A Quilombo Called Canudos - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 55

Covert Communities in Plain Sight
Quilombos and mocambos wereoftenunderstoodashideoutsandseenaslargelyisolated
from regional economic life. In some situations this was the case. 70 Recent research on
quilombos and the communities that had their origins in them, however, is recasting our
understanding of them. Some had tight yet covert linkages within the main economy,
andothersweremoreisolatedandself-sufficient.Manyscholarssituate quilombos atthe
heart of both rural and urban provisioning, petty extraction, and healing. Firewood, fish,
herbs, charcoal, manioc, greens, palm oils, fruits came from small holder and quilombo
growing grounds and forests. 71
Quilombos stretched from the terreiro —the urban safe houses and religious sanctuar-
ies for ritual dancing and healing in the center of cities—to the suburbs and small satel-
lite towns, short-term hideaways for religious practices as well as more permanent set-
tlements. 72 Quilombos often faded into the background of the campo negro , the black
countryside of free and semi-free tenants and sharecroppers. 73 These had relationships
with networks of more distant communities and were often linked to plantations and
ranches that even had quilombos within their own lands. 74
Quilombos and communities derived from them were and still are a widespread form
of settlement in the South American interior. They had varying degrees of autonomy,
linkages to the regional economy, their own forms of governance, often collective forms
of land holding, and relatively egalitarian distribution of goods. These kinds of com-
munities were likely to be structured along what James Scott has called the “Mor-
al Economies,” with rights to subsistence and access to livelihoods. 75 Jagunços and
vaqueiros ofCanudosaswellasother sertanejos wouldcertainlyhaveknownabout,had
economic and kinship ties with, spent time in (if for nothing else to celebrate various
festivals and dancing), 76 and had perhaps even been members of quilombo communit-
ies. Quilombos were often clandestine “settlement networks” that involved many com-
munities, as was the case with some famous quilombos like Campo Grande, Ambrosius,
and Calinda. These might more usefully be thought of as covert “counties” rather than
individualized villages. A cattle station might well overlap with the quilombo universe,
though it was a ranch outpost. What has fallen out of the analysis of the backlands is
that quilombos were far more numerous and extensive than millenarian settlements and
constituted a covert and very widespread system of territorial occupation whose histor-
ies, like Canudos, resides in runaways, resistance, economic change and climatic cata-
strophes.
The Secret Life of Liberty
Secrecy was key to the survival of quilombos . They were embedded in networks and
circuits of information, goods, and people (potential sources of betrayal) and existed in