African Descendants Research Articles

The Religious Project of “Padrinho Laudelino” in Southern Brazil in the First Half of the 20th Century: Between Saint Francis of Assisi and Afro-Indigenous Ancestry

This text is about a religious project carried out in the first half of the 20th century by an African descendant man, an official of the Brazilian Navy, in Porto Alegre, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Laudelino founded a place of worship, with a diversified pantheon, which ranged from former African enslaved blacks and Brazilian Indians to Catholic bishops. It is the “Spiritist Shelter Francis of Assisi”. The experience is discussed here as being inherent to the multi-differentiated nature of Umbanda: a religion in which both a hierarchical centralization and a rigid doctrinal explicitness are absent. Therefore, being aware of the cultual and doctrinal diversity is crucial to understand Umbanda in its historicity. In this perspective, this text discusses “Padrinho Laudelino’s” experience and his effort to create an Umbanda and a self-image that are able to resemble his horizon of understanding of religion: Catholicism. Keywords: Mediumistic religions; Afro-Brazilian religions; Memory. DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/10-10-03 Publication date: May 31 st 2020

Biopsy core length in white versus African descendant prostate cancer patients

Objective: To explore whether distinct prostate cancer (PCa) prognoses between ethnicities could be explained by diverse characteristics in the prostate biopsy.Methods: Clinical, prostate biopsy and surgical single-institution data of whites and African descendants with similar access to the health system who underwent radical prostatectomy whole gland histopathology within 60 days after biopsy from 2010 to 2011 and followed for 5 years minimum were compared.Results: Among 203 included patients, 153 (75.4%) were whites and 50 (24.6%) were African descendants. The mean patients’ age was 63.7 (± 6.8) years. Digital rectal examination (DRE) was suspected of cancer in 45.2% of the patients. The prostate biopsy core length was smaller in African descendants than in whites, overall 11.0 ± 3.2 vs 12.0 ± 2.9 mm, p = 0.037, and without neoplasia, 10.4 ± 3.8 vs 11.7 ± 3.1 mm, p = 0.038, respectively. Also, suspicious DRE showed smaller biopsy core length, overall 11.1 ± 3.2 mm vs 12.4 ± 2.6, p = 0.003, cancer positive 12.0 ± 4.8 mm vs 13.3 ± 3.7, p = 0.022 and negative 10.6 ± 3.6 mm vs 12.2 ± 3.0, p = 0.002. On 81 months median follow-up, more African descendants were lost to follow-up (10%, n = 5 vs 3.9%, n = 6) and the biochemical recurrence rate was the same between the groups (33.3%).Conclusion: In a PCa population with similar access to the health system, prostate biopsy core length in African descendant men is significantly smaller than in whites. This finding is new and may add to the controversial argument of PCa having a worse prognosis in African descendant patients.

Diáspora e africanidade entre os Siddis de Karnataka

Devem os siddis de Karnataka ser entendidos como parte da diáspora africana? Partindo de uma reflexão teórica sobre algumas concepções paradigmáticas do termo diáspora, este artigo analisa não apenas posicionamentos acadêmicos opostos sobre “afrodescendentes” na Índia, mas sobretudo transformações mais recentes nas comunidades que fizeram com que africanidade e diáspora se tornassem referências importantes na luta política dos chamados siddis. Procura-se argumentar que nem africanidades nem diásporas são ideias e/ou práticas sociais a-históricas com conteúdos fixos; sua análise precisa contemplar as repercussões mútuas entre discussões teórico-conceituais e contextos históricos concretos.

Is Asian type MS an MS phenotype, an NMO spectrum disorder, or a MOG-IgG related disease?

BackgroundA specific particularity of neurological diseases in Asia is the relative commonality of neuromyelitis optica (NMO) and Asian type MS (OSMS). Both conditions also occur in South American patients. The Brazilian population differs from the European and the Asian populations due to the mixture of ancestralities between European colonizers and African slaves. To better know the clinical characteristics of Brazilian patients with Asian type MS this study aimed to analyze the clinical, radiological and serological data that would help to distinguish between OSMS and NMO and clarify, in a Non-Asian population, if OSMS is an MS phenotype, an NMO spectrum disorder by 2015 classification, or a complement activating antibody to myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG-IgG) antibody-related disease. MethodsWe selected cases retrospectively with NMO and OSMS in the medical registry of patients with idiopathic inflammatory demyelinating diseases under follow-up since 1997 in Federal Hospital da Lagoa, the principal reference center for MS treatment in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. OSMS has selective involvement of the optic nerve and spinal cord with no cerebral or cerebellar symptoms associated with small spinal cord lesions and negativity for the aquaporin-4 antibody (AQP4-IgG). NMO full-filled the revised criteria (2006) associated with longitudinally extensive transverse myelitis (LETM). We recorded the following data: ethnicity/skin color, neurologic impairment “at nadir” and “at recovery” of the index events (optic neuritis and transverse myelitis), long term disability, mortality, health quality of life scores by the SF-36 questionnaire, CSF IgG oligoclonal bands and serological AQP4-IgG and MOG-IgG antibodies tested by Cell-based assay. The last brain MRIs were classified as either satisfying or not satisfying MAGNIMS radiologic criteria for MS or typical or not typical for NMOSD. The new classification of NMO spectrum disorders (2015) was applied. ResultsForty-one OSMS and 122 NMO cases were analyzed. OSMS affected mainly young white women, causing unilateral optic neuritis and partial myelitis with excellent recovery. After a mean disease duration of 20 years, 90% of the patients had free ambulation, and 70% had a mild disability or no disability. Only 7.2% presented a secondary progressive course, and no deaths occurred. All cases had negativity to AQP4-IgG and MOG-IgG biomarkers. 95% had resonance criteria for MS. OSMS differed from NMO by ethnicity, morbidity, and mortality: most were African descendants, with severe motor and visual dysfunction, and one third died. Only NMO cases full-filled the new NMOSD classification (52 AQP4-IgG positive, 29 AQP4-IgG negative, and 41 AQP4-IgG unknown). ConclusionIn Brazilian patients, OSMS and NMO are different immune-mediated diseases. OSMS is a milder MS phenotype.

Sounds of Portuguese democracy: “Pretugal” as a contemporary reality

In this essay I analyze, within the conceptual framework of Sound Studies, the role of the aural dimension of the Portuguese postcolonial experience in contemporary fiction, specifically in the novels O meu nome é Legião by António Lobo Antunes (2007), Os Pretos de Pousaflores by Aida Gomes (2011) and Esse Cabelo by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida (2015). In each of these works, the aurality — what is heard and/or what is not heard — strongly denounces the blind spots of post-1974, democratized Portuguese society. One of these blind spots has to do with the representation of racial differences and, in particular, the obstacles that African descendants need to overcome in an attempt to find their own space and agency. The fiction of these three contemporary writers emphasizes two relevant themes in Portuguese society: the end of the colonial empire and structural racism.

Families, Manumission, and Freed People in Urban Minas Gerais in the Era of Atlantic Abolitionism

AbstractLate eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Minas Gerais was heavily reliant on its slave labor force and invested in the social order shaped by slavery. The main systematic challenge to slavery was discrete negotiations of manumission that resulted in the freedom of a few individual slaves. This practice fueled the expansion of a free population of African descendants, who congregated most visibly in the captaincy's urban centers. Through an examination of manumission stories from two African-descendant families in the towns of Sabará and São José, this article underscores the relevance of family ties and social networks to the pursuit and experience of freedom in the region. As slavery remained entrenched in Brazil, despite Atlantic abolitionist efforts elsewhere, urban families’ pursuit and negotiation of manumissions shaped a historical process that naturalized the idea and possibility of black freedom.

African American descendants, community outreach, and the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead Project

ABSTRACTWe participated in the research of a post-emancipation African American site in Texas that involved a community outreach programme with local descendants. We worked with the descendant community in producing knowledge and defining project outcomes, both of which benefitted the research and raised the public visibility of black Texas history and archaeology. Based on our experiences, we discuss how cultural resource management (CRM) firms can play an important role in diversifying the profession, and in engendering a long-term commitment to public archaeology among their employees. There were challenges we encountered working within the context of CRM, including funding allocations and enlisting local descendants in the site excavation, yet we hope that this case study helps to promote community archaeology in future CRM projects.

Political Economy and the Tradition of Radical Black Study

A central concern of the Black Intellectual Tradition (BIT) since the close of the nineteenth century has been the explicit connection between the historical and structural development of the world capitalist economy on the one hand, and on the other, freedom struggles forged by African descendants. This dynamic, interwoven relationship, according to some critical observers of history, illuminates a key dimension of the modern Black experience.1 While Black Studies inherited this distinct political economic tradition, the status of political economy frameworks in the field is marginal. Because Black communities have produced a unique political economy tradition borne from necessity, study, and an incessant will toward freedom, this tradition must occupy a greater role in the work and practice of Black Studies. As a contribution toward that vital goal, I will introduce and analyze several key concepts, theories, and debates that have animated the radical Black political economy tradition. Based on my brief reflections on the lives, work, and politics of several radical Black scholar-activists within and beyond the U.S., I conclude by discussing how their ideas can serve the transformationalist vision of Black Studies.

Socio-Economic and Racial profile of Medical Students from a Public University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract: Introduction: There are still many economic and racial barriers for black and indigenous peoples regarding access to a university degree in Brazil. Although Brazil is mistakenly considered a racial democracy, black people, indigenous peoples and those of low social status are the most affected by such difficulties regarding access to the university. Medical schools are traditionally attended by white, wealthy and upper-middle-class groups, although 54% of Brazilians consider themselves to be African descendants. To deal with this scenario, since 2013, 50% of all vacancies in public universities have been reserved for low social classes, indigenous peoples and African descendants. Our objective was to describe the socioeconomic and racial profile of those attending a public medical school in the state of Rio de Janeiro during a five-year period, analyzing the associations between the Brazilian segregationist structure and inclusion policies. Method: A census study was carried out, including all groups that entered the medical school at a public university in the state of Rio de Janeiro between 2013 and 2017. We applied a self-administered questionnaire that addressed social, ethnic, economic and university admission aspects. The data were analyzed by a simple description of the frequencies and by bivariate analysis. Results: The results show that the majority profile is white, with an annual income higher than US$ 8,640, coming from a private school, with financial support from the family, both parents with higher education and no gender difference. As for the inclusion of non-white people into the course, the current quota system has not significantly increased their presence. Conclusion: We conclude that racial inclusion policies subordinated to economic ones seem to be a barrier to the entry of non-whites to medical school, contributing to racial inequality.

Socio-Economic and Racial profile of Medical Students from a Public University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract: Introduction: There are still many economic and racial barriers for black and indigenous peoples regarding access to a university degree in Brazil. Although Brazil is mistakenly considered a racial democracy, black people, indigenous peoples and those of low social status are the most affected by such difficulties regarding access to the university. Medical schools are traditionally attended by white, wealthy and upper-middle-class groups, although 54% of Brazilians consider themselves to be African descendants. To deal with this scenario, since 2013, 50% of all vacancies in public universities have been reserved for low social classes, indigenous peoples and African descendants. Our objective was to describe the socioeconomic and racial profile of those attending a public medical school in the state of Rio de Janeiro during a five-year period, analyzing the associations between the Brazilian segregationist structure and inclusion policies. Method: A census study was carried out, including all groups that entered the medical school at a public university in the state of Rio de Janeiro between 2013 and 2017. We applied a self-administered questionnaire that addressed social, ethnic, economic and university admission aspects. The data were analyzed by a simple description of the frequencies and by bivariate analysis. Results: The results show that the majority profile is white, with an annual income higher than US$ 8,640, coming from a private school, with financial support from the family, both parents with higher education and no gender difference. As for the inclusion of non-white people into the course, the current quota system has not significantly increased their presence. Conclusion: We conclude that racial inclusion policies subordinated to economic ones seem to be a barrier to the entry of non-whites to medical school, contributing to racial inequality.

NOBODY KNOWS: OPPRESSION AND RESISTANCE IN THE NARRATIVES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND OLAUDAH EQUIANO

This article intends to analyze the autobiographic narratives by Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano, two important slave narratives, Equiano was born free in Africa, was captured and fled from slavery to live in London; and Douglass was born in slavery, from African descendants. Equiano lived in the 18th century and Douglass in the 19th century. They lived a century apart. After a brief presentation and contextualization of the genre of slave narrative, I analyze the works selected, having as focus their critical content in relation to religion, economy, the legal system, and language. The analysis allowed me to understand how such cultural and social elements usually employed to oppress the slave were used as instrument confrontation of slavery and search for autonomy. Some of my theoretical references are: Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alex Argyros, Roger Rosemblatt, Edward Said, and Jacques Derrida.

“WE SPEAK BACK!”

AbstractA body of scholarship interrogates conventional notions of citizenship, viewing full social inclusion beyond formal status and as a matter of belonging. This paper integrates the perspective of anti-Blackness with that of belonging and theorizes anti-Black non-belonging. Based on more than a year of fieldwork in the Lisbon metropolitan area, I illustrate how the reality of anti-Black non-belonging in Portugal means that African-descendant women are vulnerable to racist, everyday practices in public space that impact their individual and group reality and feelings of national belonging. Employing a counter narrative methodology, I argue that Cape Verdean women’s narratives of anti-Black non-belonging illustrate the agentic strategy that they deploy to carve our alternative modes of belonging as they navigate their everyday lives. Their accounts illustrate the continued need for African-descendant women to draw from their everyday knowledge of domination to employ resistance, whether through their own parenting or through their own reactionary voices in public space. Anti-Black non-belonging is therefore both a form of racialization and a matter of resistance; as African-descendent women are racialized as foreign, non-being, and out of place, they also challenge the ideology of Portuguese anti-racialism that places Africans and African descendants outside of European citizenry.

Migration Themes and Transnational Identities in Mohammed Ben-Abdallah's The Slaves, Haile Gerima's Sankofa, and Rachid Bouchareb's Little Senegal

86 CLA JOURNAL Migration Themes and Transnational Identities in Mohammed Ben-Abdallah’s The Slaves, Haile Gerima’s Sankofa, and Rachid Bouchareb’s Little Senegal Helena Woodard Since at least the 1980s, high-profile West African slave forts, also known as dungeons, have attracted visitors in the international community for the forts’ role in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Ghana’s Elmina and Cape Coast Castles, along with Senegal’s House of Slaves at Gorée Island, originally functioned as holding cells or prisons for slave captives awaiting sell to European traders before being transported across the Atlantic in the Middle Passage. In Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa,A.W. Lawrence writes,“Nowhere else have small and transitory communities of traders so changed the life of the alien peoples who surrounded them and indirectly of a vast region beyond” (29). Renovated and designated as world heritage sites by UNESCO to mark its historical role in the slavery past, the slave fort has also appealed to certain writers who--through tourism as prism--transformed it from mass cultural artifact to a geo-political, public memory space. Though I write about the slave fort in the context of Atlantic Slavery in my book, Slave Sites on Display: Reflections of Slavery Through Contemporary “Flash” Moments, I am primarily interested, here, in the symbolic slave fort’s mediative function in select contemporary literature between African “locals” and disproportionately slave-descendant African Americans who travel to those sites.In this article,I have chosen to focus on three works that expose complexities in that relationship through partial or full settings that begin at a slave fort in Africa before evolving, diachronically, through a failed Pan-Africanist motif (or the notion of an African diaspora unification) to immersion in debate about tourism, responsibility for the slavery past, and relations between Africans and diaspora slave descendants. By appropriating that motif in this article, I regard the slave fort’s function as a potent symbol for Atlantic slavery through complications regarding departure and return for African diaspora slave descendants who visit slave forts as tourists, and their relationship with African locals that they encounter. Haile Gerima’s classic film, Sankofa (1993), and Rachid Bouchareb’s independent film, Little Senegal (2000), for example, employ migrations themes and transnational identities through African and slave-descendant African American protagonists, but their relationships demonstrate deep fissures largely attributed to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Opening scenes in Sankofa and Little Senegal foreground the slave fort--or what Playwright Mohammed Ben-Abdallah refers to in The Slaves as the “stone CLA JOURNAL 87 Migration Themes and Transnational Identities in The Slaves, Sankofa, and Little Senegal monster” by the sea--where an African griot and slave-descendant African Americans briefly converge and communicate a need to mend their strained relationships. Both films intersect with Ben-Abdallah’s The Slaves through the dungeon as a geo-political, public memory space. The play formalizes the dungeon as a foundational setting for Atlantic slavery, a precursor to the Middle Passage journey, and a foreshadowing of tensions between Africans and slave-descendant African Americans in contemporary society. I therefore place Sankofa and Little Senegal in conversation with The Slaves as these works dramatize the fort or dungeon as a pivotal, originary site that communicates a need for slave-descendant African Americans in the U.S. to connect with their African ancestry and the slave past in an effort to heal its lingering wounds. But while Ben-Abdallah allegorizes Atlantic Slavery within the confines of that space for captive Africans, Gerima and Bouchareb reinscribe its lineage in a complex meditation on slavery and race across the Atlantic through migrations themes and transnational identities for Africans and slave-descendant African Americans in contemporary society. Appropriating the Dungeon as Public Memory Space in The Slaves In anAuthor’s note about The Slaves Revisited,in the publication,titled The Fall of Kumbi and Other Plays, Mohammed Ben-Abdallah stated that his first objective for the revised script was“to provide a confrontation, a dialogue as it were, between the pain and angst of Africa at large, and the Big, White, Stone Monster by the sea . . . the slave fort” (iii, 25 March 2011...

Biopsy core length in white versus African descendant prostate cancer patients

Objective: To explore whether distinct prostate cancer (PCa) prognoses between ethnicities could be explained by diverse characteristics in the prostate biopsy.Methods: Clinical, prostate biopsy an...

Ocular Alterations Associated with Primary Congenital Heart Disease - A Cross-sectional Study.

OBJECTIVE:The objective of the study was to asses ocular findings' prevalence in children with primary congenital heart disease (CHD).PATIENTS AND METHODS:This is a prospective cross-sectional study of children with CHD treated at a specialized center in the South of Brazil between 2013 and 2015. They underwent a complete ocular examination, including measurement of visual acuity, refraction test, external motility, anterior and posterior biomicroscopy, and binocular indirect fundoscopy with retinal photographs. Two experienced examiners independently assessed fundus findings: one at the time of examination and image capture, while the other assessed only the captured images.RESULTS:Of a total of 146 children examined, 124 were included in this analysis (16% loss). Seventy children were male (55.5%). The average age was 9.3 years (minimum 1 month and maximum 15 years). Caucasians race were 81.2%, African Descendants race were 11.1%, and others were 7.7%. About 57.1% had already had heart surgery. About 14.8% had visual acuity below 0.6 and 2.8% below 0.1. Strabismus was found in 7.4% and cataracts in 1.7%. Retinal alterations were recognized in 13.5%, of which 4.8% were related to vascular narrowing or dilation and/or abnormal arteriovenous crossing; 7.14% were related to increased vascular tortuosity, while 1.6% were related to active toxoplasmic chorioretinitis lesions. Concomitant abnormalities in ocular motility, biomicroscopy, or ophthalmoscopy were detected in 24% of the cases.CONCLUSION:Children under the age of 15 years old with primary CHD have a high prevalence of ocular alterations, with external ocular and retinal manifestations, with higher occurrence rate among cyanotic cases. This leads us to strongly recommend the performance of a complete ophthalmological examination in such cases.

Espacio público y vendedores informales afrocolombianos en Cali, Colombia

El 25.5% de todos los afrodescendientes en Colombia residen en la ciudad de Cali, lo que representa el 26% de la población total de la ciudad. De esta manera, Cali es una de las ciudades con mayor población afrocolombiana del país. La ciudad ha sido el principal centro de atracción para las poblaciones migrantes de la costa del Pacífico Sur de Colombia en la que prevalece la población afrocolombiana. La venta informal en Cali es llevada a cabo principalmente por migrantes rurales y/o desplazados internos. En este artículo, me interesa saber si los afrocolombianos sufren una mayor marginalidad y discriminación como vendedores ambulantes que los auto identificados como mestizos y blancos o si, por el contrario, ambos grupos enfrentan niveles similares de discriminación. Por lo tanto, propongo averiguar si los cuerpos negros están marcados por discursos de indeseabilidad y crimen en los espacios públicos de esta ciudad. Adicionalmente, este fenómeno es entendido por los académicos urbanos, así como por el gobierno de Cali como una lucha de clases. Esta comprensión ratifica la invisibilidad de los cuerpos racializados negros en los discursos de igualdad. Muchos autores afirman que el problema actual en Colombia de reconocer la composición racial diversa de los vendedores informales y entender estas luchas sólo a través de las clases impide un discernimiento bien pensado de las realidades sociales y económicas que enfrentan los cuerpos racializados en los espacios públicos.

Silent No Longer

AbstractThis article, arising from the work of the Council for World Mission's Legacies of Slavery project, investigates the historical roots of racism present in the work of the London Missionary Society (LMS). It offers an analysis of the ways in which a missionary society colluded with Empire in constructing a racist hierarchy that it imposed on White people at home in the United Kingdom as much as it did on African and African descendant peoples. It acknowledges the personal and structural benefits that the LMS and its officers made from enslavement and their efforts to silence calls for emancipation, and offers a class and gender perspective on the forces shaping this distinctively British organization.

Afroperspectividade no ensino de filosofia: possibilidades da Lei 10.639/03 diante do desinteresse e do racismo epistêmico

No presente artigo pretendemos percorrer com a leitora e o leitor uma trilha reflexiva tripla: sobre os efeitos da reprodução e perpetuação cultural do racismo epistêmico no ensino de filosofia; sobre os esforços antirracistas que culminaram no Brasil na promulgação da Lei 10.639/03 e da Lei 11.645/08, acrescentando diretrizes importantes em todos os níveis de nosso sistema educacional. E, por fim, a Afroperspectividade, como uma abordagem teórico-metodológica relevante para combater o racismo epistêmico no ensino de filosofia.

Changes in clinical and biochemical characteristics of polycystic ovary syndrome with advancing age.

ObjectiveTo verify whether aging can modify the clinical and biochemical characteristics of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).Material and methodsThis observational cross-sectional study was conducted at the reproductive endocrinology clinics of Julio Muller University Hospital and Tropical Institute of Reproductive Medicine in Cuiabá, MT, Brazil, between 2003 and 2017. Both, 796 PCOS and 444 non-PCOS normal cycling women underwent the same examination. PCOS was diagnosed using the Rotterdam criteria as recommended for adolescent and adult subjects. Anthropometric, metabolic, and endocrinological modifications with aging were initially examined in the two groups: control and PCOS. Further analyses were performed after a 5-year age stratification of data throughout the reproductive period. All participants signed a consent form approved by the local ethical committee.ResultsBiomarkers of adiposity were more remarkable in African descendant PCOS women. Body weight, waist/hip ratio, fat mass, and BMI were higher in PCOS women and tended to increase at all 5 age-strata, between ≤19 and 35 years of age. Serum androgen levels decreased with aging, markedly in PCOS subjects (P < 0.01 for all age-strata comparisons), but remained elevated when compared with the levels found in controls. Carbohydrate markers, triglycerides, and total cholesterol tended to increase over time in PCOS (P < 0.01 for all age-strata comparisons). Total cholesterol also tended to increase with age in non-PCOS women (P = 0.041).ConclusionThe present study has shown that the advancing age influences many features of PCOS women. Biochemical hyperandrogenism, the core criterion recommended in the current systems to define the syndrome, showed statistically significant tendencies to decrease with aging progression but did not normalize. The use of age-adjusted features for the diagnosis of PCOS are recommended.

Um retrato da Educação Infantil no/do Campo no Rio Grande do Sul

A Educação Infantil e as infâncias do campo têm registrado em diferentes marcos regulatórios de nosso país direitos essenciais no que se refere ao atendimento das crianças em instituições educativas. No entanto, mesmo com a luta dos movimentos sociais do campo e da Educação Infantil, dados apontam a discrepância entre o número de crianças matriculadas na etapa no contexto rural e urbano brasileiro (ROSEMBERG; ARTES, 2011). No Rio Grande do Sul, a demanda por creche e pré-escola, bem como as condições de oferta, foram questões estudadas pela pesquisa Caracterização do atendimento de crianças de 0 a 6 anos residentes em áreas rurais do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul/Brasil (2013-2016), a partir da imersão em dois contextos: um assentamento da Reforma Agrária e uma comunidade remanescente de quilombo. Neste artigo, apresentamos algumas proposições legais e norteadoras da Educação Infantil do Campo. Questionamos a relevância das pesquisas para mudanças reais às crianças do campo brasileiras e indicamos que a escola no campo é fundamental para a socialização das crianças, sendo necessário, no entanto, um trabalho pedagógico articulado com as especificidades culturais do contexto em que está inserida.