A quilombo (Portuguese pronunciation: [ki?lõbu]; from the Kimbundu word kilombo, “campsite, slave hut”)[1] is a Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by people of African origin including the Quilombolas, or Maroons. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos (called quilombolas) were escaped slaves. However, the documentation on runaway slave communities typically uses the term mocambo, an Ambundu word meaning “hideout”, to describe the settlements. A mocambo is typically much smaller than a quilombo. Quilombo was not used until the 1670s and then primarily in more southerly parts of Brazil.
A similar settlement exists in the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, and is called a palenque. Its inhabitants are palenqueros who speak various Spanish–African-based creole languages.
Quilombos are identified as one of three basic forms of active resistance by slaves. The other two are attempts to seize power and armed insurrections for amelioration.[2] Typically, quilombos are a “pre-19th century phenomenon”. The prevalence of the last two increased in the first half of 19th-century Brazil, which was undergoing both political transition and increased slave trade at the time.
1988 Constitution: Article 68
The national black movement and the black rural communities in the northern regions of Pará and Maranhão gathered political momentum throughout the 1980s and succeeded in having quilombola land rights introduced into the 1988 Constitution in the form of Article 68. Regional and national organisations working to fight racial discrimination formed an alliance in 1986 that played an important role in the grassroots political action that resulted in Article 68. Black militants across Brazil demanded reparation and the recognition of the detrimental effects of slavery, including preventing black communities from accessing land.[3] The Black Movement explicitly decided to make land central to their political agenda during the constitutional debates. They capitalised on the perception that there were very few quilombos and that it would thus be mainly a symbolic gesture in order to get it into the Constitution.[4] It was assumed that any community would have to prove its direct descent from a runaway slave settlement.
Quilombolas are mentioned in this article about Inhotim and Paz’s exploitative business practices.