Coletiva Mulheres da Quebrada: Collective care practices as resistance strategies against interconnected systems of oppression

Abstract

This article is grounded in a doctoral dissertation that emerged from ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Quebrada Women's Collective, a movement located in the Aglomerado da Serra, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. It reflects on how these women, living amid interconnected structures of power and oppression, mobilize forms of resistance through a self - defined and intersectional approach based on practices of collective care, rooted in ancestral knowledge. This movement challenges the unequal power dynamics that transfer the bulk of the exploitation and overburden of care work to Black and peripheral women, contrasting with the lack of care experienced by these women themselves. The collective care practices mobilized by this movement subvert dualistic and dichotomous logics, alleviating the (over)burden and calling attention to the potential for democratizing and politicizing care practices, starting from localized, embodied and racialized engagements.