Summary Of Quilombismo

Racial disparity in Brazil is best explained in Abdias Nascimento article, Quilombismo: An Afro-Brazilian Political Alternative. “I believe that the Black and mulatto the Brazilian of colour must have a racial counter-ideology and a counter position in socioeconomic terms. The Brazilian of colour must strive simultaneously for a double change: socioeconomic change in the country, and change in race and colour relations.” In 1968, through these words, Afro-Brazilian scholar, artist, and politician Abdias Nascimento called attention to the potentially divergent but essentially related nature of the two main objectives of Afro-Brazilian activism: first, to effect concrete change in the distribution of social and economic power in Brazil, and second,

He writes about nationalism, but makes clear that by nationalism he does not mean xenophobia. He writes that Quilombismo, like Black Nationalism more broadly, is “universalist and internationalist in itself, in that it sees the national liberation of peoples respecting their unique cultural and political integrity, as an imperative for world liberation” (Nascimento,

d., 1989). Scholars who endorse this term maintain that Brazilians do not regard each other through the lens of race, and that therefore race is not a relevant consideration in the study of social inequality. Abdias Nascimento’s ideas stand in direct opposition to this dominant discourse of racial democracy. His writings affirm the continuing importance of race in analyses of political inequality. He also draws attention to the important differences in cultural practice and worldview that emerge from the African ancestry of Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian population in ways that dominant political discourses, in Brazil and elsewhere, are not likely to. Examining “Quilombismo” in relation to the quilombo clause and resulting land disputes highlights the extent to which the philosophy particularly its cultural dimensions reflects the situation of rural Afro-Brazilians (Nascimento A. d., 1989). This examination also reflects the implications of Nascimento’s interpretation of the quilombos for race relations and the politics of recognition in Brazil more