“Nós re-existimos! ”: o estigma nas relações de poder e resistências entre os calon e os gajon em Estreito/MA

Abstract

The present work explores the processes of social interactions between gypsies and gypsies of the Calon ethnic group with the non-gypsy population (gadjé, gajon or juran) in Estreito Maranhão. The same is inserted as a research carried out for the master's thesis in the Graduate Program in Sociology at the Federal University of Grande Dourados (PPGS/UFGD). In view of this, we seek to understand mechanisms of power and resistance in the daily life of gypsy communities located in specific neighborhoods in the municipality of Estreito/MA, considering the stigma in social interactions between the Calon and non-gypsy city dwellers. To do so, we use Erving Goffman's (2004) concept of Social Stigma as an analytical category, in dialogue with important theoretical propositions to think about concepts about identity, decoloniality and difference. Based on these assumptions, the research is configured as qualitative, which uses ethnography and ethnographic techniques, such as: direct observation, conversations and interviews with the application of questionnaires with semi-structured questions. With the research it was possible to observe that the Calon gypsies and gypsies still face many difficulties in social interactions with non-gypsy people, as they struggle daily for acceptance and many still live in conditions of invisibility and socioeconomic vulnerability, and, therefore, gypsy women are the people who most face such violence, as they are the guardians of ancestral knowledge and of many norms and rules established by the group. Furthermore, the fact that they are in conditions of invisibility and social exclusion does not make it impossible for these people to seek different forms of resistance in terms of the survival of the group, and the existence of gypsies on Brazilian and Maranhão soil is a strong indication of resistance. Emphasis was placed on the macro and microsociological contextualization that was made, sometimes with historical rescues of the scourges borne by gypsies (generally in the “world” and specifically in Brazil/Maranhão), sometimes with pinches of the interlocutions with the researcher.