“The Amazon Chernobyl”: The Role of Quilombola Women in Environmental Justice Resistance.

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Intersectional Activism

Abstract

While emerging literature has established a relationship between social movements and environmental racism, less is known about how women leaders shape these movements and challenge the institutions that perpetuate environmental racism. Therefore, I investigate how Quilombola women activists, who belong to communities established by escaped and emancipated enslaved people, have shaped the social movement in Barcarena, Brazil, over time. This project asks: How was the Quilombola social movement in Barcarena initially formed and shaped by early women leaders' strategies and community engagement and then spread and sustained at a grassroots level?" To answer this question, this study employs a qualitative approach, using archival research to examine the role of women leaders in shaping the Quilombola social movement in Barcarena, Brazil, gathering data from various sources across three phases of data collection. Analysis of archival materials from 1970-2020 revealed four themes in Quilombola women leaders' identity formation related to environmental racism: industrial development producing environmental racism, gendered environmental impacts affecting economic and cultural roles, the transformation of traditional knowledge into resistance, and collective identity formation through environmental struggle, showing how their political identity emerged from environmental racism experiences while preserving historical practices.

Author

• Mathaus Viana Campos, University of Oklahoma