{"id":223214,"date":"2016-08-23T15:34:34","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T18:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/?p=223214"},"modified":"2016-08-24T17:07:35","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T20:07:35","slug":"the-quilombo-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-quilombo-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"The quilombo economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Slaves

Victor Frond \u2013 Lithograph by Paris artists, 1861, Paris, Lemercier, imprimeur-lithographe. Guita and Jos\u00e9 Mindlin Library of Brasiliana<\/span><\/a> Slaves leaving their quarters and heading into the fields in 1861: agricultural work was an apprenticeship in how to support a quilombo financiallyVictor Frond \u2013 Lithograph by Paris artists, 1861, Paris, Lemercier, imprimeur-lithographe. Guita and Jos\u00e9 Mindlin Library of Brasiliana<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Nearly 5,000 black rural communities in Brazil today trace their origins to one of the former settlements of runaway slaves known as quilombos<\/i><\/em>, according to a study by researcher Fl\u00e1vio dos Santos Gomes. When Gomes set about following the thread that links Brazil\u2019s present to its past as a slaveholding society, he discovered a gap of 100 years, from the abolition of slavery in 1888 to 1988, when Brazil\u2019s new Constitution lent these communities visibility by formalizing the expression \u201cdescended from quilombos<\/i><\/em>.\u201d Gomes, who is a historian and professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), has been studying slavery since the early 1990s. He explains that the usual sources on the topic, like criminal cases, police records, and newspaper reports, \u201ctalked about quilombos<\/i><\/em> and attempts to destroy them and capture their inhabitants\u201d but not about how they survived.<\/p>\n

\u201cI decided to go at it from another perspective,\u201d says Gomes. \u201cI started studying black rural communities across the country \u2013 their origins and transformations, especially in the post-abolition period. I saw it would be possible to assess the formation of a black peasantry in Brazil.\u201d The product of his endeavor is Mocambos e quilombos \u2013 Uma hist\u00f3ria do campesinato negro no Brasil<\/i><\/em> (Mocambos<\/i><\/em> and quilombos<\/i><\/em>: A history of the black peasantry in Brazil), recently released by Companhia das Letras. The book is based mainly on Gomes\u2019s study \u201cCartografias da plantation<\/i><\/em>: demografia, cultura material e arqueologia da escravid\u00e3o e do p\u00f3s-emancipa\u00e7\u00e3o do Brasil\u201d (Cartographies of the plantation: the demographics, material culture, and archaeology of slavery and the post-emancipation period in Brazil), a research project that he is conducting at the UFRJ Institute of History with the support of the US Guggenheim Foundation, the Rio de Janeiro Research Foundation (FAPERJ), and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). The book features a list of all remaining quilombo <\/i><\/em>communities in Brazil.<\/p>\n

Commerce turned out to be the link between past and present. It has generally been held that mocambos<\/i><\/em> and quilombos<\/i><\/em> \u2013 both terms apply to the same phenomenon but were used in different periods and places \u2013 were isolated strongholds of runaway slaves who produced only for their own consumption. \u201cThe whole time, these communities had connections with agents from the surrounding society, like innkeepers, grocers, and networks of merchants,\u201d says Gomes. \u201cThey formed interwoven agrarian clusters, and their surplus production supplied local networks of farms and ranches, villages, open-air markets, and trading posts.\u201d These business transactions in turn spurred religious and cultural exchanges and ethnic miscegenation.<\/p>\n

\"Women

Victor Frond \u2013 Lithograph by Paris artists, 1861, Paris, Lemercier, imprimeur-lithographe. Guita and Jos\u00e9 Mindlin Library of Brasiliana | Reproduction Renato Parada<\/span><\/a> Women slaves preparing food during coffee harvest in the 19th centuryVictor Frond \u2013 Lithograph by Paris artists, 1861, Paris, Lemercier, imprimeur-lithographe. Guita and Jos\u00e9 Mindlin Library of Brasiliana | Reproduction Renato Parada<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The economic activity that was practiced by quilombos<\/i><\/em> and that basically survives on today\u2019s descendant communities traces its roots to a unique feature of Brazilian slavery: the custom of masters granting their slaves small holdings or giving them one or two days a week to grow crops for their own sustenance. This was a way slave owners found to lighten the economic load of supporting their captives \u2013 but they had other motives as well, like wanting to instill a \u201clove of the land\u201d and thus discourage insurrection and mass escapes. In this respect, the tactic had the opposite effect: when slaves acquired the habit of farming and mastered agricultural skills, including how to market surpluses, they were inspired to escape and build a life sustained by working the land. \u201cThe farm economy was also vital to the formation of families and the creation of a measure of financial autonomy, although the logic was the opposite of the monocultural plantation economy,\u201d says Maria Helena Machado, professor with the Department of History, University of S\u00e3o Paulo School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences (FFLCH-USP), and specialist in the social history of slavery.<\/p>\n

Attack and defense<\/b><\/strong>
\nIn the 1970s, historian Ciro Flamarion Cardoso (1942-2013) and US anthropologist Sidney Mintz (1922-2015) analyzed the experience of farming on Brazilian slaveholding plantations. Cardoso refers to this phenomenon as \u201cprotopeasantry\u201d or \u201cpeasant breach.\u201d In the opinion of Gomes, who explored the issue in his book A hidra e os p\u00e2ntanos<\/i><\/em> (The Hydra and the swamps) (Unesp\/Polis, 2005), these terms reflect an underestimation of how owner permission for slaves to farm plots of land contributed to forging an autonomous black peasantry. These scholars also failed to grasp the extent of continuity, reflected in the survival of communities even today. \u201cFl\u00e1vio Gomes\u2019s research is important because it ties farming experience to the quilombo<\/i><\/em>, and the quilombo<\/i><\/em> to the peasant community,\u201d observes Machado.<\/p>\n

\"Workers

Eduardo Cesar<\/span>Workers transport produce…Eduardo Cesar<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Quilombos<\/i><\/em> date back to at least 1575, when the existence of a mocambo<\/i><\/em> was first recorded in Bahia. Gomes believes they appeared so early because there was no more efficacious form of protest against slavery than escape. \u201cMany collective escapes were preceded by uprisings or riots,\u201d the historian says. Never completely stationary, quilombos<\/i><\/em> counted on having safe havens in hard-to-reach places like mountains, caves, forests, and mangrove swamps. Given the enormous financial damage wrought by the loss of manpower, plantation owners would send mercenaries and troops out to capture fugitive slaves, but this did not keep the communities of runaways from growing in number. \u201cThe establishment of a quilombo<\/i><\/em> attracted repressive forces, just as it attracted more escapees,\u201d says Gomes. Additionally, quilombo<\/i><\/em> inhabitants would arm themselves with homemade weapons or pistols and shotguns that had been stolen or ceded by trading partners and go off on expeditions, enticing captives to flee or even kidnapping them to boost the size of their fugitive community. Coordinated efforts by quilombo<\/i><\/em> residents and slaves on large plantations sparked a rebellion on a plantation in Santana, Bahia, in 1789. A series of uprisings unfolded through 1828 and, according to Gomes, a peasant economy of black runaway slaves emerged during this period.<\/p>\n

Quilombos<\/i><\/em> were usually surrounded by trenches and sharp stakes, but their inhabitants did not simply take defensive action. \u201cCircumstances of time and place turned some quilombos<\/i><\/em> into guerrilla units that sowed fear across plantations,\u201d the researcher says. The most effective and profitable means of protection, however, was to form a network of economic partners, including other small farmers, prospectors, fishermen, peddlers, small shop owners, native Brazilians, and army deserters, along with slaves who had purchased their own freedom from their masters. The firewood that supplied the Imperial Court in the state of Rio de Janeiro in the 1870s was produced in quilombos<\/i><\/em> located in mangrove swamps along the Igua\u00e7u River and was sold by recently freed slaves.<\/p>\n

\"...and

Eduardo Cesar<\/span>…and harvest rice at Morro Seco quilombo in S\u00e3o Paulo in 2015Eduardo Cesar<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cQuilombos<\/i><\/em> continued to multiply, even after slavery ended, but they were no longer mentioned in police documents or newspaper reports,\u201d says Gomes. Immediately following enactment of the Golden Law (Lei \u00c1urea<\/i><\/em>), which abolished slavery, \u201c[quilombos<\/i><\/em>] continued to move, disappear, emerge, and fade away within the tangled knot of forms of peasantry in Brazil,\u201d while still interacting and mixing with their surroundings. Gomes believes that the post-abolition invisibility of quilombos<\/i><\/em> can be ascribed to population and farm censuses, which used unclear, inconsistent criteria for classifying race and color and also failed to classify economic activities \u201cbetween family farming, seasonal labor, and extractive activities.\u201d Furthermore, early 20th-century black rural communities were often forced to move because of living or working arrangements. Their chief source of support continued to be the sale of agricultural products. \u201cMany communities would make flour and, as in the past, sell part of their output,\u201d says Gomes.<\/p>\n

Anthropologist Neusa Gusm\u00e3o, a retired professor from the School of Education at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), lends less credence to the notion of strict continuity between clusters of runaway slaves and today\u2019s black rural communities. \u201cWe can\u2019t say for certain that the origins of today\u2019s black peasantry lie in the former quilombos<\/i><\/em>,\u201d says Gusm\u00e3o, who has researched and written about rural black culture. \u201cThe current designation \u2018quilombo<\/i><\/em>\u2019 reflects a reshaping of the term, which sees [quilombos<\/i><\/em>] as tied to the land and to unique cultural practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gusm\u00e3o agrees, however, that these groups were \u201calmost completely\u201d invisible to \u201cboth society at large and academia\u201d in the 1970s and 1980s. The Constitution of 1988 represented only one stage in enhancing their visibility, which was also attributable to refined methods of demographic research. That same year, the events and protests organized in remembrance of the 100th anniversary of abolition brought attention to the question of quilombos<\/i><\/em> and their relation to black identity. It was much the same in 1995, the 300th anniversary of the death of Zumbi, leader of Palmares, Brazil\u2019s most famous quilombo<\/i><\/em>. According to Gomes, organizations like the Palmares Cultural Foundation \u2013 which, as an agency of the Ministry of Culture, recognizes and certifies communities descended from quilombos<\/i><\/em> \u2013 have played an important role. Academic scholarship in various fields has also \u201chelped social movements establish ties with these communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Book<\/em>
\nGOMES, F. S. Mocambos e quilombos \u2013 Uma hist\u00f3ria do campesinato negro no Brasil<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2015, 238 pp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trade of farm surplus continue today at black rural communities","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[241,261],"coauthors":[137],"class_list":["post-223214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-history","tag-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223214"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=223214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}