Mellon Forum: Quilombos and the Geographies of Freedom in Brazil

Brazilian quilombos were acts of black space-making in a context of radical land dispossession and racial discrimination. Spread throughout Brazil in urban, mining, and rural areas, they survived undetected – and mostly invisible on maps – in a society that made no room for their integration. The Brazilian government dismissed quilombos as spaces of otherness, land theft, and subversive activity that needed to be eradicated. In this presentation, the speakers argue instead that quilombos wrote freedom stories into Brazilian history by marking insurgent territory and structuring survival routes for those living on the margins of society. Focusing on the community of São Vicente do Céu in Maranhão, they will examine how such black peasant settlements challenged the spatial practices of the modern state and functioned as important sites of a hemispheric black radical tradition.