Zaire é um velho menino: fabulações quilombistas sobre possibilidades de vida e desencarceramento de adolescentes negros no sistema socioeducativo.

Abstract

The colonialism and slavery continue to influence the lives of Black people in the country, especially children and adolescents, resulting in a series of rights violations, social exclusion, and institutionalized violence. We start from the observation that the majority percentage of adolescents in socio-educational measures in Brazil are Black boys. Therefore, we analyze the operationalization of this data in the territory through the monitoring of actions by a CREAS in Recife. In response to this analytical issue, we propose the general objective of the research to weave narratives of life and decarceration of Black adolescents, considering the strategies produced by CREAS and socio-community movements in the territory. To achieve this objective, the research adopts a methodological approach based on quilombist epistemologies, combined with Narrative Research and Saidiya Hartman's Critical Fabulation. The stories and analytical discussions were structured into two tracks: Track 1 – Revisiting the archive: from Colonial Brazil to the <Redemocratization=; Track 2 – Contesting the archive in the fieldterritory. Through this approach, the research aims to contribute to the development of effective socio-educational intervention strategies, in addition to supporting public policies aimed at affirming the right to life for Black youth. Furthermore, the dissertation seeks to confront epistemicide in academia, valuing African and Afro-diasporic epistemologies. Thus, we highlight how racial data is still maintained as a subjective and individualizing scheme, failing to structure practices and actions in socio-educational public policies, being treated merely as the individual work of each team professional. However, we point to the need for a consistent territorial dialogue with this data, reflected in a socio-educational policy established in plural networks related to the racial issue as their foundation. Additionally, we emphasize how CREAS role in socio-educational measures is assimilated by the community to the punitive power of the Judiciary, leading us to consider the need for a structural review of this relationship with justice. For this, we point to Bantu knowledge on justice and community reparation, focusing on how quilombola/quilombist knowledge is fundamental for an effective repositioning of socio-educational practices in open environments with Black, poor, and marginalized youth. Thus, we must consider socio-educational models attuned to the field of the National Social Assistance Policy, therefore, not individualizing, but committed to community bonds and protagonism. Finally, this research highlights the socio-assistance field in open environments as a territorial, not individual issue. In other words, the adolescent is situated within their microcosm of family, community, and social dynamics, and not as an enemy to whom punitive and individualizing judgment should apply. Hence, we emphasize how the principle of 'aquilombamento' is fundamental for constructing possibilities of life and freedom for black adolescents, especially those who more frequently end up in socioeducational institutions nationwide.