Sobre aqueles que estão autorizados a ser ouvidos: a tradução de práticas culturais por meio do protocolo de consulta prévia, livre e informada das comunidades apanhadoras de flores sempre-vivas

Abstract

When set off by traditional and quilombolas evergreen flower-picking communities from Espinhaço Meridional, in Minas Gerais, the right to free, prior and informed consent brought about the interaction between the legal sensibility of a territory and that of a Western legal tradition. The handling of law by the communities emerges in a context of violence: their territories have been overlapped by mining enterprises, silviculture, large farming estates and conservation units. These communities have progressively resorted to legal institutes for the defence of their rights, in a continuous process of inscription of themselves, leading to the circulation of their values, producing internal and external normative resonances. Employing an ethnographic approach, I sought to understand how the translation of cultural practices into community protocol occurred. I developed a period of participant observation, writing down information in a field diary, complemented by semi-structured interviews with the leaders of the communities which signed the two protocols generated in the law-triggering process to prior consultation by evergreen flower-picking folk. Drawing from the theoretical contribution of legal anthropology, the analysis of this document revealed that its elaboration process integrated human rights values with its legal sensibility, and that the numerous legal actions contributed to traditional identity self-attribution, putting into circulation values shared by the signatory communities, strengthening their position in the socio-environmental conflicts in which they are involved. In relation to the conservation units implanted overlapping traditional territories, I verified that there are profound contradictions that have been leading to the annihilation of the affected groups, from which come forth serious violations of human rights.