Sustainable Cultural Afro Brazilian Practices in the Melancias Quilombola Community in Ocara-Ceará- Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to present the cultural practices experienced in the Lagoa das Melancias Quilombola community, located in Ocara, Ceará, Brazil. The focus is to emphasize the cultural practices of the community residents considering the sustainability and the identity recognition as quilombolas remaining group. It is an exploratory study with a qualitative approach and the method chosen is the ethnography case study. The data collection consisted of direct observation, conversation circles, field/notes diary, on-line and face-to-face interviews, through electronic resources such as whatsapp and pictorial resources. The data analysis techniques were composed by the content interpretation and narrative speech. As a conclusion, it is possible to attest that the community residents' identity profile reflects their history and ancestral memory which can be found in nowadays cultural practices in the subsistence agriculture, in women's handcrafted practices, in the medicinal plants cultivated, in the capoeira circles and in the wearing of rastafari hair.