The Brazilian quilombo: ‘race’, community and land in space and time

Abstract

More than a century after the abolition of slavery in Brazil, the term ‘quilombo’ continues to evolve new meanings, not all of them associated with its common definition as a runaway slave community. In this article, I discuss the significance of quilombo in its diverse social, political and historical contexts, demonstrating how changes in the uses and meanings of the term reveal broader trans-historical, juridical, political and metaphorical processes. I argue that quilombola communities should not be conceptualized as a racial category, but rather as a system of social organization and a right. Specifically, I show how the term quilombola is currently a way actors identify with Afro-descendants in order to achieve political recognition. I also describe how contemporary practices involving quilombos reveal historical tensions over land conflicts between historically marginalized rural black communities, private interests and governmental authority. I draw on evidence from field research in southern Brazil to illustrate my understanding of how quilombos work.

Keywords:

• black rural communities
• quilombos
• ethnic identity
• nationalism
• collective land rights

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Rebecca Tarlau and Anthony Pahnke, for their excellent work organizing this collection. I also want to thank my colleagues Mauricio Pardo, Diana Brown and Mario Bick for our discussions about the ideas in this contribution, and for help making the necessary adjustments with my wording on concepts in English.

Notes

¹The corresponding words in Portuguese are: castanheiros, ribeirinhos, faxinais, quilombolas. The translations above fail to capture their meaning in Portuguese. The territorial designations for each group are the following: ‘terras soltas', ‘terras de santos', ‘terras de preto', ‘terras de parentes'. Loosely translated, respectively, these designations are ‘land of the free', ‘holy land', ‘land of the blacks' and ‘land of parents'.

²In anthropology, for example, these studies include Silva (1996), Almeida (2005, 2008), O'Dwyer (1992, 2002, 2012), Arruti (2006).

³In a recent trip to Angola, I came across a newly created district, close to Universidade Agostinho Neto, named ‘Kilamba'. I found that 'kilamba' was the codename of the war leader Agostinho Neto, who understood the term as representative of courage and military leadership. The famous Portuguese historian Cadornega, based in Angola in the seventeenth century, described and made a drawing of a ‘quilumbo’, a ritual with fire for the initiation of young warriors. From the colonial period to today, this word has been common in Brazil, used to name neighborhoods, city streets.

⁴Document from the ABA Thematic Group ‘Rural Black Communities,’ published as a letter after a conference realized on 17–18 October 1994, in Rio de Janeiro (ABA 1996, 81–82).

⁵Those considered to be traditional populations are: quilombolas, ciganos, caiçaras, ribeirinhos, geraizeiras (inhabitants of the inland), pantaneiras and quebradeiras de côco, among others.

⁶In 2005, a public action was taken by two federal agencies, INCRA and the Palmares Cultural Foundation, to support the establishment of the Silva Family Quilombola Association, in the capital city of Porto Alegre. This was the first officially recognized urban quilombo in Brazil. The judge made his decision by arguing for the need ‘to assure the protection of those who have resisted for a long time and fought for their survival in the margins of the established order'. The open language of this court decision has allowed for the possibility of quilombola territories to be established in urban as well as rural areas. Thus, quilombo rights have now become central to the territorial politics in both rural and urban Brazil, re-shaping the struggle for land and the recognition of alternative social and cultural practices.

Additional information

Ilka Boaventura Leite is a professor in the Anthropology Department at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. She is the founder of NUER (Research Nucleus in the Studies of Identities and Interethnic Relations). She was trained as a historian (Federal University of Minas Gerais, 1980) and an anthropologist (University of São Paulo, 1986). Her post-doctoral work was at the University of Chicago (1997) and at the New University of Lisbon (2007). Her research is situated in the areas of anthropology, the literature on travel, interethnic relations, afro-Brazilian ethnicity, culture and black identity, quilombos, and art and ethnicity.