This work is a study about the relationship of women and backyards, with an emphasis
on plant cultivation. The research took place in the Quilombola Community of Mangueiras, in
Salvaterra, Archipelago of Marajó, Northern Brazil. From the experience with four women
and their narratives, I aim to understand how the space is inhabited, how they build their
landscapes. I understand backyards as a microcosm, studying the relationships established
in/with it involves issues related to a several aspects of social life such as family, politics, cure
and shamanism, and reveals ways and perspectives of seeing and living the Marajoara world.
In Mangueiras, as in most of the quilombola communities in Salvaterra who are still fighting
for the recognition of their lands, women played a decisive role in the political and identity
process. They also have a leading role in other areas, including care for backyards and home
gardens, implying the sphere of interactions between non-humans and humans; the concerns
about their children, the subtle relationships with the sacred and the themselves. This
knowledge is passed on through a network of transmission and exchange, often inherited from
the relationships of mothers, daughters and grandparents. In this case, secrets, tactics of
resistance of a culture, of the women of a people are also at stake. They are knowledge and
practices that resist and reinvent themselves in the face of domination processes from the
colonial period to the most recent processes of internal and external colonialism. Backyards
and women cultivate each other over time towards take care of themselves and their people,
reflecting the dominant patriarchal model. But it has a fundamental political facet, which keep
these cultures alive, pulsating today.
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