Kilombo

Throughout this continent, many names were used to identify the social, political and military organizations with undeniably African roots built by these peoples in diaspora. Some of them were: cimarron, palenque, rochela, mocambo, magote, cumbé, coito, ladeira and in Brazil, the one that became best known, quilombo. The primary need to rescue their humanity and regain their freedom was the initial impetus for enslaved Africans to form quilombos in Brazil.
 
By treating Africans as merchandise and exploiting their labor power through slave relationships, Europeans discovered this almost infinite source of wealth in the 15th century. Brazil quickly became the main destination for these dehumanized people, and the Mbundo region (located in the south of Angola today) was the main target of Portuguese raids at the time.

Among the peoples encountered, attacked and enslaved by the Portuguese were the “Imbangala”, also known as the “Jagas”. The imbangalas were a warlike and nomadic people who lived basically by plundering the peoples they attacked. These people adopted an oscillating position with regard to the enslavement implemented by the Portuguese, either resisting it or contributing to the supply of Africans from other peoples in commercial exchanges. For these people, Kilombo was a specific military social formation that was organized and maintained during periods when they were at war, in which case the term kilombo also referred to the location of these conflicts. Other meanings of this word were related to the initiation ritual for the subject to integrate into the people, to the sacred place of this initiation or to the initiate himself. In Brazil, Kilombo came to refer to the camps of runaway slaves. And in the colonial period, these organizations were so important that they could be considered the first attempt to build autonomous sovereignty over the Portuguese metropolis in this territory, with the exception of the societies of the original peoples.
 
In the colonial and empire periods, Brazil could be classified as a collection of quilombos. This is due to the immense and varied number of these organizations of African origin in these periods. In this sense, it is no exaggeration to say that the quilombo is a historical constant in this country and that its importance has not yet been satisfactorily revealed, despite the progress made with research in recent decades.

Quilombos could range from small armed groups to large complexes with up to 20,000 inhabitants, like Palmares. They were organized defensively, but often carried out offensives in search of products for survival or new members for their community. It is also important to note that the quilombolas did not live in isolation. In addition to having a diverse internal public made up mainly of those marginalized by colonial/imperial society, there was also contact with fugitives, criminals, indigenous peoples, some traders and producers. As such, the quilombo developed its own dynamic despite the attacks and threats from the power of the dominant society.
 
The dynamics of quilombo society often created links between its internal population and other black people (enslaved or not) in urban centers to carry out revolts and uprisings against the slave system. These articulated actions also took place with enslaved people in the slave quarters to carry out escapes or direct attacks on the masters and/or their exploitative administrative structure.

With all this, the quilombo's influence had a wider reach than its closest networks of relations, and the colonial and imperial hegemonic society itself had to shape itself to guarantee its political and economic interests, thus constituting the repressive and ideological slave apparatuses.
 
It was in the 19th century that the quilombo came to be seen as a symbolic reference in the struggle against oppression, especially for the abolition of the slave system and later against racism in general. It was in this way, as a symbol of the struggle of the black people, that the quilombo arrived in the 20th century. In the small towns in the interior of the states, the rural communities furthest from the urban centers became black rural communities. In the big cities and capitals, these black communities closer to the urban centers gradually became slums. In both cases, there is a marked African presence in their ways of life, even if they are crossed (often violently) by Westernization. It is therefore quite common to see the presence of religions of African origin such as Candomblé and Umbanda, as well as cultural phenomena with African roots such as capoeira and samba, for example. The reference to the quilombo as a utopian goal was one of the main foundations for the resurgence of the black movement in the 1970s as the reconstruction of the collective political subject.

Photo: Lanne Araujo