ENLINHADAS: THE POLITICAL TEXTILE OF THE FUXIQUEIRAS DO BEM (MITUAÇU, CONDE, PB)
Quilombola women; Mituaçu; Textiles; Methodology; Visual anthropology.
This dissertation investigates how textile practices — specifically fuxico and hand embroidery — of the Fuxiqueiras do Bem group are intertwined with their experiences as women in the quilombola territory of Mituaçu, located in Conde (PB). The central objective of this work is to understand the influence of these practices on the construction of identity, political resistance, and the preservation of the collective memory of these women. Through meetings between 2024 and 2025, this ethnography proposes embroidery as a research method. Articulating the concepts of racialized territories (Givânia Silva, 2022) and territories of affections (Mariléa de Almeida, 2022), the research demonstrates that the Fuxiqueiras redefine the practice of textiles — historically used as a tool for female domestication — transforming it into a gendered territory of leisure, escape from loneliness, and political agency. Among its main conclusions is that textiles act as a suture capable of reintegrating biographies and memories into the reverse side of official history, proposing another history of threads that values textiles as legitimate anthropological text and document.