Real Brazil: Quilombo dwellers win a battle
By Marcelo Netto Rodrigues, staff writer

Texto sent to the discussion group "Rede do 3° Setor" in June 10th, 2005
http://br.groups.yahoo.com/group/3setor

Remaining slave descendants of a quilombo tracing its roots back 124 years, in Ubatuba (northern coast of São Paulo State), were nearly evicted by a developer of luxury condos. Even though the Brazilian constitution guarantees their right to the land, the deadline for expulsion of the 44 families of the Caçandoca community (recognized as a remnant quilombo in an official anthropological finding in 2000) had already expired when the State Court of Appeal accepted a motion for preventive relief filed by the São Paulo Lands Institute (ITESP), overturning a repossession order issued by a local judge in favor of Urbanizadora Continental – a real estate development company that alleges it had bought 210 of the 890 hectares in the area in 1974, and that had already fenced in 410 hectares on its own account.

The suspect authenticity of the property title deed presented by the developer and the appreciating land value of the quilombo area are the main bones of contention. One of the stretches of the area runs along a pristine beachfront surrounded by the Atlantic Forest, abutting a luxury vacation condo development built by Continental in the 1970s.

While the suit brought by the São Paulo state government (to determine whether Continental’s title to the property is authentic or not, and if the developer is entitled to indemnity) is unresolved, INCRA (the federal land reform agency) in parallel began a process for the developer to vacate the area, by publishing an edict that recognizes the area as remnant quilombo territory.

INCRA’s decision is based on Decree 4887 of 2003, which stipulates joint actions by the agency, the Palmares Cultural Foundation and the Special Secretariat of Policies to Promote Racial Equality (Seppir).

“Even if at the end of the suit the judge finds the title valid, the developer will not be entitled to the area,” guarantees Carlos Henrique Gomes, special assistant of ITESP, citing Article 68 of the Transitory Constitutional Provisions Act, enacted in 1988 along with the current constitution. This act recognizes definitive ownership of “the remaining quilombo areas that are still occupied, with the State bound to issue the respective titles.”

HEIRS
On their side, the quilombo residents presented an inventory from 1881, written by the owner of the original farm, José Antunes de Sá, who on his deathbed included their ancestors among his legal heirs. Sá, who had a romance with one of his slaves, Tomázia, the farm’s midwife, manumitted his slaves and divided the land among their descendants – who were also his.

Antônio dos Santos, 58, leader of the community today, is one of them. “We don’t know who we have to thank, since the public organs and the community have worked together. We hope the outcome of our situation is an opening of the other quilombos in Brazil, and that these quilombo lands are no longer treated as ordinary land.” Of the 2,228 remaining quilombo communities in the country, only 70 have their land ownership regularized.

The pressure to suspend their eviction and to hasten giving legal title to quilombo residents comes from many sides. But the efforts of the recently seated São Paulo State Secretary of Justice and Defense of Citizenship, Hédio Silva Júnior, a lawyer and Black activist, appears to have been the determining factor in the favorable ruling from the appellate judge. With only four days in office, the Secretary went to the quilombo and asked ITESP to file for the preventive relief with the appellate court.

SOLIDARITY
Silva Júnior’s attitude gave visibility to the campaign that has been headed by the Pro-Quilombo Parliamentary Caucus, composed, among others, of state legislators from the Workers Party (PT) Simão Pedro, Hamilton Pereira, Tiãozinho and Carlinhos Almeida, by the coordinator of the Agentes de Pastoral Negros, Edgar Amaral, and by the representative of the Negro Movement, Vicente Ferreira Santos.

Besides this, the mobilization of other quilombo communities also played a role, among them those in Ivaporonduva and Vale do Ribeira (southern coast of São Paulo), whose representatives stayed in Caçandoca for several days until the risk of eviction passed.

Quilombo – A word of African origin, from the Bantu language (kilombo), which means settlement, fort with difficult access, where in Brazil Blacks resisting slavery lived along with poor whites and indigenous people. The Bantu trace their origins to African countries such as Angola, Congo, Gabon, Zaire and Mozambique.

Caçandoca – Although the word may sound like “casa” (house in Portuguese), also due to the suffix “oca” (house in Tupi-Guarani), in reality it means “forest Gabon”, in a reference to the Center-West African country Gabon.