articulates dimensions of the health-disease process that transcend the barriers established in the modes of care produced from biomedical rationality. This article seeks to understand the constitutive elements of the notions of health, care, and food in the quilombola cosmoperception disseminated in the experience of the Kaonge quilombo, located in the Recôncavo region of Bahia. It was based on an ethnographic approach grounded in fieldwork conducted between August 2022 and October 2023, comprising participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group, mobilizing eight women and three men who are residents of the quilombo. We sought multireferentiality in the narratives, experiences, and collective memory of the group. Understood as a racially delimited territory, the quilombo mobilizes productive arrangements, care practices, and discourses about living that are expressed in the fabric of memories, especially food-related memories, grounded in the preservation of its space where the boundaries of the classic discussion about nature and culture are constantly being strained. Through this critical reflection, we seek the countercolonization of care practices disseminated in the health field, establishing new symmetries between traditional and academic knowledge in the practice of health and resulting public policies.