A ALIMENTAÇÃO ESCOLAR NAS ESCOLAS PANTANEIRAS DO MUNICÍPIO DE AQUIDAUANA/MS SOB O OLHAR DOS ESTUDOS CULTURAIS: DESAFIOS, MEMÓRIAS E NARRATIVAS

Abstract

School feeding is a right of all students enrolled in the public school system, guided by the National School Feeding Program of the Ministry of Education, aimed at the transfer of resources from the union to the states and municipalities for the acquisition of foodstuffs that will make up the school menu, and must be healthy and adequate, satisfying nutritional needs, ensuring physical and intellectual development, with equal access, respecting the biological differences between ages, regionality, culture, health conditions and those who are socially vulnerable. Aquidauana is a municipality in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, located in the Pantanal region, and in 2024 the municipality was responsible for a public school network of 4,280 students, 212 of whom were distributed among four schools located within farms in the Pantanal, the so-called Pantanal Schools. These schools are alternatives for access to education for the children of farm workers in the region. The distance from the municipality to the schools and between the farms varies from 50 to 160 km and, therefore, in some schools the students are housed in a boarding regime, and those who go daily need to wake up very early, arriving at school hungry due to the distance from home, an occasion in which food becomes more than necessary. The general objective of the research was to verify the existence of a Pantanal food culture and its presence in the food of these schools. And as a specific objective, to analyze data related to food in these school units, as well as the memories and narratives of the education workers involved in the process, of the students and their families, living on the farms in the interior of the Pantanal of Mato Grosso do Sul, in the region of Aquidauana, under the eyes of cultural studies. The methodological procedures included bibliographic surveys, field diary, field observation, application of a guiding questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and compilation of memories and narratives from oral sources. For data analysis, a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach was used. The qualitative analysis focused on memories and narratives, while the quantitative analysis was based on the measurement of the interviewees' responses. As a conclusion, it was possible to identify that in the environment where the Pantanal people live, students, parents and cooks do not recognize the foods sent by the education department and that are part of the menu, as part of the Pantanal culture and food identity, and that they are not given the opportunity to speak, nor to listen, to be able to help compose the menu with foods that have meaning and representation for the community, therefore, the existing public policies that guarantee their rights in relation to school feeding are not complied with.