For Land and Liberty: Black Struggles in Rural Brazil

by Merle L. Bowen

Overview

For Land and Liberty is a comparative study of the history and contemporary circumstances concerning Brazil's quilombos (African-descent rural communities) and their inhabitants, the quilombolas. The book examines the disposition of quilombola claims to land as a site of contestation over citizenship and its meanings for Afro-descendants, as well as their connections to the broader fight against racism. Contrary to the narrative that quilombola identity is a recent invention, constructed for the purpose of qualifying for opportunities made possible by the 1988 law, Bowen argues that quilombola claims are historically and locally rooted. She examines the ways in which state actors have colluded with large landholders and modernization schemes to appropriate quilombo land, and further argues that, even when granted land titles, quilombolas face challenges issuing from systemic racism. By analyzing the quilombo movement and local initiatives, this book offers fresh perspectives on the resurgence of movements, mobilization, and resistance in Brazil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781108928953
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/22/2023
Series:	Cambridge Studies on the African Diaspora
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Merle L. Bowen is Associate Professor of African American studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of The State against the Peasantry: Rural Struggles in Colonial and Postcolonial Mozambique.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. History, Heritage, and Resistance; 2. Ethnic Cultural Politics Trumps Black Land Rights; 3. Quilombola Recognition and Criminalization of Blackness; 4. Land, Labor, and Livelihoods; 5. Ethnic Tourism and the Commodification of Quilombola Culture; Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

'For Land and Liberty shows the foundational importance of land rights to black citizenship in Brazil. With an unflinching gaze, Bowen demonstrates the dispossession of rural black communities by powerful rural and state interests since the time of slavery, and compellingly argues that land rights are a necessary form of reparations for past injustices, and to achieve justice today. Deeply researched and timely, this work illuminates the unfinished struggle for liberation in Brazil and the African diaspora.' Yuko Miki, Fordham University

'Quilombola - the formation of fugitive slave communities - is a storied part of the struggle of enslaved Africans in the Americas for self-emancipation, nowhere more so than in Brazil. For Land and Liberty is a deeply researched meditation on the afterlives of Quilombola in contemporary Brazil. With its rural, land, and labor focus, yoked to the theme of self-emancipation, then and now, the book does double duty as a paradigm-shifting work on the origins and evolution of pan-Africanism. A stellar accomplishment.' Michael West, Pennsylvania State University

‘Scholars of Latin American studies, Africana studies, history, geogra­phy, anthropology, and agrarian studies will get an extensive overview of the regional complexities in applying a land reform program, including what was promised and what has failed to deliver.' Mary Lorena Kenny, Agricultural History

From the Publisher