LIFE PROJECTS OF TEENAGERS AND YOUNG PEOPLE OF COMMUNITIES QUILOMBOLAS DO VALE DO MUCURI/MG

Abstract

This article provides information about the research "quilombo young life projects" financed by Fapemig in the period 2012-2014, carried out with young people of quilombola communities Cama Alta, Córrego Novo and São Julião, located in the municipality of Teofilo Otoni, belonging to the middle region of the Mucuri Valley, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We apprehended through three data collection instruments (questionnaire, interview and conversation wheel) education as the main component in the construction of such subjects’ life projects. They attribute its important role in the achievement of a profession that will enable better living conditions for their families (the parents or close relatives and one that may be). Many of them wish to become teachers, veterinarians, engineers, and, therefore, consider that much time must be devoted to their studies. Family support also proves indispensable for the realization of this desire. While wishing some of the professions that confer social status, especially in large urban centers, some young people do not see how to achieve them, and therefore visualize activities that keep them in the country, but with certain privileges, such as to be cowboys and farmers. Many of them express the will, through the study and practice of chosen profession, to live outside the community. If on one hand school education is seen by young people as a means of better living conditions, through the exercise of a profession, and community output, on the other hand, it also shows an obstacle to the realization of their life projects. This contradiction is seen in the description about the lack of structure of schools attended, physical and human resources. They do not have clarity about the possibility of a quilombo education (CNE / CEB 16/2012) that articulates knowledge regarded as universal and knowledge that focus on ethnic-racial identity, history and culture of African and Afro-Brazilian (Law 10639/2003) and the issues surrounding territory and territoriality, peculiar to the condition of black, rural and quilombo groups, but the perception of the mismatch between school knowledge and the one that emerges from the everyday experiences of these communities.