Organização Mutirão
- Location
- Natal, Rio Grande do Norte
- Backed in
- 2012
- Covered areas
- Human Rights and Civic Engagement
Dignidade Humana em Ação
In the 1960s, residents of the Acauã Quilombo (a community of afro-descendants originally formed by escaped slaves) were forced from their homes without compensation by the construction of the Poço Branco Dam. The nearby community of Sagi was also ultimately destroyed by the construction of a bridge which prevented high tide and fish from entering the mangrove forests, leading to the death of the mangroves, home to the crabs which formed the basis of the Sagi economy.
Organização Mutirão promotes human rights through collective action of historically repressed ethnic groups. The project, Human Dignity in Action, will fight for human rights and reparations for social, territorial and environmental injustices suffered by Acauã and surrounding indigenous communities.
*Mutirão derives from a tupi word for a community collectively building something, like a home, or engaging in some other collective effort. Rather than an abstract concept like collectivism or solidarity, a mutirão is a tangible, practiced event.