Cota não é esmola: análise da eficácia social da Lei nº 12.711/2012 para estudantes indígenas na Universidade Federal da Paraíba

Abstract

Since the beginning of Portuguese colonization, indigenous policies have been guided by the coercion, subjugation and imposition of European culture, through the catechi-zation and mischaracterization of indigenous peoples as a socially differentiated group. In the colonial, imperial and early republican periods, the official discourse predicted and yearned for the disappearance of the Indians, through the extinction and / or as-similation of the remnants to national society, to the point of becoming invisible in the first constitutional texts. The Federal Constitution of 1988 transformed this paradigm, replacing the political model based on the notions of tutelage and assistance with a model that affirms ethnic plurality, allowing for more and more intense dialogues in all fields, including the Academy. The expressive increase in affirmative action at public universities promoted, among other things, a significant change in the social profile of students, with the increasing presence of minorities previously excluded from this level of education, culminating in the edition of the Quota Law. In this context, the research seeks to reflect on two sets of questions. First, we present a historical review and an overview of Brazilian indigenous policies, assessing how the Quota Law was imple-mented at UFPB, drawing a parallel with MIRV, an affirmative action at the domestic level, and its impacts on indigenous students. Then, considering the categories ac-cess, permanence and academic success, we seek to give a voice to the indigenous students of UFPB, observing the specificities of successful students, understood as those who manage to prosper in graduation, despite so many obstacles experienced in a teaching institution to the heirs of a social elite (BOURDIEU, 2014), proving that a sociology of the improbable (XYPAS, 2017) is possible, if it is enough to promote an epistemological interaction, an ecology of knowledge (SANTOS, 2010, 2010a).