Elizabete,
President of the Morro Alto-Maquiné Quilombo Community Association |
Elizabete is 64 years old, lost her father when she was five and was encouraged by her illiterate, widowed mother of six children to get an education. She and her brothers worked in the fields and as cleaners of beach houses for a livelihood. Now retired, she remembers fondly her profession as a teacher, which gained her recognition beyond the community, making her a person of reference in the municipality as to what it is to be a quilombola. Transiting between memories of scenes of police violence in the yard of her home, offers of work which disregarded her qualifications, but not her colour, lack of official data about her community, and the desires and actions for social justice in the community’s future. Her children do not live exclusively in the quilombo. Like other young people, they have left in search of employment. |
The great majority are outside... they leave looking for work. Because the municipality doesn’t have work for everyone. So our own children go to other municipalities or other states looking for work. But they never lose our quilombola bond, because it is our customs, our values, our identity. And there’s one thing that I call very important, which is our blood ties… So, that’s because those ties are scattered. It’s not just within the community, not just the coexisting inside that piece of territory we find ourselves on. It goes beyond that. The feeling identifies us a lot. And we are survivors of a struggle, because to me, being a quilombola is being able to identify with a certain community. And to this day we are after our identity, we are after our light, looking for better days, because - as incredible as it may seem - we are invisible. |
Francisca,
quilombola leader, Osório |
Also in a leadership role is Francisca, Preta do Maçambique, ceremonial Queen Ginga, a leading character in the Maçambique celebrations. She lives in Osório, where the quilombola territory is not recognised. Born at Morro Alto in the 1960s, she tells us how she left the territory, not from choice. Her history crosses issues of gender and violence, combines the importance of female ancestry, orality and religiosity in the transmission of values of what it is to be a quilombola. During the COVID-19 vaccination process, she experienced the community that goes beyond celebration and stressed that the vaccine process brought out other issues experienced by her community. |
People had to leave this community. Not because it was their choice, but necessary to survive. We lived on top of the hill and with the quarrying, because of the dynamite, our lives were at risk, there was no way we could stay on the hill top.
I spent a long time leaving, leaving the community, before I recognised myself again [as a quilombola] |
Lélia,
quilombola leader, Morro Alto, Maquiné |
Lélia, in addition to leading the process of preparing meals during the filming, told us of the hunger that marked her childhood. At 59, her words depict the pains in her body today from the kind of work she has done in the fields since childhood. Although trained as a nursing technician, she opted to work in the school canteen. Lélia is also the daughter of the community’s oldest resident. Her father, marked by the struggle for the territory and arrested during the dictatorship, was also the main reason for her hospital discharge when she fell ill with COVID-19. |
We were very poor and had a neighbour where we used to go to get pigswill. And the situation was so difficult that there was no meat and we had no meat, so sometimes they threw it away and we went and washed it and ate it. My sister said: Why tell other people about something like that? But it’s our life, it was our life.
It’s a root that comes in your blood, because to this day, like, when you try to think that it’s something that has passed , but to this day, when I remember the people who had it rough, look, it seems to me like I’m still taking a beating today.
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Edite,
quilombola leader, Ribeirão, Maquiné |
Edite was the first to have tears recorded by the cameras. Emotions overflowed even during camera focus setting. At 78 years old, this retired teacher talked to us about the importance of her aunt Aurora in keeping history alive and showed concern when she told us that today many people doubt what is said about the past. She also said memorable things about the importance of community meetings and her pride in being recognised today as a quilombola. |
I fight, I participate... in the quilombola meetings and I was one of the first to form the group, get people together, make coffee, make cake and bring people together in my house or often in my family, at the club, at Ribeirão Soccer Club. Even when there was no meeting room, we got together under the fig tree... and not just half a dozen people, it was a hundred and something people. So, that was gratifying to me. It was a struggle that we were fighting and thank God we are getting something back for what we did. I beat my chest and say: I am a quilombola and proud of it. |
Catiani,
quilombola leader, Faxinal, Maquiné |
Catiani, a young leader from the area known as Faxinal or Quilombinho, the place where the first dose of vaccine was applied in the community. In addition to giving birth to her second child during the pandemic, she suffered the loss of her partner and the challenge of sanitising the vaccination room at the health post. Her daughter’s father left, revealing their vulnerability to precarious work. She drew attention to the difficulty of isolation, cutbacks in public transport, the difficulty of reconciling employment with caring for the children during the pandemic. She talked about the course in pedagogy interrupted by pregnancy, but envisaging in education the possibility of other futures for her community. She feels safe with her great family, in the quilombo. |
I, quilombola, me being vaccinated for being a quilombola, that makes a great difference.
We would not be vaccinated or we would be the last if not for the role of the people of the quilombo.
What is it to be a quilombola to me? I think it is resistance, I think it is the strength that comes from right back, from my grandmother, going through a lot of things like that, I mean, like racism, inequality, that is our strength in being quilombola to me.
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Solange,
quilombola leader, Aguapés, Osório |
Solange, mother to young Isadora and Vitória, was born in the community de Morro Alto, but lived in Terra de Areia, a nearby municipality. She went back to live in the Aguapés community - which is within the territory of the Morro Alto quilombo, but belongs to the municipality of Osório - when she married a resident born and raised in Aguapés. She is a teacher in the neighbouring municipalities of Capão da Canoa and Xangrilá. |
It wasn’t just the vaccine. The vaccine came to show me the other side. We came over here to be slaves, but today we are no longer slaves. We have to know the history of us blacks to know that it was us who helped build this country. If we hadn’t taken the lead on the issues of the vaccines and all the rights that we come to know about when you take part in a quilombola community, people, the majority, wouldn’t have access to the vaccines, because they don’t have the knowledge, because they aren’t informed. |
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Source: Authors.
Illustration: Natália Gregorini, 2022.
Illustration: Natália Gregorini, 2022.
Illustration: Natália Gregorini, Ricardo Lubisco e Gustavo Maluf, 2022.