Território, maternagem e extermínio da juventude negra. Uma etnografia nas periferias ao oeste de Parnamirim/RN

Abstract

In recent years, Rio Grande do Norte has been among the Brazilian states with the highest rate of homicides against youths, with the people murdered being mostly men, black and poor. Being aware of this, and considering that women are the ones responsible for the care of these subjects, daily seeking ways to safeguard them from the risk of death, this research includes the perceptions on public safety and on the strategies for maintenance of young black people’s lives adopted by “mothers” who have already lost a “son”, so that other tutored youths with the same profile do not die. To carry out this dissertation, an ethnography of the mothering relationship of six women who live in a region of the city of Parnamirim-RN, where problems of urban violence have been occurring since the late 1990s, was made. This endeavor was carried out through two movements: in the first one, the effort was to produce a historical survey on how urban development and the dynamics of public security in the region took place; and in the second one, the investment was in understanding how mothers deal with the social configuration there, including the recent changes that the world is going through due to the coronavirus pandemic and the international struggle for the lives of black people. It is worth noting that the author of this academic work resides in that place and one of the collaborators in the research is his mother. Calling her to be a part of this study (even though she did not have any murdered tutored youths) was a methodological strategy to facilitate the approximation with the other women, who already had a relationship of affinity with her.