Presentation short abstract

Quilombola experience report that discusses how body and territory are articulated in the practice of labor and environmental care, revealing strategies of resistance, dignity, and ecological justice in the face of the global crisis.

Presentation long abstract

In the face of contemporary ecological, political, and social crises—marked by intensifying climate change, economic inequality, and the commodification of nature and labor—Quilombola communities in Brazil affirm themselves as spaces of resistance and creators of civilizational alternatives. This experience report proposes a reflection grounded in political ecology and in the category of body-territory, seeking to understand how Quilombola ways of life articulate labor, dignity, and sustainability as inseparable dimensions of a collective struggle for ecological justice. Drawing on my personal experience and on collective ethnographic records, I discuss how labor in Quilombola communities is conceived not merely as a means of subsistence but as a practice of ecological re-existence, in which body and territory mutually constitute one another. Forms of cultivation, communal land management, and practices of environmental care express a relational and ancestral ethic that counters the capitalist logic of exploitation and productivity. By situating these experiences within broader debates on social reproduction and environmental justice, I highlight epistemologies grounded in the relations between humans, non-humans, and ancestral presences. Quilombola practices reveal an ecology of reciprocity, where everyday care and collective labor sustain life in its fullness. This report proposes an understanding of quilombismo as a political and ecological project of the future—a horizon of dignity, resistance, and mutual flourishing in the face of the global crisis of life.