Census in Brazil finally include Black communities founded by enslaved people

• For the first time in its 132-year history, the Brazilian census counts members of “quilombo” communities.
• Quilombos were formed over centuries by enslaved people who escaped forced labor.
• A record number of Black candidates are running for office in Brazil this year

The Brazilian census, which is currently underway. It includes a question about members of “quilombo” communities founded by runaway enslaved people for the first time in its 132-year history.

This opportunity to be counted is one step in a political transformation. For which local organisers have long fought on Ilha de Mare, an island with several quilombos. It is off the coast of Salvador in northeast Brazil.

“Participating in the census is a strategy for us. A strategy for resistance and change,” says Marizelha Carlos Lopes, 52, a local activist and fisherwoman on the island. An island where 93% of the population is Black. “One of our goals is to avoid intentional invisibility.”

Eliete Paraguassu, her 42-year-old friend, is launching a new front in the strategy. She is the first woman from the island to run for a seat in the Bahia state legislature. And she is one of a record number of Black candidates running for state and federal office in Brazil this October.

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

Quilombos were established over centuries by enslaved people who escaped forced labour to establish isolated, self-sustaining communities in remote forests and mountain ranges, or on islands such as Ilha de Mare.

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

CONAQ, the national quilombo organisation, has identified nearly 6,000 quilombo territories. According to CONAQ President Antonio Joao Mendes, government recognition of the communities gained traction under former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva two decades ago.Wwhen the communities gained more formal land rights and support for cultural programmes.

Mendes compared Lula’s presidential candidacy this year to that of incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, who has dismantled many of those programmes and slowed the recognition of additional quilombos.

Bolsonaro was fined 50,000 reais ($10,000) in 2017 for insulting residents of Quilombo, saying “they do nothing” and are “not even good for procreation.” Because he was a federal lawmaker at the time, an appeals court dismissed the case.

Quilombo residents on Ilha de Mare have relied on the hard work of artisanal fishermen and fisherwomen for generations.

Uine Lopes, Marizelha’s 26-year-old nephew who wakes up at 3 a.m. to fish in the crystalline waters surrounding his community of Bananeiras, has proudly memorialised their tradition with a tattoo of his grandfather casting a net on his left arm.

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