Quilombolas: The Afro Brazilians serving as guardians of the forests

“When the speculators arrived, they said everything was theirs,” Marilda De Souza Francisco still remembers. From her family home, surrounded by sumptuous vegetation, the griotte (African storyteller) from the Santa Rita do Bracui Quilombo slowly revives images from the past. Her community began to be expropriated during the military dictatorship in the 1970s, when there was an explosion of seaside tourism in Brazil. Located on the Costa Verde, the Atlantic coast between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, this is where the Brazilian elite has established its “Hamptons”: luxurious accommodation with private access to a crystal-clear sea. And a privileged view of the Atlantic rainforest, the country's second-biggest tropical forest. 

To welcome these new arrivals, the Rio-Santos highway was built and the inhabitants who lived on the coast were gradually dislodged. They took refuge in the heights of the forest, joining other parts of their group.

“The quilombolas tried to go to court collectively to defend their land, but we lost,” says De Souza Francisco with a sad smile.

The Porto Marina Bracuhy condominium now stands where their homes used to be, a real estate complex of second homes with a private harbour where dozens of yachts are anchored.

Violation of land rights

Their history dates back to the 19th century. Santa Rita do Bracui was then the name of a sugar cane and coffee plantation owned by Commander Jose de Souza Breves. As a member of a powerful Portuguese slave-owning family, he held hundreds of Black Africans captive to cultivate his fields. After the slave trade was banned in 1831, he also participated in trading them illegally. When he died in 1879, he left all of his land, which was no longer productive, to his slaves. Since then, their descendants have remained there and formed a black, rural community: a quilombo.

“Around 3,475 quilombos exist in Brazil and each one has a different history,” explains historian Martha Abreu. A number of them emerged from marronage, an organised escape by slaves to remote territories. Others stemmed from revolts by the oppressed against their executioners. Many are simply places where Black Africans and their descendants decided to stay and live after slavery was abolished.

Despite this, they all have one thing in common: “They are places of Black resistance for the right to land and its preservation,” Abreu says. Whether they are in the forest, the countryside or the city, almost all quilombos are threatened by the Brazilian farming lobby. Real estate and agricultural entrepreneurs, and even tourism professionals, covet these “empty” lands, which are often located in remote areas. And to obtain them, some resort to violence.

Since 2013, the National Coordination of Quilombo Articulation (Conaq), has registered around 30 quilombolas who were murdered because of land conflicts. In August 2023, Mother Bernadete, the organisation's national coordinator, was shot 12 times and killed while fighting against land speculation in her quilombo. Members of communities such as Rio Preto (Tocantins state in northern Brazil) and Jacarezinho (Maranhao state in northern Brazil) are also regularly victims of intimidation and physical attacks aimed at making them abandon their ancestral land. 

The importance of titles for Quilombos

Article 68 of the Brazilian Constitution (1988) recognises the land rights of quilombolas in these terms: "The remaining quilombo communities that occupy their lands are recognised as having definitive ownership of them, and the State must issue them respective titles." The titles in question make it possible to legally prevent land speculation in quilombos and to sanction any attempted intrusions.

After 24 years of waiting and numerous incursions onto its territory, a title deed was conferred on the residents of the Santa Rita do Bracui Quilombo on July 26. Brazil recognised the property rights of people of African origin living in quilombos some 34 years ago. But it's a long administrative process that explains why only 147 of the 3,475 quilombos in the country have titles, fueling the greed of land speculators.

Since his return to power, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has begun certifying around eight indigenous and four quilombo territories, compared to none during the four years under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. The change in governance gives hope to traditional peoples in Brazil that their rights to land will be recognised and the ecosystems they protect sustainably preserved.