Quilombola
A quilombola (Portuguese pronunciation: [kilõˈbɔlɐ]) is an Afro-Brazilian resident of quilombo settlements first established by escaped slaves in Brazil.
Shortly after reaching Brazil, the pregnant Aqualtune escaped with some of her soldiers and fled to the Serra da Bariga region.
The inhabitants used African style forges to make metal plows and scythes to harvest fields of corn, rice and manioc and created agricultural forests of palm and breadfruit.
Palmares and other quilombos during the Quilombola's glory days were surrounded by palisades, camouflaged pits filled with deadly stakes, and paths lined with lacerating caltrops.
But the constant attacks wore down Ganga Zumba, and in 1678 he agreed to stop accepting new slaves and move out of the mountains to safety.
The Mola quilombo consisted of approximately 300 formerly enslaved people and had a high degree of political, social and military organization.
[8] Historians, such as Benedita Pinto and Flávio Gomes, interpret the organisation of the group as an ideal model of resistance to slavery.
Despite this, it was not until 1995 when INCRA drafted Ordinance nº 307/1995, which laid out a formal legal framework for regulations for the titling of quilombo lands,[11] and the Palmares Cultural Foundation began registration of quilombola communities, that the formal process of recognition of quilombo remnant communities and awarding of title began.
However, the ordinance only applied to federally-owned lands, and activists for the quilombo remnant sector experienced greater support from state governments.
In 2001, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed Decree 3.192/2001, which formally empowered the PCF to identify and demarcate quilombola communities but also extended the Milestone thesis to quilombola communities, requiring them to prove that they had maintained ownership of their claimed lands continuously from 1888, when the Lei Áurea was passed, to 1988, when the current constitution came into force.
Approximately forty percent of the twelve million Africans imported to the Americas to be enslaved landed in Brazil in the late 16th century.
[16] On March 3, 2018, Simão Jatene, the governor of Pará, signed a document giving land titles for more than 220,000 hectares of Amazon forest to an isolated community populated by descendants of enslaved people who escaped centuries ago.
"[18] In 2017, during a speech at the Hebraica club, Bolsonaro stated: "If I [become president], there won't be any money for NGOs ... You will not have a centimeter demarcated for indigenous reserves or quilombolas.
"[19] Under Sergio Camargo, a conservative activist appointed by Bolsonaro as chair, the Palmares Cultural Foundation issued far fewer certifications of quilombola communities and territories.
Lula appointed activist João Jorge Rodriguês as chair of the FCP, with over 100 certifications being issued to quilombola community claimants in 2023 and 31 in 2024.
Though Quilombola land rights are secured by the STF for now, the communities still face many obstacles today, like the constitutional amendment PEC 215, which has often been proposed in Congress.
Regional and national organisations working to fight racial discrimination formed an alliance in 1986 that played an important role in the grassroots political action that resulted in Article 68.
Black federal representative Benedita da Silva was the main proponent in Congress of the inclusion of quilombo land rights in the new Constitution, which was drawn up after Brazil's military dictatorship ended in 1986.
[31] The inclusion of quilombo communities in the Constitution was the first recognisable government action towards the reparation of historical injustice against slave descendants.
Throughout the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s, hundreds of black peasant communities in Brazil began the legal process for official recognition.
