Cultivating and crystallizing resistance

food and health practices in Guarani indigenous and quilombola literatures and writings

Abstract

Indigenous and quilombola literature and writings can be thought of as documentary sources that express the daily lives of their communities. Antônio Cândido (1982, 2006) in Literatura e sociedade and Os parceiros do rio Bonito sensitizes us to the importance of food practices and ways of life that emerge from Afro-descendant, peasant, indigenous, and riverside communities. The objective of the article was to discuss the resistance carried out by actions to protect the diversity of corn seeds and bees included in the food heritage of these communities, based on records of the knowledge and ways of life of the Guarani and quilombola peoples, facing the impacts caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides and transgenic seeds. This text seeks an approach that analyzes traditional knowledge from the perspective of environmental history and food history. The indigenous and quilombola sources analyzed were: O presente de Jaxy Jaterê; Oremba’e Eí Yma Guare (O mel do passado); Modos de viver Guarani e o cultivo de sementes crioulas; e A terra dá, a terra quer.