Summary
In the following post, Diego Gonzalez discusses the movie Quilombo (Carlos Diegues, 1984). What follows is a discussion of the movie on the topics of “Racial Capitalism, Radical Black Feminism, and Imagining the Archive” by Black Studies Colloquium (BSC) members Dr. Erica Richardson, Dr. Tshombe Miles, and Dr. Rojo Robles.
A Haven in Nature: Indigenous and Maroon Communities in South America
By Diego Gonzalez
The movie Quilombo (Carlos Diegues, 1984) and the discussion of the movie on the topics of “Racial Capitalism, Radical Black Feminism, and Imagining the Archive” by Black Studies Colloquium (BSC) members Dr. Erica Richardson, Dr. Tshombe Miles, and Dr. Rojo Robles raises conversations on how the maroon communities in Brazil during the 17 and 18 centuries prepared for the constant threat of colonizers. The BSC also looked at how the film builds historical fiction based on methods of speculations. They highlighted the significance of the silences in the archive. This panel was part of their ongoing series Black Futures that looks to answer questions like what kind of Black futures might we imagine through cultivating conversation and producing scholarship across sites of Black studies in North America, the Caribbean, South America, and Africa?
Similarly, in the course LTS 3110: Debates in Latin American Social Theory with Professor Robles we have examined the movie Quilombo and have looked at other films and documentary works that depict how indigenous communities in the present continue to experience similar extractive and war-like circumstances as those of maroon communities in the Latin America region. All the communities that have been explored during the course like the Zapatista Movement in Chiapas, Mexico, the indigenous people in Bolivia represented in the film Even the Rain, or the Tembe tribe portrayed in the reportage Illegal Loggers: The Tribe Waging War in the Amazon (Vice News, 2015) share with maroon communities a common practice of promoting strength in numbers and cultural unity. Through having a strong sense of community, indigenous people, like the maroons in Quilombo, thrived and their cultures survived through generations. In all these works about marginalized Afro-indigenous communities, we can also identify a disposition toward direct action activism or full rebellion. They all show how maroons and indigenous folk have been fighting for centuries for their human rights, languages, culture, knowledge, and ecosystems.
Although the narratives are separated by hundreds of years, the movie Quilombo and Even the Rain let us understand how the past influences the present. They also allow audiences to see how colonial legacies have persisted in Latin America and the Caribbean through the experiences of maroons in colonial Brazil and Indigenous persons in the 21st century. When looking at the ways Afro indigenous people live in the mountains, in the forests, or in contemporary urban areas we can locate the same ecological and anticolonial practices. As seen in the movie Quilombo, Africans and Afro-descendants under attack were able to resist by literally fighting off the colonizer’s constant threats. They also did it by affirming their ways of living and African ancestral knowledge.
Likewise, in the movie, Even the Rain we see the importance of a community to have the strength to fight off what’s trying to end your ways of being in the world, in this case, neoliberal policy and the privatization of natural resources. The movie Even the Rain demonstrates how the government in Bolivia has failed its indigenous population. The local government is putting a big emphasis on corporate dominance and privatization at the cost of indigenous exclusion and exploitation. This film shows us an example of how these communities have been denied access to water. They also lack representation in the government, receive threats from the government, have been removed from their lands, and have limited rights. Quilombo and Even the Rain let us pinpoint ongoing colonial factors and how they have marked these communities in Latin America.
The maroon communities in Quilombo, as the indigenous people presented in Even the Rain, in the Amazon (or in other regions located outside cities) can be considered a threat to the capitalist economy and the modernization project built from colonization as the Black Studies Colloquium members also argued. For example, the strong quilombo community found in the mountains in Brazil was an area that the colonists considered for economic development, opportunity, and change. The quilombo represented a threat to an economy fueled by slavery and environmental destruction. African and Afro-descendant people being free in these communities, being strong, and existing on their own terms challenged the dehumanizing views Europeans and criollos had on them. Quilombos represented hope and ignited in maroon people the will to resist and stand up for their ways of life and their emerging Afro-diasporic cultures.
Likewise, when looking at the tribes in Brazil living in the Amazon, we see how the people living in the forest and in the mountains have learned to coexist with nature by making it an ally and a protector from outsiders. However, Brazil’s current president Jair Bolsanaro has put these communities’ living environments at risk by dismantling the governmental agencies and policies that protected them. He menaces the Amazon and Indigenous lives by encouraging deforestation and pushing into the Amazon for economic growth. His actions and those of the agrarian oligarchy that supports him have left the only area that has remained untouched after colonial times in danger of becoming extinct. The government displaced people who lived in the area for centuries and have reduced important legal protection. These extractive practices have shaken indigenous people’s relation to the land leaving them and their ecosystems vulnerable to neo-colonization.
Overall, although colonization is something that might seem from the past it is still present all around the globe. Through these audiovisual works that document Afro-indigenous societies in Latin America, we can see its remaining effects on the communities impacted. It is possible to observe how economic practices and ideas of imperial power are intertwined. Even though national building discourses and governments throughout Latin America have seen and treated them as inferior because of colonial structures inherited from the European empires, maroon descendants and Indigenous communities have been able to survive threats of (neo) colonizers by creating sustainable communities and ecological practices. When looking into the way different countries deal with their population and who is represented and heard, it’s important to understand that the ones making the most noise and taking to the streets (in Brazil, Bolivia, and elsewhere) are the ones that have been kept shut for centuries. When the world considers the ways Black and Indigenous communities have been treated throughout history, a process of accountability and transparency can be established. That’s why it’s important to engage in these conversations and to develop educational strategies to study these overlooked but essential Latin American groups.
Diego Gonzalez (Baruch College, 2022) is a SEEK student and poet from Ecuador that lives in Washington Heights and belongs to the LGBTQIA community. His major is in Public Affairs and his research is predominantly focused on US Latinx and Latin American communities, and South American Afro-Indigenous ecologies. He has been the Coordinator of Student Affairs for the Initiative for the Study of Latin America (ISLA @WSAS) during Fall 2021 and Spring 2022.
Recording of Select Screening of Quilombo (1984) and discussion of Racial Capitalism, Radical Black Feminism, and Imagining the Archive
Watch the recording below: