Quilombo’s Message
Carlos Diegues’ 1984 film Quilombo depicts the fugitive slave community (quilombo in Portuguese) of Palmares, located in the province of Pernambuco in Portuguese colonial Brazil. Pernambuco was the province most intertwined with slavery at the time, particularly sugar slavery. Sugar slavery was especially cruel, as it was usually on massive plantations with highly specialized labor, meaning a typical man might be cutting cane for 20 hours a day in some parts of the year. In addition, sugar cane is very sharp, often leaving cuts that are then tinged with salty sweat, causing intense pain. Sugar plantations, though particularly hellish, often had a stronger sense of community than other slave holdings because of the size of the plantations. Sugar required often hundreds of laborers, often in many different roles, allowing for slaves of all type to be involved. Quilombo even attempts to show this in its opening scene, with men of all shapes and sizes, from massive to skinny to even a person who appears to have dwarfism This sense of diverse community coupled with the unimaginable pain of sugar slavery, was the perfect storm necessary to create a functioning fugitive slave community, especially amid the Luso-Dutch War of the first half of the 17th century, which left the Portuguese colonial armies distracted and busy. Quilombo, in its depiction of this 17th century slave community, highlights the diversity and complexity of slave society in the distinctly African-American Palmares.
The deliberate, ever-present diversity in Quilombo’s portrayal of Palmares attempts to display the perfect balance Palmares had achieved: diversity was recognized, and kinship bonds weren’t disbanded, but the community was still together as one, with equality among dividing lines. There was diversity ethnically; there is no question, that not everyone is bozal or creole, and that not everyone is from the same region in Africa. The characters in the movie, at a physical level, are often different shades, with people appearing quite dark, while some appear that they might even be biracial. There are clear efforts to highlight the ethnic difference present in Palmares: for one, the slaves that eventually escape to Palmares in the opening scene discuss the necessity of speaking in the colonial tongue because some are bozal and some are creole. Furthermore, in Palmares, they speak Portuguese, demonstrating that speaking one African tribal language isn’t a possibility. During community-wide discussions and rituals, many different groups of fugitive slaves wear different tribal color and dress, and may vote differently from one another on central issues, like whether to agree to arbitrate with the colonial government for freedom or continue to eternally fight, a central question in the movie. These councils or rituals, when people are divided by kinship or other pre-Palmares bond, demonstrate one of Diegues’ main points, that Palmares was a diverse community of communities. People did not leave everything behind when they left Palmares, only their bonds.
` Palmares’ diversity extended even beyond black people. Early in the movie we are introduced to a Sephardic Jewish converso who eventually becomes a citizen of Palmares. Later, Dutch people, equipped with many strange European skillsets like knowledge of the classics, are educated and integrated into the community. Even at only a semi-involved level, occasionally Palmares’ leadership makes agreements with mercenaries hired to extinguish them, which, while not demonstrating integration, demonstrates that the leadership had no hatred of white skin or those born with it, only those white people that tied their chains and denied them their freedom. All citizens of Palmares seem to be treated equally and are expected to contribute to the community, a sign of actual racial harmony, in stark contrast to the mythical racial harmony that was written into the law codes of many of the South American states after independence, as talked about at length in Marixa Lasso’s Myths of Racial Harmony.
Even more so than Palmares’ diversity, Diegues stresses the complexity of society in Palmares in an effort to make the slave community seem like a stratified, developed, civilized place, not an encampment of runaways. He strives to show what black people, the same black people that were being exploited, lashed, and killed by the colonial system of slavery, were capable of. This aspect of the film is a deliberate and strong refutation of the inferiority of black people and their need for white people’s direction to be civilized. Moreover, black society was not only as developed as white society, but fairer. Palmares was without private property, as manifested in Ganga Zumba’s telling off of a man upset over his crops being stolen, reminding the man that crops cannot even be owned in the first place. One of the reasons this sharing of resources is so important is because Palmares is depicted as extremely specialized. People seem to mainly do one job, and then the fruits of their labor, literally and other, are shared among the community. Kids have certain roles in agriculture, adults have certain different roles in agriculture, defense, and governance, and the elderly are even involved in medicine, among other jobs. The military is also developed, with the leader having the power of conscription and military commander-in-chief, capable of complex military strategy. Zumbi, during Palmares’ final fight commands his most talented fighters to wait initially, implying an already present military stratification. In addition, the community uses sophisticated traps, spears, and swords, along with constructed walls around the community.
Beyond the different roles of the average citizen of Palmares, there are further stratifications shown in the movie. There are prisoners, who seem to be released during wartime. There is a singularly high leader, intimately involved with both governing the community in a logistical manner, but serving as a religious and cultural figurehead. He/she (both men and women seem to have this role in the film: Acotirene, Ganga Zumba, and Zumbi) must participate in religious rituals of death, birth, or even debate, and also must make sure the community runs smoothly in the ways of any other leader. That isn’t to say that they lead alone however; during times of decision-making, councils are depicted where many advise the leader on what decision to make, often disagreeing with him. On this matter, Palmares is markedly more liberal and less authoritarian than most of white society during this time, as the 17th century is a time of mostly absolute monarchies in Europe, where very little disagreement is recognized and accepted in government.
Palmares is also depicted as distinctly African-American. Rhythm and song are ubiquitous in the film, both in the background, and in the spoken dialogue. Though the music playing in the background is filled with heavy African-sounding drumming, the lyrics are in Portuguese, highlighting the syncretism of the community. Religion is equally syncretic, with dress and coloring that looks nothing like European Christian dress, but often features the cross, a sign that the bonds slavery had successfully converted many of the slaves. Dance is everywhere, along with jewelry and dyes that look tribal. Funerals, deaths, births, and really all other important community moment are accentuated with seemingly African characteristics of rhythm or dance, and occasionally imbued with clearly white characteristics, like the cross.
Quilombo, like any other film, is deliberate. Every depiction, casting choice, piece of dialogue, musical interlude, set design, and all other aspects of the film are specific choices made by the team who made the movie. Their motive in these decisions is clear throughout the movie: portray Palmares as complex, diverse, and African-American. Society is stratified yet egalitarian, and socialist yet individualistic. It is diverse within, and outside of, the fugitive slave population, exemplifying racial harmony. Finally, Palmares is depicted as African-American, not colonial white, but also not African, conceptualizing the idea of African-American identity through a mixture of African ritual, European religion, and an American setting. The film has a point; it isn’t just a vanilla portrayal of a true story meant to tell us exactly what happened. Rather, the film attempts to highlight and focus on specific aspects of Palmares that are too often forgotten: that it was as complex and developed as any society at the time, yet more fair, that it was African-American in all the new definitions that the word began to mean, and finally, that it was diverse, showing off its actual racial harmony to the world from its remote rainforest location.
Works Cited
Diegues, Carlos, dir. Quilombo. 1984; Brazil: CDK Produções. Viewed on Canvas via Jones Media.
Lasso, Marixa. Myths of Racial Harmony. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007.