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News|Politics

Photos: Black Brazilians in ‘quilombos’ to be counted in census

For the first time in its history, Brazil’s census includes members of communities founded by former enslaved Black people.

BRAZIL ELECTION
On Ilha de Mare, quilombo residents have for generations survived on the hard work of artisanal fishermen and fisherwomen. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
Published On 20 Sep 202220 Sep 2022
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For the first time in its 132-year history, the Brazilian census now under way will count members of so-called “quilombo” communities founded by formerly enslaved Black people who resisted the system of oppression.

On Ilha de Mare, an island with several quilombos off the coast of Salvador, in northeast Brazil, this chance to be counted is one step in a political transformation for which local organisers have long been fighting.

“Being part of the census is a strategy for us, a strategy for resistance and change,” said 52-year-old Marizelha Carlos Lopes, a local activist and fisherwoman on the island, where 93 percent of people identify as Black. “One of our objectives is to escape an intentional invisibility.”

Her friend Eliete Paraguassu, 42, is mounting another front in the strategy. She is the first woman from the island campaigning for a spot in the Bahia state legislature – one of a record number of Black candidates running for state and federal office in Brazil in this October’s elections.

Together, Brazil’s updated census and the rising number of Black candidates are part of a slow reckoning with centuries of slavery that ended only in 1888, making Brazil the last country in the world to abolish the practice.

Quilombos were formed over centuries by enslaved people who escaped forced labour to create isolated, self-subsistence communities in remote forests and mountain ranges or on islands like Ilha de Mare.

Quilombo residents now hope that a proper count of their numbers and more elected voices will open the door to improved social services and guarantees of rights for people and places long left off official maps.

National quilombo association CONAQ has identified nearly 6,000 quilombo territories.

CONAQ head Antonio Joao Mendes said government recognition of the communities gained steam under former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva two decades ago, when the communities won more formal land rights and support for cultural programmes.

Lula’s presidential candidacy this year presents a stark contrast, Mendes said, with incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, who has dismantled many of those programmes and slowed the recognition of additional quilombos.

Bolsonaro was fined 50,000 Brazilian reis ($10,000) in 2017 for insulting quilombo residents, saying “they do nothing” and are “not even good for procreating”. An appeals court threw out the case because he was a federal lawmaker at the time.

BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
A general view of the Praia Grande, on Ilha de Mare near Salvador in northeast Brazil. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
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BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
Joselia Farias Pedro, 57, collects shellfish near Ilha de Mare. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
Marizelha Carlos Lopes's life, like that of many women living on Ilha da Mare, centres around the sea: she collects shellfish at dawn, shucks clams, and cracks crabs for meat that she feeds her family. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
Lopes, 52, a local fisherwoman and environmental activist, holds siri shellfish after taking the meat off them at Quilombo Bananeiras. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
Maria da Conceicao (centre), 62, makes handcrafted baskets while census taker Aissa Freitas, 22, interviews her at Quilombo Praia Grande, Ilha de Mare. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
Men ride horses in the sea at Quilombo Bananeiras, August 24, 2022. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
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BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
Helio dos Santos (left), 30, and Uine Lopes, 26, pull a fishing net into a boat near Ilha de Mare. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
The younger generation of islanders are increasingly aware of the common cause they have with other minorities and marginalised communities in Brazil, says Uine Lopes, 26, as he shows off a tattoo of his grandfather fishing. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
Eliete Paraguassu, 42, who is running for state deputy in Bahia, is the first woman from the island campaigning for a spot in the Bahia state legislature. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]
BRAZIL-ELECTION/RACE
A sticker showing Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and one reading 'Who ordered the killing of Marielle?' in reference to Marielle Franco, a Black city councilwoman in Rio de Janeiro who fought for racial justice and was shot dead in 2018. [Amanda Perobelli/Reuters]


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