“Nossos filhos têm mães"!: as agências das mães e familiares de vítimas de violência do Estado na Baixada Fluminense

Abstract

This paper explores the relationships between territory, pain, suffering, and kinship handled by mothers and family members of victims of State violence in the Baixada Fluminense. Looking at the theme of violence practiced by state agents, which includes military police officers, death squads, and militias, I analyze the mobilizations of the family members of the victims. Mothers Luciene Silva, Nivia Raposo, Ilsimar de Jesus, Elisabete Farias, Maria, and Rozinete Santana, and the sister Silvania Azevedo, members of the Rede de Mães e Familiares de Vítimas de Violência do Estado na Baixada Fluminense, are the main interlocutors of this research. Through acts carried out by the Rede that were followed up in 2019 and virtual interviews granted by these women in late 2020 and early 2021, I perceive central categories for a study about these female agencies that follow a critical event. In this way, I worked on the specificity of the performance of the collective of mothers and family members in the Baixada Fluminense territory, which besides being historically associated with the stigma of criminality, coexists with the exaltation of powerful groups, responsible for the mass murder of young blacks man. Then, by placing gender as a central element, I examine the connection between emotions, mourning, and motherhood in the struggle for justice and memory of the dead. Besides, I also consider the closings in the trajectories of mothers after the death of a child and how their lives and bodies are affected by suffering. I close this dissertation with a study on the place of parenting in the absence of children and family members victimized by the State and the exercise of motherhood in peripheral territories. I am also interested in knowing the means that mothers have in relating to a child that no longer exists in a physical sense. In this way, my work deals with categories that contribute to studies on the topic, so that it adds perceptions about the Baixada Fluminense, the individual and collective dynamics in the face of sorrow, the maintenance and transformations in the kinship network