The contested nature of Afro-descendant quilombo land claims in Brazil

Abstract

In Brazil, Afro-descendant quilombola communities were for the first time in history recognised as legal rights-holders to land in the 1988 constitution – 100 years after the abolition of slavery. Drawing on fieldwork in the quilombo Bombas in the state of São Paulo, and a review of relevant literature, this contribution explores the historical trajectory of the constitutional quilombo provision and how it has been translated into practice. Combining a discussion of the use of self-identification and the concepts of ‘regulation’, ‘force’, ‘market’ and ‘legitimation’ when analysing the dynamics of access and exclusion, we show how struggles over land are simultaneously enacted in controversies over the meanings of quilombola identity and its implications.

Keywords:

• access
• Afro-descendants
• Brazil
• exclusion
• land struggles
• quilombola identity

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the inhabitants of Bombas for accepting this research, for their hospitability and time, and for providing crucial insight into the case. We are also indebted to inhabitants of other quilombos in the Ribeira Valley who participated in this research, as well as other key informants. Furthermore, we are grateful for the help provided by Nilto Tatto at the socioenvironmental NGO Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) and the rest of the staff of the Ribeira Valley Programme. Lastly, we would like to thank Rose Rurico Saco and Cicero Augusto at ISA’s geoprocessing laboratory for making the figure.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Estimates from the National Coordination of Quilombola Communities (CONAQ).

2 Certification is issued by the Palmares Cultural Foundation (FCP), named after the most famous of the seventeenth-century quilombos, while land titles are emitted by the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) and land agencies at the state level (Farfán-Santos 2015). The 167 land titles regularise 762,535 hectares (CPI-SP 2017). The total land area of Brazil is a little over 850 million hectares.

3 Afro-Latin America is, however, still considered to be ‘relatively understudied’ (Busdiecker 2015; 174).

4 Following Ribot and Peluso, we have here chosen to use the term mechanisms as shorthand for means and powers of access and exclusion.

5 In the English-speaking West Indies and Guyana maroons has been used with reference to fugitive slaves, as well as their descendants (Mintz 1985); in Spanish, cimarrones. Along the Spanish-speaking Caribbean coast of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, the term garifuna has been used to refer to Afro-descendants. In Colombia and Ecuador, palenques referred to (fortified) villages of runaway slaves (Halpern and Twine 2000; Escobar 2008).

6 Schwartz (1992) traces the etymology of both mocambo and quilombo to the Angolan KiMbundu language, where mukambo may refer to a hideout, while kilombo could refer to a ‘warrior settlement’ or circumcision camp for a male initiation society.

7 The quilombola movement also continues to struggle for affirmative action and the combat of racism together with the black movement (Cardoso and Gomes 2011).

8 The day has been celebrated since the 1960s, but was only officially established in 2003 and approved in 2011.

9 Both the self-identification principle and the concept of occupied lands in decree 4.887/2003 are in line with the International Labour Organisation's Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, ratified by Brazil in 2002. Here quilombolas fall under the category of ‘tribal peoples’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kjersti Thorkildsen

Kjersti Thorkildsen has a PhD in international environment and development studies from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). Her background is in ecology, natural resource management and development studies with a research focus on local peoples’ struggles for rights and resources. Her doctoral research examined Afro-descendant quilombolas’ contestation of conservation and development projects in the Ribeira Valley, Brazil. Email: [email protected]

Randi Kaarhus

Randi Kaarhus has in the period 2014–2017 been a professor of anthropology at Nord University, Northern Norway, and is currently taking up a professor position at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). She has done research in South America and south-eastern Africa, and has published on land rights, access to and conflicts over natural resources, livelihood strategies, food and gender. Email: [email protected]