“Minha mãe era negra, meu pai branco, nós morenos”: relatos biográficos de descendentes de barbadianos no Amazonas

Abstract

The beginning of the 20th century was marked by intense human mobility, a period of great migrations. At that time, Brazil received immigrants from several countries, including Barbados, an island in the British Caribbean. To narrate this moment, this thesis is inscribed in the intersection of the human and social sciences, which dialogue with each other and are mutually enriched within a topic that is linked to human mobility. Through which I discuss what is presented here in a frontier position between these fields of knowledge, where I debate the theme of immigration, identities, and biographical account with researchers of Caribbean history and migrations. Barbadian immigrants arrived in Brazil at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, as workers hired by foreign companies that operated in Brazilian territory, originating from the Caribbean Island of Barbados. Most of them were hired to work on the construction of the Madeira-Mamoré Railroad, in Porto Velho (RO), but at the end of the works on that railroad, some of them remained in Porto Velho, while others were destined for Manaus and Belém. The sources of this thesis were interviews with representatives of families descending from Barbadians, adding to them I read and analyzed documents to compose the historical part of the thesis. Due to the social distance caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, I applied the use of a methodology called netnography, as part of the interviews were obtained through Social Distance. After the field, I analyzed the interviews and documents, which led to the conclusion that the descendants of Barbadians who live in Manaus are experiencing a moment of returning to their origins, seeking to understand the formation of their ethnic-cultural identities.