Quilombos

By Helena Theodoro

Muniz Sodré states that myths, legends, and folk tales are ways to access the unconscious of a people. The legend of Boi Bumbá, so present throughout the country, points directly to the mythical universe of Afro-Brazilian culture, to faith and the freedom to be. In it, we have as central characters Father Francisco and Mother Catirina, a couple of black workers on a farm. When Mother Catirina becomes pregnant, she craves the tongue of a bull. To satisfy his pregnant wife's desire, Father Francisco kills the farm owner's pet bull. Realizing the bull's death, the owner seeks Father Francisco, who arrives with a tribe's shaman and resurrects the bull to everyone's joy.

The Ox in this play represents the resistance of descendants of Africans and native peoples for the preservation of their identity and dreams, which are revealed in the "Bumba meu Boi" of Maranhão, in the Bois of Parintins, in the Bois de Mamão, indeed in all places where black and indigenous people are found.

Similarly, in the book "Contos Crioulos" from Bahia, by Mestre Didi, we also find stories that well situate the rules of social cohesion of the quilombola black community and the concern with the structure of the personality of its members. The tale "The escape of Uncle Ajayi" tells how a slave escapes from the farm with others to be able to perform his religious duties. Pursued by soldiers, he climbs hills and walks through alleys with his group, always singing, dancing, and turning every everyday event into a way of telling the group's life and creating art. In the end, after much persecution, he manages to reach a space of freedom with his people, where the soldiers could no longer reach them, creating there their community, known as QUILOMBO, according to the norms and traditions of their people.

Source: Congresso em Foco

Photo: Photograph taken by Januário Garcia on November 20, 1982, in Serra da Barriga in the Quilombo de Palmares and present in his book "25 years of Black Movement in Brazil." From left to right: Lélia Gonzalez, Abdias do Nascimento, Edialeda, Deputy José Miguel, and Helena Theodoro. Photo: Januário Garcia

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