“To Preserve is to Resist”: Threading Black Cultural Heritage from within in Quilombo Tourism

“To produce [a] textile it
is necessary for [the warp and the weft] to be bound, otherwise each
will
remain a fragile and fluttering potentiality”[1] “A resistência é ficar no
território da mãe”[2]

In 1888 Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Slavery was fundamental for an economic system based on sugar, cacao, and coffee plantations, and—as happened throughout the Americas—the enslaved peoples found many ways to resist this oppressive system.[3] One systematic way was to establish parallel communities, quilombos, quilombolas, or mocambos, throughout Brazil’s territory.[4] Quilombos are communities formed by peoples of African descent, often mixed with indigenous and European peoples, who banded together as a collective outside the plantation system for more than four centuries. They could be considered as a united reaction of marginalized groups against the social order and, as such, locations of Afro-Brazilian resistance.[5] Across decades, quilombos have remained simultaneously self-contained and connected to the outside world. Mostly located in rural areas, its members have engaged primarily in self-subsistence activities. With the end of the military government in the 1980s, the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 gave contemporary quilombos both the rights to the lands where they lived and protection for their “ways of creating, doing, and living.”[6]

Under this constitution, historic and anthropological legitimacy became fundamental conditions for the official recognition of quilombos. In this context, Brazilian anthropologists and historians found themselves at the center of the debate over conceptualizing and identifying quilombolas.[7] The Association of Brazilian Anthropology (ABA) emphasizes that modern quilombo descendants are ethnic (rather than racial) groups with their own set of rules and organization and a substantial relationship with the land where they live.[8] In 2003, then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva followed the recommendations of the ABA to define a quilombo as a “self-identified, ethno-racial group with their own historical trajectory, a specific relationship to the land, and the presumption of a black ancestry connected to forms of resistance to historical oppression.”[9] Using this broader definition, Brazilian anthropologists and historians estimate that more than 3,000 communities exist throughout Brazil. However, to date, the federal government only recognizes about 1,500.[10]

Social scientists, filmmakers, writers, the black movement, and even the Brazilian state have regularly used multiple interpretations of the role of the quilombo in Brazil’s racial history to represent the country’s peculiarities of oppression and defiance. From colonial and imperial times, through independence, the republic legislation, and the 1988 constitution, quilombos have been portrayed in drastically different ways. They have been represented as locales for “fugitives” and “criminals,” and as locations of resistance and rights par excellence.[11] But, quilombos are also privileged sites for the study of the preservation and construction of multiple notions of black social memory because they represent not only the most visible part of the slavery system but also its antithesis.[12] In fact, the thread of resistance appears as a constant in the constructed history, memory, and cultural heritage of its residents. In this article, I follow this thread to what might be, perhaps, a surprising context, and one that has been only marginally addressed in the literature on quilombos: that of tourism. I concentrate on how the thread is woven in a quilombo community in the state of Rio de Janeiro where its members have chosen to engage in community- based tourism. Following the perspective that heritage is not only situated in the past but often heavily based on discourses of the present,[13] I ask how are legitimacy and authenticity experienced within the context of quilombola tourism? I discuss how the quilombolas of the community known as Campinho da Independência, especially those working on tourism-related activities, produce fluid tour narratives that both create and preserve selective aspects of their cultural history and memory as means of resistance. However, in spite of the undeniable relevance of the resistance thread in quilombo history, I concur with Farfán-Santos[14] that reducing quilombos solely to sites of resistance is limiting. As the author notes, “for nearly a hundred years, real slave resistance seemed to only exist in warring fugitive slave camps that were isolated from, and in constant battle with, society,” when in fact, historically, the quilombo experience has been as much about resistance and self-isolation as about negotiation and engagement. In the discussion that follows, I apply an expansive understanding of the concept of resistance to capture how defiance, compromise, and involvement are implemented in quilombo community-based heritage tourism. The ethnographic data and analysis presented in this article are based on fieldwork and archival and ethnographic research carried out in Campinho and Rio de Janeiro in 2015.

Selling Brazil to the World

Brazil lingers in the world’s imaginaries, generally evoking positive messages, or contrastingly, representing a land of great poverty, inequality, carnage, and child exploitation. The world tourism industry conspires in the perpetuation, transformation, and re-invention of these stereotypes in no small way. As Freire-Medeiros[15] estimates for the city of Rio de Janeiro, it would be no exaggeration to argue that, “a large amount of [its] identity has been built on the real, as well as imaginary, connections between colonization, voyaging and tourism.”

The tourism industry in Brazil has experienced sustained growth since the mid1990s.[16] Although tourism has been a part of Brazil’s economy for a long time, it has increased significantly in the last two decades, becoming one of the fastest growing industries in the region. From 1997 to 2007, the number of international tourists rose from 2.97 million to 5.0 million, and they contributed 2.8% of Brazil’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Tourism itself grew 18.5% between 2007 and 2011. In 2014, tourist visits grew 10.6%, partly due to the World Cup, contributing 9.6% to the GDP.[17]

Brazil’s tourism products, recognized throughout the world, range from environmental to cultural and leisure attractions. For years, the country has promoted a few attractions almost exclusively: presenting it stereotypically as the land of soccer, striking beaches, and carnival, which represents the quintessential Brazilian tourism product. Every year, millions of visitors participate in carnival events in cities such as Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro), São Paulo (São Paulo), Salvador (Bahia), and Olinda and Recife (Pernambuco). Brazilian carnival became famous in the 1970s, when its parades started to be televised nationally and internationally. As early as the 1980s, the image of Brazil as a land of sensuality, eroticism, and sexual liberty emerged, when tourism publicity for Brazilian carnival and other events invariably included women (particularly Afro-Brazilian women) posed sensuously.[18] Partly due to pressure from the civil society and to confront this rising phenomenon, since the mid-1990s the Brazilian Tourism Institute (Instituto Brasileiro de Turismo, EMBRATUR) has developed campaigns to eliminate Brazil’s representation as a sex tourism paradise.[19]

In the 21st century, Brazilian governments have made concerted efforts to diversify the country’s touristic appeal and highlight its numerous less well-known attractions. These include tours to some of Brazil’s sixty-seven national parks or nineteen United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage cultural and natural tangible sites. In addition to conventional cultural and heritage tourism, leisure tourism, and ecotourism, recent tourism offerings emerging in Brazil include voluntourism, medical tourism (and more specifically, cosmetic surgery tourism), ethnic tourism, rural tourism, roots or diaspora tourism, favela or slum tourism, and quilombo tourism. In response to the traditional development model of high-end infrastructural projects, alternative models of community-based tourism with interactive relations between visitors and hosts emerged in the early 2000s.[20] The tourism niche carved out by quilombolas in Campinho lies at the junction between quilombo heritage tourism and community- based tourism.

The Tapestry That Starts with Three Women

When slavery ended in 1888, Rio de Janeiro was the principal slave-holding state, and it contained the majority of the last enslaved peoples to be liberated.[21] However, only fifteen communities have been identified as quilombos, and only three have received titles to their land. One of these is Campinho da Independência,[22] located eight miles from Paraty, a preserved Portuguese colonial and imperial town. Paraty, situated in the Green Coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro, was founded in the early 17th century; it was declared a National Historical and Artistic Heritage site in 1962 and has been on the tentative list of the UNESCO World Heritage sites in Brazil since 2004. Since the 1980s, tourism has been one of the main industries in the region. Nowadays, Paraty is a well-known cultural, recreational, and ecological destination. A brochure from Pousada Literaria, a local hotel, reads as follows:

A historic city founded in the seventeenth century, Paraty offers attractions for every taste. From the lazy walks through its Historic Center, with its charming streets, old houses, numerous bars and restaurants, to its ecotourism and adventure tourism options, and in addition to an extensive cultural calendar, these attractions make Paraty an important national and world destination.[23]

The city attracts national and international tourists with many different preferences; however, the city authorities place emphasis on its cultural offerings, including ceramics, art and photography workshops, jazz, cachaça[24], gastronomy, and literary festivals year-round. Only the major agency in town (Paraty Tours) offers quilombo tours as part of its cultural activities.

Campinho is composed of 120 families and 550 members who follow a matrilineal kinship pattern. The majority of the population is composed of children and youth between 5 and 16 years old.[25] “You can count the old ones with your fingers,” said tour guide Suely to a group of tourists visiting Campinho on March 25, 2015. Most of the residents work in agriculture-related activities; secondarily, quilombola residents work on activities related to tourism (tour guiding, work at the local restaurant, or production of handicrafts) at the community itself or in Paraty.

The myth of origin of Campinho da Independência goes back to the 19th century and it centers on three women, Vovó Antonica, her sister Marcelina, and her cousin Luiza.[26] Here I use the term “myth of origin” intentionally. During the first phase of the process of quilombo territory recognition—that is, between 1988 and 2003—two of the defining characteristics that anthropologists (as state representatives) needed to identify in a quilombo for it to be “legitimate” were that it had a “myth of origin” and a “quilombo memory”; that is, historical memory that its ancestors had endured slavery and escaped from it.[27] Campinho’s land used to be part of three haciendas: Sertão da Independência, Itatinga, and Paratymirim, with its majority belonging to the first of the three. These haciendas produced mostly sugar cane and coffee. As Irma, a quilombola guide, explained to a group of 25 quilombolas who visited Campinho to learn about its tourism offerings, “we all know that when we practice monoculture, the soil becomes weak and unproductive; one has to plant diverse plants on the soil. [ … ] Because this hacienda was based on monoculture, the soil became exhausted.”[28]

One version of the myth is that when this happened, the owners of Sertão da Independencia simply left off and the three women took over the land. Another version has the owners giving the land away directly to the women. The women were enslaved, but the narrative indicates that they were somewhat privileged domestic servants who possessed valuable skills: embroidery, weaving, and combing. Marcelina was also a healer.[29] Seu Chico, one of the most respected leaders of the community, situates the origins of the quilombo immediately after abolition:

When abolition happened, the three women became owners of the land—their grandchildren and great grandchildren believed that they needed to fight to guarantee these lands. Land is only one. There they [the three women] raised their children and grandchildren.

Regardless of the version, the three women are considered the founders of the nuclei that today constitute Campinho. A nucleus in Campinho is composed of an elderly woman and her descendants. The guide Luiza told a group of middle-school students from a private institution based in the state of São Paulo:

The women in the hacienda took care of the children and the house; they washed clothes, worked the land. When the land no longer produced, the owners left and the three women took advantage of this, organized themselves and created the community Sertão da Independência, which was the name of our community at the time.[30]

A crucial moment in the history of Campinho was the creation of the Residents Association of Quilombo Campinho da Independência (Associação de Moradores do Quilombo Campinho da Independência, or AMOQC) in 1994. The well organized Association is run by a president, a vice-president, two secretaries, and two treasurers, as well as representatives of the thirteen family nuclei and five area coordinators. The Association carried out an indefatigable campaign to acquire legal ownership of their territory, citing the Constitution of 1988.

In line with the requirements put forth by the federal government in the initial phases of quilombo recognition, an accredited anthropologist needed to establish the validity of the community’s claims. In the case of Campinho, anthropologist Neusa Gusmão was invited to conduct research at the quilombo. In her book, Land of Blacks, Land of Women (Terra de Pretos, Terra de Mulheres),[31] Gusmão argued that the economic, historic, and social characteristics of Campinho were irrefutable proof of its condition of a terra de pretos.[32] Along with legal documents and Gusmão’s official report, the quilombo applied for land ownership in the early 1990s. The Association’s efforts culminated in success in 1999, when Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government conceded 287 hectares of communal land to AMOQC. This achievement was partly the result of the support provided by then-senator Benedita da Silva, the first black female senator in the history of Brazil. Since then, the area coordinators have worked toward strengthening the five interconnected areas identified as strategic for the quilombo’s development: agro-ecology, health, artisanal work, community-based tourism, and differentiated education and culture.

Tourism at Campinho is a byproduct of Paraty’s tourism industry. In 2000, the coordinators of the tourism area launched the Ethnic and Sustainable Tourism Project (Projeto de Turismo Étnico e Sustentável), to teach tourist groups about family organization, landscape, cultural practices, and history.[33] In 2003, they also created the Cultural Spot Manoel Martins (Ponto de Cultura Manoel Martins), an entity recognized and financed by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. Along with its financial incentives, this recognition permitted quilombolas to organize oficinas de cultura or culture workshops. In a larger sense, the intention of these workshops was to assist quilombolas with identifying what it meant for them to be descendants of quilombos.[34] The culture workshops at Campinho focused on the re-discovery of practices such as the call-and-response dance known as jongo (a cultural practice with Bantu origins) or less commonly practiced weaving techniques for their artisanal work. They also set up music, drum, and capoeira[35] lessons, which continue until today on a smaller scale. They obtained funds to build a large kitchen and install a wellequipped restaurant that received several awards in the category “peasant” or “rural cuisine” (Figure 1). Finally, they developed and tested an itinerary for their community-based tourism visits.

When asked why tourism was chosen as one of the five strategic development areas for the quilombo, leader Sinei Santos explained, “Tourism did not interest us as such; we simply thought we could benefit from being so close to a very touristy place. [ … ] With time, we came to recognize that we needed a special kind of tourism for our community, and we chose to implement community-based tourism.”[36] At Campinho, community-based tourism is understood as an activity carried out by a local group of individuals who belong to the specific touristic destination. The group makes all the decisions and retains all the profits, which are then shared with the community at large. Although the tourism approach developed at Campinho was independent from the Municipality of Paraty, Paraty holds Campinho as the poster child of a successful community-based tourism enterprise. Campinho’s leaders are invited to travel throughout the state to discuss their experiences implementing this kind of tourism.[37]

Figure 1 Restaurant at Campinho da Independência (Carla Maria Guerrón Montero).

Launching and sustaining community-based tourism has been a difficult battle for quilombolas. Tourism agencies in Paraty do not advertise visits to the quilombo with the exception of reference to the quilombo’s restaurant or handicraft store. According to the president of the Association, “the travel agencies in Paraty do not like to advertise our tours because they have to split profits with us. If they choose other places to advertise, they use their guides, their restaurants, their hotels, and their transportation, so they earn all the money.” With time, the Association has been able to develop contacts throughout Brazil (especially the state of São Paulo) and in the United States and Europe. These travel agencies agree to the rules of the Association, and organize educational tours for children and adults year-round.

The guided itinerary has undergone several transformations over the years. When tourism at Campinho was beginning in the early 2000s, the Association permitted group visits without previous clearance. Leaders became rapidly aware that this approach was intrusive and unwelcome for three main reasons. First, the scrutiny and the tourist gaze[38]—understood as the set of expectations placed by tourists on their guests in their quest for “authentic” experiences—were not welcomed by the majority of quilombolas, especially the significant and influential evangelical sector. Residents argued that they were not willing to adjust to finding a stranger in their backyard smelling the flowers, prying inside their houses, or picking fruit from their gardens. Second, Association members quickly recognized that these unorganized tourist visits did not benefit the quilombo at large, as tourists who arrived with guides hired in Paraty left limited revenues to the Association. Third, the Association was and continues to be adamant about avoiding mass tourism in their territory; containing tourism has been crucial for quilombola residents. At the present time, the Association has developed a system where individual tourists can visit on their own and remain at the restaurant or artisanal store, while tour groups need to request advanced permission to visit and can only be guided by a quilombola on site. Visits last from three to four hours and require a guide’s undivided attention; prices vary according to the specific requests made by the group, but they generally go from forty to sixty reais (11 to 17 dollars in 2016). Almost all tours offered at Campinho focus on educating the tourist about the history and current situation of the quilombo. With some variations, the itinerary runs as follows: tourists arrive in vans or buses at the quilombo’s restaurant (which doubles as meeting place for all tourismand most Association-related activities) and have a farm breakfast (café da roça) or a hearty feijoada for lunch. The first important interaction with quilombolas happens when guides ask that tourists form a circle (roda) and sit on straw mats to listen to the history of the quilombola as narrated by a few of the quilombo’s griots. Griots are wise older men and women who are able to transmit their history orally; at Campinho, all but one are female. This portion of the tour is the lengthiest and most dynamic, and it varies considerably depending on the audience and the questions asked by the tourists. If the tourists do not speak Portuguese, either the group guide or a quilombola by marriage who speaks English translates the information.

After the roda, one of the quilombola guides takes the tourists throughout the community on a predetermined path. Along the way, the guide offers information about the use of plants and fruits in home healthcare, kinship relations, and other information about culture. The tour ends at one of the handicraft stores, located at the other end of the quilombo, where forty artists sell their products. Ninety percent of the material used in these handicrafts is local. If the group has requested it, the tour is followed by a hands-on jongo or handicraft workshop (Figure 2). On occasion, the tour also includes a visit to the agro-ecological nursery or nearby waterfalls.

The level of involvement and interest on the different aspects of the tour expressed by the tourists differs depending on the groups visiting, their purposes, and the degree of attention paid by quilombolas to the groups. Tour guides often compare notes about which tour groups had more appropriate behavior. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork and these comments, the most receptive audiences are Brazilian children and adolescent students from private schools. Their teachers and guides prepare them in advance by providing information about the history of quilombolas in Brazil. When they arrive at Campinho, they are prepared to ask relevant questions and to engage with quilombolas and their practices.

Figure 2 Jongo workshop (Carla Maria Guerrón Montero).

The least interested audiences tend to be United Statian or European tourists making a quick stop at Campinho between destinations. Maria Vitória characterizes these groups as unpredictable. “They tend to be very tired and seem to be bored with our explanations. With them, we do not form the roda and only give a quick summary of the history of Campinho. Then, we walk on the path and visit the handicraft store. At the store, they almost never buy any products, especially because they cannot take anything made out of fiber with them.” Often times, these tourists did not travel to Paraty with the intention to visit Campinho, and demonstrate impatience for the pace of the tour, the detailed historical explanations provided by the griots and tour guides, and for having to rely on translators for communication. For instance, a university teacher from the United States who brought a small group of students to Campinho for a visit in January 2015 complained about the time it took to move from one activity to another throughout the tour. She also criticized what she called “poor (limited) English” used by the community member assigned to translate this English-only tour.

Community-based tourism in Campinho highlights two main principles: restriction and containment.[39] The purpose of both strategies is to guarantee that the quilombolas remain in control of the tourists’ interactions and overall experience. As part of restriction, two strategies are used—secrecy and regulations. Examples of secrecy include the fact that tourists are not allowed to visit quilombola homes, and that certain questions posed by tourists are sometimes simply not answered. This is most frequently the case for questions regarding religion. The presence of evangelical churches at Campinho is a source of conflict, as followers of these denominations tend to label cultural practices such as jongo or capoeira as sacrilegious. Additionally, and in part precisely because of the strength of the evangelical sector, Campinho does not have established African-based religious practices (religões de matriz africana). Given that the contemporary representation of quilombos centers on the presence of “African cultural survivals” that tie these communities directly to Africa and to slavery, the lack of African-based religions would seem to challenge the “authenticity” of Campinho’s residents as quilombo descendants. Thus, questions about religion from tourists to griots and guides tend to be either avoided or answered with short responses. Regulations are evidenced in the fact that only local guides can offer tours at the quilombo, and that these tours can only be booked in advance. One outcome of this approach is that, in effect, most profits resulting from tourism remain in quilombola hands.

In terms of containment, the Residents Association has clearly determined its commitment to maintaining small-scale tourism. Another strategy is to make use of a script that—albeit flexible—remains committed to conveying a very clear message to tourists about who quilombas are and what matters to them about their history and their present experiences. Quilombola leaders highlight that their intention is to strengthen their ethnic identity through community-based tourism. In each phase of the tour, including the meals prepared, information about their history, or the teaching workshops, the constantly changing script has a persistent reference to quilombola’s ethnic pride. Quilombola griots and tour guides modify their discourse depending on the age and level of understanding of their audience, yet they always focus on land rights, ethnic pride, and black identities regardless of the audience. During a tour organized for a neighboring quilombo that took place on the sixteenth anniversary of Campinho’s land titling (March 21, 1999), the Association’s president spoke as follows:

Brazil has one of the strongest economies in the world because it was built over the shoulders of slaves. If you think about it, the majority of the population in favelas and jails is black, and the minority of the population at the university is black. On May 13, 1888, Princess Isabel signed the document that ended slavery. With a bit of ink, “lovely” Princess Isabel changed our history. But what happened on May 14? Where were the black populations? Where were the enslaved ones? So, we need to remember that the government has great responsibilities toward us; people in this country need to see us as citizens.[40]

This example illustrates how, through different approaches, Association griots and leaders address slavery, land rights, and current political and social issues such as corruption, racism, and inequality in their scripts.

The official narrative of quilombo history sanctioned by the state and the tourism industry is slavery-centered. It views heritage as something coming from the past rather than as something being forged in the present. However, quilombos are constantly creating new means of producing heritage. One example of emerging heritage is rap music. Rap music in Brazil has been appropriated by urban youth from marginalized areas to challenge authority and denounce the plights they endure in a segregated society. At Campinho, creating rap counters the official narrative, and thus becomes what Ashworth and Larkham call “dissonant heritage.” In partnership with a musical producer from São Paulo, the well-established rap group in Campinho Realidade Negra (Black Reality) released the CD Realidade Negra ao Vivo: É Prus Guerreiro a Missão (The Mission is for the Warriors) in 2009 and is working on a second one. It is composed of eight members between the ages of 23 and 35; most of them are affiliated with evangelical churches.

Realidade Negra raps about the inequalities endured by Afro-Brazilian populations from slavery until the present time, as well as the need for quilombolas to recognize their rights as deserving members of the African diaspora. For instance, in the song “Terra para Tudos” (Land for Everyone), they connect the struggles of the quilombo leader Zumbi dos Palmares[41] with those of African American human rights activist Malcolm X. As Spinelli[42] notes, Realidade Negra’s music refers to the epic Quilombo dos Palmares “to make current a myth of resistance about a place that served as refuge for black slaves” by linking this resistance with the one withstood by Campinho today. Other songs discuss subjects such as Campinho’s ancestry, the historic oppression of black peoples in Brazil, a call to end social violence, and the power of love and God (with specific references to evangelical beliefs). Another recurrent reference in Realidade Negra’s music is the simple rural life that characterizes the quilombo:

Meti a mão no bolso e sem nenhum conto (I put my hand in my pocket and had no money)
Mesmo assim graças a Deus era feliz (Even so, thank God I was happy) Podia brincar como sempre quis (I could play as I always wanted) Correr, cantar, pular (Run, sing, jump)
Essas coisas de criança ninguém pode negar (Those things children do, no one can deny)[43]

Information about Realidade Negra and its music is mentioned occasionally to tourists, and their CD was sold for a period of time in the most commonly visited handicraft store. Although rap music is not (at least not yet) a prominent feature in the tourism circuit, the Association leaders argue that rap is another expression of resistance, and directly connected with the African diaspora.[44]

Conclusions: Weaving Blackness through Continuous Threads

The new possibilities granted by the 1988 Constitution for quilombo descendants to become legally recognized as ethnic groups entitled to communal ownership of their land generated a hostile response by the Brazilian media, which regularly characterizes quilombos as a priori frauds that need to prove their legitimacy. In the 1990s, the scientific authority of an anthropologist was necessary to vouch for their heritage’s “authenticity”; in the 2000s, self-identification became the primary factor in theory, while in practice written documentation is still a requisite for recognition. Quilombos have gone from being communities fiercely criminalized and policed by the state to communities defined and determined by the state, partly through legislation, anthropological intervention, and even tourism. Regardless of the medium, as Farfán-Santos states, the authenticity of quilombos

depends not only on their ability to perform and describe the ancestral history of their community, but more importantly, in their ability to tell a specific history of their past as it has been written and incorporated into the Brazilian national imaginary.[45]

What happens when the tourism industry entangles itself in the thread? How are legitimacy and authenticity experienced within the context of quilombola tourism? This is a much less studied subject in the literature on quilombos. At Campinho, the concerted efforts of quilombola leaders have centered on using tourism as a means to obtain revenues while also presenting a carefully selected representation of their culture: dynamic, sovereign, resistant, as well as showing where the present is interlaced with the past. The thread woven in Campinho’s tourism script starts with quilombolas enduring the slavery system. It continues with the struggle of the three women to remain on what they deemed their land. It culminates with the collective story of those same quilombolas guiding a tour while confronting governmental whims, a neglectful mainstream tourism industry, and a menacing real estate machinery.[46] The thread emphasizes the deep interconnectedness of the five strategic areas identified by the Association for quilombolas. Maria, one of the most active quilombola leaders, explained to me how quilombolas look at their lives and their relationship with the land:

For us, everything is interconnected. We want to preserve our jongo dance not only because we want to maintain a practice from our ancestors or show it to tourists, but because it connects us to nature, to our land. The drum that is necessary to play is made out of wood, and the cotton skirts used by the dancers resemble flowers. We are practicing agro-ecology when we are dancing jongo.[47] (Figure 3).

The thread interweaves quilombola domestic issues with those of regional and national relevance, including the role of what they call “traditional communities” (indigenous peoples, fisher communities of Brazil’s coastal areas or caiçaras, and quilombolas) in protecting the environment, supporting agro-ecological practices, and maintaining solid cultural fronts. Quilombolas in Campinho are among the most active and outspoken leaders of the forum that consolidates the collective efforts of these communities, the Forum of Traditional Communities (Fórum de Comunidades Tradicionais). I have used the Forum’s motto, “to preserve is to resist,” as the title of this article to bring attention to the fact that quilombolas present their struggles as never ending and as interconnected. In spite of the momentous achievement of acquiring communal land ownership in 1999, it is only the first step to attain sovereignty. Self-government for quilombolas entails having the right to carry out agro-ecology, to recreate cultural practices such as jongo or capoeira, to develop a quilombola-based educational curriculum for their children, and to decide how to practice communitybased tourism. Self-government also entails having the right to incorporate new practices in the community’s cultural repertoire and to produce heritage that does not conform to prevailing norms and objectives, which is the case of rap music.

Figure 3 Basket weaving workshop (Carla Maria Guerrón Montero).

Throughout this article, I have paid close attention to the thread of resistance and the patterns it has produced in the history of Campinho da Independência. Nonetheless, in emphasizing resistance, I am not supporting the idea so easily repeated in the Brazilian imaginary that resistance has gone hand in hand with isolation in quilombo history. Quite the contrary. In Campinho, the practice of resistance—resistance to embrace essentialist claims about their history; refusal to accept being defined by intellectuals or the state; refusal to go along with the misrepresentations of the media—goes hand in hand with astute abilities to develop contacts, communicate, negotiate, and engage. The current success of community-based tourism ventures is partly possible because of these approaches. And yet one of the strengths of the strategies selected by the Association leaders is the fact that tourism is not a panacea, as it commonly is for other ethnic groups in Brazil or elsewhere in Latin America. In the process of constructing complex ethnic identities in response to the state, the media, and academia, quilombolas in Campinho provide us with some answers on how Afro-Brazilian groups use tourism to attain sovereignty and redefine notions of citizenship.