Other legacies, heritage, and memories of emancipation: peasantry, quilombolas, and citizenship in Brazil (nineteenth to twenty-first centuries)

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the relations among history, human rights, and citizenship through a study of quilombo (maroon) descended communities in Marambaia, in the south of Rio de Janeiro state. These communities have struggled to secure their territories through provisions in Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, as well as through regulations dating from the nineteenth century. Since the 1980s, the quilombolas of Marambaia – an area of plantations and quilombos formed in the nineteenth century – have resisted the actions of the Navy, the Federal Government, and the courts in order to secure their territories and cultures. We analyze the history of the conflict, its protagonists (quilombolas, lawyers, jurists, anthropologists, archeologists, non-governmental organizations, and representatives of federal and state governments), and the arguments about memory, history, and law these actors have used. We also present the transcription and analysis of unpublished documents on the quilombo occupation in the region in 1870.