QUILOMBOS: A DISPUTE ABOUT LAND — AND RACE

The Economist has a little write-up about the current land dispute for quilombolas in Brazil. From Wikipedia, "A quilombo is a Brazilian hinterland  settlement  founded by people of African origin, Quilombolas, or Maroons. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos were escaped slaves and, in some cases, a minority of marginalised Portuguese, Brazilian aboriginals, Jews and Arabs, and/or other non-black, non-slave Brazilians who experienced oppression during colonization."

Now the Brazilian government is about to give deeds to quilombolas, but that is not happening without controversy.

Benedito da Silva lives in Ivapurunduva, the largest and best known of the quilombos in São Paulo state, with 400 inhabitants. Mr da Silva says that 20 years ago life was difficult, and many people were leaving. Although Ivapurunduva’s main link with the outside world remains a single payphone, it has acquired some roads and people have started to return from nearby towns. It helps that Ivapurunduva is near a cave that bristles with stalactites, bringing tourists who stop off to buy wooden trinkets.

There are 30 such clusters around the town of Eldorado in the Ribeira valley. The Palmares Foundation—named after a quilombo that survived for much of the 17th century in what is now Alagoas state—recognises 1,408 of these groups, which are present in all but three of Brazil’s 27 states. Since the foundation is attached to the Ministry of Culture, this carries some weight. Many of the groups have declared themselves as quilombolas in “festivals of self-definition”, which were held on Brazil’s annual “day of black consciousness”, November 20th, according to Mauricio Reis of the Palmares Foundation.

Some reckon that this has already gone too far. “It is dividing Brazil into nations of colour,” says Onyx Lorenzoni, a federal deputy from Rio Grande do Sul state. The land affected by the law in the Senate amounts to 1m hectares (2.5m acres), says Mr Lorenzoni, so its progress is of concern to Congress’s rural landowners’ block and to property developers. 

Affirmative anticipation: A dispute over land becomes an argument about race 

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