Gênero, poder e violência: uma análise antropológica do feminicídio político de Dorcelina Folador

Abstract

This thesis investigates political femicide as the ultimate expression of intertwined power structures in Mundo Novo/MS, analyzing the case of the murder of Mayor Dorcelina de Oliveira Folador on October 30, 1999. Guided by Political Anthropology, Gender Studies, and Decolonial Theory, the research understands violence not as an isolated event, but as a ritualized social phenomenon marked by informal powers and persistent impunity. The work is grounded in the category of gender as an inequality of power structures (PERROT, 1990), where the silencing and exclusion of women from the public sphere are pillars for maintaining male sovereignty.An ethnographic methodology is adopted, based on archival ethnography (PEIRANO, 2006) and the triangulation of media archives, judicial documents, and memory narratives collected from local interlocutors who experienced and followed Dorcelina Folador’s trajectory. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four interlocutors living in the city at the time of the event; their identities were preserved due to the persistence of the pistolagem (hired killings) system in the region. Data regarding this femicide were interpreted through Thick Description (GEERTZ, 1978), articulating the concepts of Necropolitics (MBEMBE, 2018), Coloniality of Power (QUIJANO, 2005), and High-Intensity Patriarchy (SEGATO, 2021).The analysis demonstrates that the assassination of Dorcelina Folador—an MST activist and woman in power—functioned simultaneously as a Public Gender Lesson (SEGATO, 2016) and an Act of Parallel Sovereignty, aiming at the recolonization of the Political Body-Territory that challenged the patriarchal-oligarchic order. The study concludes that political femicide is a mechanism for preserving this deeply rooted social order. However, the mobilization around Dorcelina’s memory challenged the condition of ungrievability (BUTLER, 2011) and the pedagogy of cruelty (SEGATO, 2018), transforming collective mourning into a counter-discourse that reversed the necropolitical goal of erasure, ensuring her legacy persists as a symbol of resistance on the border.