Quilombos, the Brazilian Sanctuaries of Maroons
The Martyrs of Freedom
Quilombos were Brazilian hinterland settlements founded by people of African origin, and others sometimes called Carabali. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos, called “quilombolas”, were maroons, a term for escaped slaves. Documentation about refugee slave communities typically uses the term mocambo for settlements, which is an Ambundu word meaning “war camp”. A mocambo is typically much smaller than a quilombo. The term quilombo was not used until the 1670s, and then primarily in the more southerly parts of Brazil. In the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, such villages or camps were called a “palenque”. Its inhabitants were palenqueros. They spoke various Spanish-African-based creole languages such as Palenquero.
Benkos Biohó – Colombia hosted the second largest African slave population in South America, second only to Brazil. The country was also the scene of one of the first black revolutions in the American continent’s history. Its protagonist was Benkos Biohó (late 16th century – 1621), also known as Domingo Biohó, born into a royal family that ruled Biohó, which is today part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, and Angola. The former African king escaped from the slave port of Cartagena in 1599 with ten others and founded San Basilio de Palenque, then known as the “village of the maroons”. On 18 July 1605, the Governor of Cartagena, Gerónimo de Suazo y Casasola, unable to defeat the Maroons, offered a peace treaty to Biohó, recognising the autonomy of the San Basilio de Palenque and accepting his entrance into the city armed and dressed in Spanish fashion. In exchange, the palenque promised to stop receiving more runaway slaves, cease their aid in escape attempts, and stop addressing Biohó as “king”. The treaty was violated by the Spaniards in 1619 when they captured Biohó as he was walking carelessly into the city. He was hanged and quartered on 16 March 1621.
Princess Aqualtune, born in the first half of the 17th century, was from the House of Kwilu of the Kingdom of Kongo, and a descendant of Nimi of the Mpemba Kasi Kingdom and Lukeni Iua Nimi of the Mbata Kingdom of Africa. She was the mother of Ganga Zumba and maternal grandmother of Zumbi of Palmares. According to some sources, she was an African princess and a warrior, the daughter of an unidentified Kongo king. In the second half of the 17th century, she led a force of ten thousand men in the Battle of Mbwila (city located in present-day Angola), between the Kingdom of Kongo and Portugal and was captured with the Congolese defeat. She was then imprisoned and brought to Pernambuco in Brazil and sold as a breeding slave. She became a property of the Porto Calvo mill, where she learned about the Quilombo of Palmares and got impregnated by the males of the farm. In the last months of her pregnancy, she organized an escape to Palmares, where she led a group of 300 people (Maroons, Indians and renegade Whites) to freedom. She reportedly gave birth to Ganga Zumba and Ghana, who became chiefs of two of the most important mocambos in Palmares. Later she also gave birth to Sabina, who would had been the mother of Zumbi, the great leader of Palmares. With her political, organizational and war strategy knowledge, Aqualtune was instrumental in the consolidation of the Black State, the Republic of Palmares.
Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua was born in Djougou (currently in Benin) between 1820 and 1830 in a prominent Muslim trader family. He learned the Quran, literature and mathematics in an Islamic school. For unknown reasons, he was imprisoned and transported to Dahomey, then embarked into a slave ship in 1845 and taken to Pernambuco in Brazil. He worked in Brazil as a captive for about two years and learned Portuguese language. But the cruelty of his Brazilian masters made him resort to alcoholism and attempt suicide. Taken to Rio de Janeiro, Baquaqua was incorporated into the crew of a trade ship that took him to New York in June. He managed to escape from the ship but was imprisoned and sent to Haiti, where he lived with the Reverend Judd, a Baptist missionary. Converted to Christianity and baptized in 1848, Baquaqua returned to the US due to the political instability in Haiti. He studied at the New York Central College in McGrawville for almost three years. In 1854, he moved to Canada and his autobiography was published the same year by Samuel Downing Moore in Detroit.
It is not known what happened to Baquaqua after 1857. He probably had a stint in England and returned later to the American Baptist Free Mission Society to be sent as a missionary to Africa.
His published book is the only known document about the slave trade written by a former Brazilian slave.
Quilombo, the Fight for Freedom
A black life had no value. They could be subjected to most appalling corporal punishment and be killed by the whites for most trivial reason–it never mattered. Wherever slavery flourished, so did resistance. Even under the threat of the whip, slaves tried to carve spaces of autonomy through negotiation and open or disguised rebellion, whether individual or collective. Though the list of forms of resistance is long, one was ubiquitous – flight and the formation of runaway slave communities, known in Brazil as quilombos or mocambos. Slave flight, did not always lead to the formation of quilombos. Fugitives often escaped individually or in small groups and disguised themselves as free or freed blacks or mestizos, especially in larger urban settlements located in or near mining and plantation regions. Escape from a life of slavery was a matter of opportunity. Settlements were formed in areas with dense populations of slaves, like Pernambuco, where the biggest collection of mocambos formed the quilombo that became Palmares. While many quilombos were formed in rural areas such as Palmares, some were formed inside of cities, such as the Quilombo de Leblon inside of Rio de Janeiro.
It is widely believed that the term quilombo establishes a link between settlements and the culture of West Central Africa from where the majority of slaves were forcibly brought to Brazil. During the era of slave trafficking, natives in central Angola, called Imbangala, had created an institution called a kilombo that united various tribes of diverse lineage into a community designed for military resistance.
Many quilombos were located near Portuguese plantations and settlements. To keep their freedom, they were active both in defending against capitães do mato (slave chasers) and being commissioned to recapture other runaway slaves. At the same time, they facilitated the escape of even more enslaved persons.
Despite the atmosphere of cooperation between some quilombos and the surrounding Portuguese settlements, they were almost always eventually destroyed. Seven of 10 major quilombos in colonial Brazil were terminated within two years of formation. Some mocambos that were farther from Portuguese settlements and the later Brazilian cities were tolerated and still exist as towns today, with their dwellers speaking Portuguese Creole languages.
Number of quilombos formed in Brazil between the 17th and 19th centuries, by state
- Amazon Basin 12
- Bahia 35
- Maranhão 5
- Mato Grosso 6
- Minas Gerais 116
Paraíba 4
- Pernambuco 13
- Rio de Janeiro 8
- Rio Grande do Sul 7
- Santa Catarina 3
- São Paulo 23
- Sergipe 17
TOTAL 249
