Territoriality and animality: Human-animal relations in Quilombola communities of Brazil

This article seeks to highlight the importance of the still incipient studies about the relationships between humans and animals in the remaining AfricanBrazilian Quilombola communities in tropical Brazil. I suggest here that these studies can prove very relevant to assist in the processes of land claiming and recognition processes, since I believe human-animal relations constitute, and are constituted by, the concept of territoriality, which is significant to Quilombola social organization. Starting with a brief review of the literature on the topic, the discussion will culminate in two specific cases: the Quilombola community of Bombas located in Iporanga in the state of São Paulo, surrounded by a vast area of moist tropical Atlantic Forest and approximately a two-hour walk from the center of the municipality, and the Quilombola community of Carmo in the municipality of São Roque, São Paulo, a rural neighborhood in an urban area surrounded by and urban jungle of high-end condominiums (and where I carried out field research). Both communities have been struggling for many years with the Brazilian state for the recognition of their territories.


Introduction
We must recognize that we know...almost nothing of the contemporary settings of the human-animal relationship in rural neighborhoods and districts, large farms, pastures, Quilombos, hunting and gathering communities and other segments of the population living outside the major urban centers (Bevilaqua & Vander Velden, 2016, p. 16, my translation).
he United Nations 'International Day of the Tropics' speaks of peoples, cultures, animals, nature and territories of the tropics.This paper is a response to this call for very little is known about the human-animal relations in rural spaces in Brazil, especially in African-Brazilian Quilombola communities 1 .And as such, the reasoning about and the 1 "Until one hundred years after the signing of Lei Áurea that freed the slaves in Brazil, the quilombos were considered places with great concentrations of afro-descendants who rebelled against the colonial regime.With the Federal Constitution of 1988, the term 'quilombo' had its concept expanded so that at present it is considered to include every area occupied by remnant communities of the former quilombos.Currently, T interaction with the animals in these communities has only been vaguely explored -never as a main theme, but rather always as background; as part of the landscape.Based on such works as those by Brandão (1999) and Queiroz (2006) regarding the Brazilian rural world, in addition to the anthropological theory about human-animal relations, this article seeks to shed light on the emergence of this subject in relation to question of the survival of the remaining Quilombola communities.I argue here that the territoriality and the way in which these people think, deal and relate to their surroundings, including animals, are of great importance in the long and arduous process for the recognition and claiming of their territories, since the Quilombola identity itself correlates not only with a territory, but also with the relationships established between humans and non-humans.
Quilombolas and the remnant social groups have therefore historically established common use relationships with natural resources, and one should consider that together with this fact an identity was built that led to the concept of territoriality or the process of territorialization (Stucchi & Ferreira, 2009, p. 316, my translation).
In order to demonstrate the reach of these studies regarding Quilombola communities, the literature review will address two specific cases, which perhaps we could call symmetrical and reversed, as the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss would say.The Quilombola community of Bombas, located in the municipality of Iporanga in the state of São Paulo, with a portion of its territory included in the protected park Parque Estadual Turístico do Alto Ribeira (PETAR)2 , which is delaying and obstructing the community's land claim and recognition process; and the Quilombola community of Carmo, located in the municipality of São Roque also in the state of São Paulo, a rural neighborhood surrounded by an urban area.They are symmetric cases, since the land claim processes of both communities are stuck, the first because of PETAR and the second primarily because of real estate speculation; and also inverse, since Bombas is surrounded by the moist tropical Atlantic Forest, while the community of Carmo is increasingly surrounded by the urban jungle of São Roque.
The remaining Quilombola communities are, by definition, social groups whose ethnic identity (which dates back to the times of African slavery in Brazil) defines a distinct political and social organization, in addition to a very specific way to relate with nonhumans and territory.It is worth mentioning that despite the fact that there are around 4,000 Quilombola communities in Brazil, we still know very little about the human-animal relations in such communities.these communities must pass through the administrative steps of identification, self-definition and certification, under the responsibility of Fundação Cultural Palmares in order to be allocated the legal and inalienable possession of their territories".Retrieved from: http://www.palmares.gov.br/?p=19099.I have attempted, using an ethnographic case, to analyze the relations between humans and their environment from the standpoint of the dynamic interactions between the techniques used in socializing nature and the symbolic systems that organize them (Descola, 1994, p. 3).
Based on the idea that Amerindian People -and perhaps this can be extended to other peoples designated by the West as 'traditional' -deal with their surroundings in unique ways, Descola suggests that "...the principles of the construction of social reality are primarily to be sought in the relations between human beings and their natural environment" (Descola, 1992, p. 109).In addition, the author proposes an analysis of nature's socialization system which provides technical/material and symbolic/conceptual determinations on the same plane and in constant relation.Such an analysis departs from the separation of symbolic and material aspects and, therefore, the dichotomy between nature/culture, as organized in a naturalistic ontology, cannot be sustained: Confronted with the technical and economic conditions linked to the characteristics of the natural environment, the spirit does not remain passive.It doesn't reflect these conditions; it reacts to them and organizes them logically into the system (Lévi-Strauss, 1986, p. 161, my translation).
The inter-relationship between humans, plants and animals, therefore, consists not only as a fundamental element of the social reality of indigenous populations (Descola, 1992(Descola, , 1994) ) -and, thus, as in the case of the Quilombola communities -it also attests to the existence of distinct ways of thinking about the categories of nature and culture, in addition to making a distinction between them.In the Quilombola community of Carmo, where I was able to develop this research and undertake a month of fieldwork, humans and animals (especially breeding animals) establish a relationship of mutual dependence.There, animals are not mere objects, a source of food or income; they are active subjects in the making of Quilombola territoriality, since they are bound to the territory both historically and by kinship.In Carmo, animals, as well as humans, are Nossa Senhora do Carmo's sons4 .
Studies of human-animal interactions have seen significant growth in anthropology and other fields of study.In anthropology the study of inter-relations between humans and animals5 have formed a central theme through the ethnographic work of Descola's animism (1994Descola's animism ( , 1996)), Viveiros de Castro's perspectivism (2002), Latour's hybrids, "mixtures of nature and culture" (Latour, 1994, p. 35), and Ingold's questioning of what animals are (1994).Animals now occupy the place of subjects, instead of mere symbols or signs (Vander Velden, 2015).This notion has configured not only in anthropological reflection6 but also several other western fields of knowledge, including psychology, biology (Coy, 1994), veterinary medicine, zoology (Serpell, 1996) and primatology (Rapchan & Neves, 2014).The multiplication of such studies increasingly reveal the fluidity of boundaries between humans and animals (Mullin, 1999;Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010).
According to Vander Velden and Badie (2011), after the initiative of the above key authors, among others, "oppositions like human and animal, living creature and artifact or machine, and people and landscape have lost much of their original meanings, and they should be reconstituted based on local ontologies through ethnographic research" (Vander Velden & Badie, 2011, p. 19, my translation).For Latour (2001), issues involving nature/culture and, therefore, relations between humans and animals, should not arise from a comparison between: A nature and culture to surpass them, but [from] different models....The relationship lies not in the fact we, Westerners, make a distinction between nature and culture, while, if we were good savages, we would mix them up.We make the distinction while they ignore them (Latour, 2001, p. 38, my translation).Viveiros de Castro (2002) has already suggested that for indigenous societies in the Amazon Region animals (not all of them, it is important to remember), like the humans, are people.Ingold (2000), in turn, introduces the concept of engagement in studies of relations between humans and non-humans with his ecological anthropology.It is the process of engagement with the world, both by humans and non-humans, which builds environments on the one hand, and fosters relationships, on the other.For him, "'organism plus environment' should denote not a compound of two things, but one indivisible totality" (Ingold, 2000, p. 19).
While studying the animal husbandry by the Karitiana in Rondônia, Vander Velden (2012) reaffirmed this sui generis dynamic of the Amerindian peoples of thinking about the material and symbolic aspects, and he highlights the inter-relationship, or even the interdependence, between categories which Western thinking considers to be independent or in binary opposition to each other.Among the Karitiana, the concept of kinship, for example, which in the West has restricted solely to what is considered social and human, extends to the animal world, since the domestic animals are part of the human family: "One might suggest that the bond between humans and domestic animals is a bond of kinship" (Vander Velden, 2012, p. 171, my translation).In Carmo, thinking about human-animal relations from a kinship perspective has been very productive: since animals are Nossa Senhora do Carmo's sons, just like Carmo's inhabitants, and thus there is a bond of kinship between humans and animals, even though this bond often goes unnoticed.As Descola has suggested (1992Descola has suggested ( , 1996) ) to be able to think about animals, it is certainly necessary to turn our gaze to humans, just as one has to look to non-humans to think about humans.Brandão (1999) starts from a similar analysis and suggests that, through a logic of nature and an ethic of rural environments, it is possible to achieve "the ways in which welldefined types of people bred, reproduced, felt and believed, through their peculiar cultures, about their own modes of relating with nature" (Brandão, 1999, p. 12, my translation).It is based on this logic of interaction between the symbolic and the material and between the natural and the social that relationships are built between humans and animals in the neighborhood of Pretos (Joanópolis/SP), which was the focus of Brandão's analysis.People in Carmo claim a nature that, although it exists physically, is currently inaccessible: with the environmental degradation of the region and the consequent urban advance, the community has been deprived of much of its territory.Depriving its inhabitants of their territory has also been to deprive them of their crops, vegetable gardens and animal creations.
Even though the rural and the urban are, to a greater or lesser degree, in a constant relationship of exchange and, with respect to the discussion of this article, always sharing reasonings in relation to the environment and to animals, in rural areas this relation goes beyond utilitarianism: The surrounding environment is actually lived and always represented as a function of its different alternatives of appropriation, transformation and usefulness, in the motivated socialization of the natural world.But all this also goes through a subtle fabric of senses and sensitivities to which even the rules of economic gains are subordinated, at least in part (Brandão, 1999, p. 66, my translation).
Although most people in Carmo think of raising animals as something useful, whether financially or for food -breed to kill and eat or to sell -there are those who think of farm animals from the perspective of feeling and affection.This was reported during field research by many locals.I suggest, then, from my field data, that in Carmo there is (and again I quote Brandão), "a subjectification of natural beings that brings them closer, in other senses and affects, to persons and families, and because of this new approach, new affections and senses requalify human-nature relationships " (Brandão, 1999, p. 77, my translation).
It is through this approach, in which "nature is no longer understood as something unique and as something that exists in and of itself, but as built nature-cultures" (Schneider & Menasche, 2014, p. 255, my translation), as suggested by Latour (1994) with his naturalcultural hybrids, that the material and symbolic relations between humans and animals in Quilombola communities should be understood.Just as the relationships between humans and animals in Carmo are based on aspects other than utilitarianism and naturalism, I believe that studies in other Quilombola communities can reveal so many other forms of human-animal relationship.I'm therefore guided by the idea of a multispecific ethnography, in which animals and humans can only be understood if they're seen as mutually constituted and constituting.Or as Haraway (2008, p. 19) puts it, "I am who I become with companion species, who and which make a mess out of categories in the making of kin and kind" (emphasis added).
I also believe that reflecting on the relations between humans and animals in Quilombola communities based on the idea of territoriality, in addition to thinking about territoriality based on the human-animal relationship, and how this territoriality is built by the Quilombola communities, may prove interesting, including for the process of claiming and recognizing their land.The identity construction of a Quilombola community itself might well occur through relations with the territory and animals and other non-human beings -as well as with the Brazilian State.To think about these relations along with the notion of territoriality, has proved to be extremely useful in Carmo (especially for the still ongoing elaboration of the anthropological report necessary for the titling of the lands).My contention is that it may also be useful for many other Quilombola communities.Albert's work (2005) where he examines the indigenous movement in the Brazilian Amazon from the 1960s onwards, and the economic development and integration programs of the national territory, can prove interesting to think about territoriality from a dialectic reformulation, in which both the State and the indigenous societies take part in the reconstruction of an identity and territoriality: The ensuing territorial confinement and identity ambiguities impel these groups [Amerindian societies in the Brazilian Amazon] toward the dynamics of "adaptive resistance" (Stern, 1987), which gradually become a crucial dimension of their social and cultural reproduction.They thus become engaged in processes of reconstruction that depend as much on repertoires of legitimation imposed by developing states and advocacy organizations as on their own political-symbolic resources (Albert, 2005, p. 200).
Thinking about territoriality in Bombas, in Carmo, or in any other Quilombola community in Brazil7 , from the perspective of an adaptive resistance may prove productive in unveiling relations between Quilombola communities and animals.Based on data collected in fieldwork, such a perspective would enable us to think about how animals, as subjects, may serve for the construction of a Quilombola territory, both symbolically and materially.According to Ingold (2000), it is the engagement with the world by both humans and non-humans that allows for the relations between them and the construction of the environment -a relational territory, where: "environments are never complete but are continually under construction" (Ingold, 2000, p. 172).
Useful answers may arise when we think of the relationship between humans and animals in Quilombola communities based on Ingold's concept of engagement and using the concept of territoriality as developed by Albert as background.In addition, it is necessary to think not only about the relations between Quilombola communities and animals, but also about the relations between Quilombola communities, animals and the Brazilian state, since the very concept of a Quilombola community evokes two implicit categories: The notion of territoriality converges to the demarcation of a certain ethnic territory, which extrapolates [but doesn't exclude] the classifications assigned by the State: they include the symbolic dimension, containing special modes of using and accessing natural resources (Ferreira, 2013, p. 19, my translation).

Furthermore:
The notion of territoriality converges to certain ethnic territories: black lands, holy lands, Indian lands; these categories mean specific, designated territories that go beyond the expression of classifications assigned by the State, to the extent that they encompass singularities (Stucchi & Ferreira, 2009, p. 64, my translation).
What is questioned in the neighborhood of Pretos, and by so many other "native" and "traditional" communities and populations whether in rural or urban areas in Brazil, is: The evidence, from the point of view of their experiences and of their interpretations of it, that, on behalf of the reconquering of a state of harmony between society and nature ...a disharmony is fostered between the categories of traditional, rustic agents, peasants and, on the other hand, old and new 'arrivals from outside', who are seen...as rich and powerful.Subjects who, supported by the banks, by politicians, judges and the police, are perceived as unethical invaders destined to success and progress (Brandão, 1999, p. 62, my translation).
Brazilian legislation hinders the material and symbolic relations which Quilombola communities -as well as other so-called 'traditional' populations -use to think, act upon and interact with the natural world, and it insinuates itself as the only and seemingly unchangeable way for the resolution of land struggles facing the populations in question.
According to Vianna (2008, p. 45, my translation), "the idea of the nature of environmental policies is imposed on people, because it is a cultural category transformed into a scientific concept".It might be suggested that such an imposition serves not only to think about nature in a broad sense, but also to reflect on the specific relationships between humans and animals: the ways of thinking about and relating with animals just as resources are also often defended by the State.As such, the indigenous modes of thinking about non-humans, in particular animals, are constrained by scientific thought, as Lévi-Strauss previously claimed (2012).
At the same time that Quilombola communities were included in the sphere of those with rights in Brazil, the State forced them to accommodate to its context to a certain degree, classifying them "not so much or mainly by the observation of their intrinsic characteristics...but according to the available interests and instruments of domination" (Arruti, 1997, p. 17, my translation).However, according to Arruti (2002), the denotation of the Brazilian State itself of Quilombola communities as remnants, implied in their politicization: As such, what is mainly at stake is not the identification of a connection, of a concrete, material and direct continuity with historical groups of escaped slaves who were registered and documented in the past, but of continuities that today are organized to reclaim this bond, almost all of them encroached by land conflicts with invaders of the lands that they occupy (Arruti, 2002, p. 246, my translation).
According to information provided by the Fundação Instituto de Terras do Estado de São Paulo (ITESP), there are currently about fifty-four Quilombola communities in the state of São Paulo 8 -concentrated mostly in the region of the Vale do Ribeira (Santos & Tatto, 2008), of which twenty-eight were recognized by the ITESP (six of them with already vindicated land claims).The issue of the regularization of the Quilombola territories in Brazil -and the conflicts with the law and environmental bodies emanating from the land irregularities -constitutes an aspect of great importance regarding the maintenance of 8 São Paulo is one of the 27 federal units of Brazil.
the social life of the Quilombola communities in Brazil, since "identity ...is built in correlation with the territory" (Stucchi & Ferreira, 2009, p. 318, my translation).
It is worth pointing out that here territory is configured as a "space outlined by certain symbolic representations and regulation mechanisms between people and those with the possession and use of natural resources that -unlike our rules -need not be and, in general, are not, explicit" (Arruti, 2002, p. 248, my translation).The territorial claims by the Quilombola communities in Brazil are therefore a central point in this articlesince, as suggested here, territorial claim can be equal to the claim, or even the reinvention, of the lost concept of nature.For the Quilombola communities in Brazil, therefore, the issue of territoriality is a: Fundamental factor for the construction of the group's own identity, showing that their life trajectory in the face of their adaptability to the surrounding environment and forms of appropriation of spaces, dictated by economic opportunities and the livelihoods found in different ecosystems and their uses, habits and customs, mold these spaces in a particular and unique manner (Imesp, 1997, p. 48, my translation).
According to Almeida (2002, p. 45, my translation), the occupation of spaces, whether by Quilombola, indigenous people, or any other group recognized by the State as 'traditional', passes through "ethnic, kinship and succession factors, through historical factors, through characteristic elements and through political-organizational and economic criteria, related practices and their own representations".Once again, the indispensable need of a territory should be highlighted to maintain the practices and symbolisms of these populations and, therefore, the urgency of recognition of the territories they occupy.
The recognition of Quilombola territories is provided for by the Constitution of 1988 (Article 68 of the Act of the Constitutional Provisions of the Transitional Federal Constitution).Furthermore, the State Decree No. 42,839 of February 04, 1998 9 , seeks to identify the remaining communities of Quilombos Based on criteria of "self-identification and written and/or oral historical-social data", also taking note of the "total limits of the occupied areas" with attention to "areas for housing, economic, social and cultural exploitation and those intended for religious cults and leisure, ensuring the land necessary for the physical and sociocultural disposition".
9 Available at http://www.cpisp.org.br/htm/leis/sp04.htmAs Stucchi and Ferreira (2009, p. 301, my translation) suggest, "the guidelines, be they economic, social or symbolic, are inscribed in both the agents and the territories, and they are revealed by means of memory, action and experience."As such, the land disorganization in which a large part of the Quilombola communities find themselves in the state of São Paulo, Brazil -including the communities of Carmo and Bombas -has an impact on how they organize their production practices and think about their relations with nature and, in the particular case of this article, with the animals.
In Bombas area analysis of human-animal relations relies on data provided through the Instituto Socioambiental (Santos & Tatto, 2008).In her ethnography on the relations between the playful and the educational in the Quilombola community of Bombas (Vale do Ribeira/ São Paulo), Santos (2010) offers some of the few available data on how the coexistence and interaction of Quilombola communities and animals is configured: All houses have a farmyard for the breeding of some animals.Dogs and cats are among the pets.But there also those animals that may be part of the menu: chickens, ducks, goats, pigs.In some cases, these animals go into the homes, and are constantly being expelled to the farmyard (Santos, 2010, p. 134, my translation).
The Quilombola community of Bombas, located in the municipality of Iporanga/SP, was made up of eighteen families, about sixty-eight people, in 2008 (ISA, 2008).According to Santos, "The houses are distant from each other.They are scattered throughout the territory, in an irregular manner" (Santos, 2010, p. 134, my translation).Each house has its own garden and farm land, the former is left to the care of the women and children and the farm is the responsibility of the men, who are also responsible for the trips to the city and the preparation of the pasture for the animals.The Quilombola community has been involved in a process to recognize and claim the land since 2003, on account of the delicate situation existing between the community and the PETAR: The occupation of the Quilombo region began in the 19th century, due to the settlement of escaped slaves.PETAR was created in 1958, overlapping part of the Quilombo land because it also preserves the way they maintain the soil and the forest….The boundaries of the park overlapped areas used by the community, which from then on started having difficulties to perform their traditional farming activities, known as coivara farming.They also had their animal husbandry areas restricted and were banned from carrying out any exploitation activity 10 .
Before the creation of the state park in Bombas there were goat, chicken and pig breeders -for the production and consumption of meat; and horses -employed in labour and transportation all of which were in a more spontaneous and integrated relation with the Atlantic rainforest 11 .The Quilombolas, who were established there prior to the appropriation of the region by PETAR through the state of São Paulo, were overruled by the Brazilian conservationist rules and thus prohibited from pursuing activities such as hunting and fishing -activities which not only provided food but also tied the Quilombolas to their historical territory.According to Arruda, such governmental measures are mistakes which would have important political implications if avoided: By ignoring the conservationist potential of the culturally differentiated segments that historically have preserved the quality of the areas they occupy, the current environmental policy framework has potentially ignored one of the only suitable ways to achieve the goals it aspires to (Arruda, 2000, p. 288, my translation).
Unlike in Bombas, the Quilombola community of Carmo is surrounded by urban space.The community's origins date back to the seventeenth century, to the farm of Província Carmelitana Fluminense (Carmelite Order).According to Stucchi, "enslaved families experienced relative autonomy in the Carmo Farm, which remained under the administration of the slaves themselves during much of the period in which it was productive" (Stucchi & Ferreira, 2014, p. 94, my translation).A large part of its current 700 inhabitants, distributed over sixty-eaight families (Stucchi & Ferreira, 2009) are therefore descended from the slaves of the old Carmo farm.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, the families of ex-slaves who remained on the lands of the farm, now as tenants, suffered repeated territorial losses.The first decades of the twentieth century already pointed to a long and brutal process of dispossession, based primarily on real estate speculation on account of the arrival of Portuguese and Spanish immigrants in the region and resulting in the construction of high-end gated communities, to which a large part of the Quilombolas community currently provides various domestic services: The mostly black population living in the village of Carmo around the church [former chapel of the Carmo farm] is composed of a population that has no land for agricultural practices and occupies a small area in relation to the number of dwellings it sustains.Many of these residents are employed as caretakers or provide other domestic services in homes that are part of the gated condominium called Patrimônio do Carmo....This scenario reflects the complexity of the land's occupation process in the region, which is currently completed with the existence of available terrains in an area of approximately 400 acres....In this area, owners mean to install lots that still don't exist physically... (Stucchi & Ferreira, 2009, p. 14, my translation).
As such, "although it's a rural district, there are no plantations, crops or trees due to a lack of space and the produce is acquired exclusively through purchase.A few residents keep small pieces of land with cassava in the surrounding areas" (Stucchi & Ferreira, 2009, p. 26).In addition, "the Icarai dam, which was once used for fishing, is fenced off and is in the middle of an infrastructure development for a new nearby venture, a golf course" (Stucchi & Ferreira, 2009, p. 26, my translation).
Residents of Carmo with whom I spoke, as well as residents of neighboring towns such as Vargem Grande Paulista, who are linked to the community -whether by consanguinity or affinity -do not raise animals (pigs, chickens, cattle) but intend to do so as soon as the titling process ends.The previous activities of hunting (in Carmo, of deer, armadillos and coatis) as well as fishing, are now very rare, and people no longer speak much of them.Both fishing and animal husbandry (currently only chickens are raised) are practices that residents of Carmo not only want to redeem, but which they associate with their territory.As many locals informed me, formerly chickens, pigs, goats and even cattle were bred untied in the neighborhood.They also speak little about "wild animals", such as deer, armadillos, guara wolves, howler monkeys, and marmosets, of which they keep their distance -however, such animals are as territorial markers, so to speak; they are like limits of the social space of the neighborhood.In other words, a nature is constructed, and this nature becomes part of the Quilombola territory; the wild animals, then, become bounds of the territory.
In Carmo, breeding animals is tied to territory in the same way as growing crops, humans and Nossa Senhora do Carmo.The relations between them and the people who live there composes and are composed of the very notion of territoriality.As Segata (2012: 60, my translation) reminds us, "this animalist turn in anthropology, [led mainly by Descola, Ingold, Latour and Viveiros de Castro] does not see the animal as provoking a reaction to the social, but as that which also composes it".Animals appear in the residents' speeches mainly in past histories and future plans -for the rescue of animal breeding is a way to rescue their own relations with the territory, and are always thought together with the territory, as subjects that also build and modify social life.
It is important to note that many residents no longer raise animals because of lack of space as their daughters and sons have been forced to build their houses on the same land and the yards have been dwindling.Most of people today in Carmo would like to raise animals again, as their parents and grandparents did, but the lack of space continues to be an impediment.Even though the inhabitants of Carmo are surrounded today by the urban area of São Roque, the possibility is suggested here of a nature that one might want to recover, even though it is physically absent.And it is something they want to recover.There is also an environment that continues to be exploited, both by the advance of urban areas and by environmental accidents -quick could be avoided.In October 2014, for example, one of the trains of América Latina Logística (ALL) that passes through the nearby community of Carmo carrying sugar, derailed and caused environmental damage when part of the load affected the lakes and streams in the region, contaminating the water and making it unfit for human consumption 12 .
I believe that it is based on this somewhat conflicting organization between the rural and urban worlds that we must think about territoriality in Carmo -and in many other communities in Brazil -and, especially, about the relations between humans and animals, since the boundaries between humans and non-humans, especially animals, are constantly in conflict: The animals described as "wild" or as "non-domesticated", however, appear the entire time in cities and metropolitan areas: these are not only spaces of domesticity and cultural control of non-human species...such unexpected encounters evoke, once more, the lability of the borders between the natural and the cultural and the need to rethink classificatory labels to distinguish the rural/natural/animal from the urban/cultural/human (Bevilaqua & Vander Velden, 2016, p. 25, my translation).
What I would suggest in this article, therefore, is the existence -and resistance -of a Quilombola logic of interaction between the symbolic and the material, between the natural and the social and, therefore, between humans and animals, regardless of the land ownership status in which the community finds itself, whether located in a rural or urban area, which constitutes and is constituted by the territoriality.I argue, therefore, that thinking about the human-animal relations in Quilombola communities based on territoriality also allows us to think about how these relationships influence the construction of territoriality itself.
In short, human-animal relationships and territoriality can be thought of together, at least in the contexts of Quilombola communities.Furthermore, I defend here that animals and nature, even if only imagined or remembered, can contribute to the definition of Quilombola territory.The lack of space, either for agricultural production, animal husbandry, hunting or gathering, does not mean the loss of indigenous notions or of a Quilombola system of classifications of nature, nor of traditional techniques for the use and occupation of land and particular ways of relating to the non-humans fauna and flora that once shared the territory with the Quilombola communities.

Concluding remarks
The inter-relationships between Quilombola communities and non-humans, mainly animals, is a subject that has been discussed very little in Brazilian anthropology until recently.At the same time, the ban on the traditional use of land, whether it is imposed by the demarcation of areas of preservation or by the dispossession and invasion of urban space, is one of the largest problems facing the remaining Quilombola communities today, both regarding the maintenance of their way of life and the recognition of their territory by the state.
I believe that anthropological studies investigating interspecies relations and how these are understood by remaining Quilombola communities are urgent, especially as these studies can serve as legal-political instruments for the Quilombola communities regarding the state.The centrality of territoriality for the maintenance of the Quilombola identity has allowed me to make the following reflection: if the territory is as important to the identity construction of a Quilombola community, either in a rural or urban space, then I argue that the land ownership status necessitates redefinitions in the relations between humans and animals, and even in the very concept of nature.
I suggest here that the human/non-human relations certainly impact the definition of territory by the Quilombola communities.And if territoriality is one of the "major factors in the production of an ethnic identity" (Bandeira, 1988, p. 320, my translation), then why would the relations among the Quilombolas and animals not be?I once again state here that human-animal relationships and territoriality can and should be thought of together, at least in the contexts of Quilombola communities.
Finally, I also believe that such studies can raise many promising discussions regarding the relations between nature and culture, a subject that has been dear to anthropology since Lévi-Strauss "...raised the possibility that the relationship could be taken in its singularities, based on the evidence found in the ethnographic work with different societies" (Vander Velden & Badie, 2011, p. 16, my translation), in addition to the relations between humans and animals.
With this article, I hope to have contributed to the relevance of anthropological studies in the tropics, especially in this case in Brazil, noting that studies in regions of South America must reflect the plight of Amerindian populations.The United Nations declaration of an International Day of the Tropics is one that calls for such studies of the peoples, cultures, the animals, nature and territories of the tropics.