The Mobile Quilombola Community of São José (Sergipe Del Rey, 19^th Century)

ABSTRACT

In the early 1870s, many enslaved people who escaped the properties where they lived and worked used the forests of the Cotinguiba Valley - the main agro-economic region of Sergipe Del Rey, Brazil - to build communities of resistance and hope called “quilombos”. These communities, even those established in more distant municipalities, were mobile, and people often clandestinely returned to the slave quarters of the ranches they had escaped from in order to secure supplies. They strategically resorted, thus, to continuous detachment, dispersion and interaction to ensure their survival. The meanings of these displacements, understood from the concept of mobile community proposed by Flávio Gomes and Maria Helena Pereira Toledo Machado, as well as the importance of the support network that permeated the quilombos, will be presented based on the analysis of the experiences of enslaved men and women who were part of the São José quilombola community.

Keywords
Quilombos Volantes; Communities; Resistance; Cotinguiba Valley; Sergipe Del Rey