A Practical and Poetic Approach to Afro-Brazilian Resistance

This post is part of our roundtable on The Dialectic is in the Sea.

The idea of Quilombo as a place of rioting, popular organization, and resistance is not new to Black Brazilian activists. Our activism has told the remembrance of Palmares, our publications, and our popular culture. Scholars such as Clovis Moura (1959), Abdias do Nascimento (1980), Lélia Gonzalez (1981), and others have theorized about Quilombo as praxis, as an Afro-Brazilian intellectual and practical organized resistance to Portuguese domination and the intrinsic roots of slavery mentality in Brazilian society in the post-abolition.¹ Meanwhile, activist organizations replaced the idea of the Portuguese Princess Isabel as the Black Brazilian’s redeemer with the image of Zumbi as the African leader and warrior who fought for our freedom (2021). From “Samba enredos” to rap lyrics to thesis and dissertations, the idea of rescuing the quilombo past is recurrent.

However, Beatriz Nascimento’s theorization of “quilombo” comes from a different place. If, on the one hand, the late Afro-Brazilian scholar reinforces the idea of the resistance of quilombos, on the other hand, she will bring that resistance from the collective to the self. Through the concept of body-territory, coined by Alex Ratts (2007), Nascimento will embody the quilombo as identity, the I-Quilombo. Still, the I-Quilombo also introduces the idea of quilombo as a verb, as a practice of individual and collective resistance, where the quilombo territory cannot be disassociated from the Quilombo subject.

The Dialectic Is in the Sea shares the history and trajectory of Beatriz Nascimento as this Quilombo-self. Beatriz is, at the same time, the narrative and the narrator in this publication. Rescuing Nascimento’s history by creating a humane narrative, especially through the shared memories of her only daughter Bethania, her “compadre” Muniz Sodré, and others, like Ratts, who fell in love with her work, the book brings the reader closer to her and as a consequence, to her work. The emotional efforts to translate and introduce the Beatriz-Quilombo to the reader demanded more than language knowledge, but a transcendent state that would bring her memory back, first, for the personal characteristics of her work, but also because even in Brazil, Nascimento’s work is still unknown by most humanities scholars who are not investing their time and careers to read Black scholars.

By translating Beatriz Nascimento’s intellectual thought, The Dialectic Is in the Sea invests in the I-quilombo as a research method. Contextualizing her life through birth, life, love, maternity, and death, the authors take the concept of self-ethnography to a different place. The biographical context is not only a participant observation but is fundamental to understanding how Nascimento develops her intellectual thought. Her connection to the ocean, which makes her affirm herself as “Atlântica” wouldn’t have been possible if she had not spent most of her life in the coastal areas of Brazil. The author knew the Atlantic because she lived in it; the ocean was also her home. Another indication is her marriage to a Cape Verdean, an African man, whose colonial experience differs from hers as a descendant of enslaved Africans, but with whom she created an inseparable connection when giving birth to her daughter, exemplifying her Pan-Africanist and Afrocentric visions. Her dualities were the dualities of her orisha, Osumare. Even the description of her murder contributed to the idea of living theory when she was sacrificed while intending to defend another woman from domestic violence.

To the international audience, The Dialectic Is in the Sea offers a unique perspective on the Black resistance in Brazil, especially through the actions of the Black Unified Movement (Movimento Negro Unificado) and Black women’s resistance. Each section of the book refers to one aspect of Beatriz’s life and work, but they also reveal the main concerns of our collective resistance. Demystifying the myth of racial democracy, rethinking the role of Black Brazilians in our society, and rescuing our history, our culture, our spirituality, and, as a consequence, our identity have always been important topics for Afro-Brazilian activists. Not coincidentally, the editors selected a few texts published in activists’ vehicles. Beatriz talked about us and for us.

Her observations of the Bailes Blacks as places of resistance and contemporary quilombos would become common years after her first considerations. I wonder what she would say when, in 2016, Tássia Reis released “Ouça-me,” mentioning carrying the strength of Queen Nzinga, or still back in 2002, when Z’África Brasil, a rap group from the south side of São Paulo released an album named Antigamente Quilombos, Hoje Periferiaand rapped on a track by the same name:

They tried to change the majority’s DNA

King Zumbi! In the past quilombos, Now periferia!

Hoist your ship; we won’t give you peace, no, no

Then come the war

Zulu Z’África Zumbi, we won’t give you peace, no, no

Then come the war

Both cases illustrate how Nascimento’s observations of Afro-Brazilian cultural practices and her cultural productions indicate her ability to project the future, or as her daughter states in the final interview, someone born an Afrofuturist. Beatriz Nascimento’s quilombo-self, or her embodiment of the I-quilombo, brings contemporary reflections that are still pertinent almost three decades after she went to the Orum.

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