Mulheres Taliasere e Aymara: guardiãs do poder e do saber tradicional de seu povo

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the power and traditional knowledge of Tariana women in the Iauaretê administrative region, in order to understand how they have reclaimed their healing powers and political organization throughout history. It also seeks to establish a connection with the Ayamara women of El Alto, Bolivia, regarding the preservation and transmission of ancestral knowledge. This study is centered on a gender perspective and seeks to highlight the existence of new forms of conversation, complementarity, and interdependence between two ethnic groups, their struggles for recognition of their culture, work, and the cultural knowledge practices of Tariana and Ayamara indigenous women. This investigation intertwines with the threads of interdisciplinarity in a dialogue between Anthropology, Sociology, History, and Indigenous Science. The research locus is the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira/AM/Brazil and El Alto, department of La Paz/Bolivia. This study, centered on the perspective of "writing from lived experience," seeks to highlight the existence of new forms of conversation, their struggles for recognition of their culture, and the practices of the Tariana and Aymara indigenous women. Our intention is to weave together an analysis of these two ethnic groups from Brazil and Bolivia and the transmission of ancestral knowledge. We use the intersectional paradigm as a methodological tool to analyze the production of racial, gender, and class oppressions on the bodies of these women. Among the multiple aspects observed, it is noteworthy that Tariana and Aymara women constitute guardians of ancestral knowledge, responsible for transmitting and preserving knowledge that is intertwined with their lifestyles deeply linked to the land, the forest, and the waters. The results of this research show that this relationship is not limited to a daily practice of subsistence, but constitutes a cosmological and political horizon in which care for the territory is inseparable from the continuity of collective life. By keeping alive the practices of cultivation, healing, spirituality, and community solidarity, these women reaffirm their centrality in resisting the colonial and capitalist pressures that have historically attempted to delegitimize their knowledge.