A luta pelo direito à saúde em Ilha de Maré: concepções locais e estratégias coletivas.

Abstract

The study locates the traditional communities, inhabitants of Ilha de Maré and their socioenvironmental conditions, giving priority to the explanations of the social agents involved in the struggle for changes in the social reality. The perspective of this research is to bring to the debate of social struggles for the right to health voices that are systematically absent from the decision-making processes that define economic and social development projects and health policies in the territories. For that, a methodology is proposed that uses ethnographic instruments to gain an in-depth understanding of the point of view of the communities of Ilha de Maré, establishing their political leaders as interlocutors of the communities, who represent collective subjects involved in social struggles. In this sense, the research focuses on the explanations of community leaders about the health situation and ways to claim the right to health. The territory and the interaction processes between subsistence fishermen are taken as the theoretical basis for the analysis of social struggles, in the macro-structural context in which these struggles erupt. The result is the intertwining of health with territory and territoriality, with environmental justice and with recognition of the citizenship rights of traditional communities. The construction of arguments based on rationalist science is observed to give legitimacy to the health demands of these communities, demonstrating the need for Public Health to rethink its theoretical bases that contribute to the strengthening of social struggles that bring health as an object of demand and new horizons for health policies in Brazil.