November 20th: A day to celebrate and discuss Afro-Brazilians heritage and history

The date was first suggested and celebrated by a Black group from the south of the country in the 1970s during the military dictatorship

Originally published on Global Voices

For the first time, this November 20 was a national holiday in Brazil to mark and remember Black Consciousness Day. The date was added to school calendars in 2003 and officially recognized by then president Dilma Rousseff in 2011, but it was only celebrated in certain cities and states until now. 

It remembers the death of Zumbi dos Palmares, the historical leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares, in 1695. Quilombos were communities formed by people of African descent who escaped slavery in Brazil during the colonial period, while nowadays, the term refers to contemporary hinterland settlements formed by individuals of African descent with cultural or historical links to the territory in both urban and rural areas.

Senator Paulo Paim (Workers’ Party — PT), one of the four Black parliamentarians who worked on the discussion and elaboration of the 1988 Constitution, a document that advanced the discussion on racial issues in Brazil and criminalized racism, said about the importance of the date:

Vai além de poder ser um feriado; é um momento de consciência, de debate, de diálogo sobre todas as formas de preconceito, discriminação e racismo que atinge toda a sociedade.

It goes beyond simply being a holiday; it's a moment of consciousness, of debating, of dialogue about all forms of prejudice, discrimination and racism that hits the entire society.

The latest national census, from 2022, registered the majority of the Brazilian population self-identifying as mixed ethnicity (pardos) for the first time. According to IBGE (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics), 45.3 percent of Brazilians identify as such, while 10.2 percent as Black. The sum of these two groups forms the entirety of the Afro-descendent population among the estimated 203 million inhabitants in the country.

Despite advancements in affirmative action policies, this population still struggles with the effects of structural racism in Brazilian society with vicious effects, like being the main target of police violence — almost 90 percent of the people killed by police forces in 2023 were Black.

Who was Zumbi?

There are several versions of the life of Zumbi dos Palmares, the man who once led the largest quilombo in Brazil. It is believed he was born around 1655 in the region known as Serra da Barriga, where Palmares was located, between the north portion of Alagoas state and the south of Pernambuco, and taken by settlers (bandeirantes). Later on, around the age of 23, Zumbi would escape and become Palmares’ leader.

Historian Jean Marcel Carvalho França, co-author of a book entitled ”Three times Zumbi: The Construction of a Brazilian hero” (“Três vezes Zumbi: A construção de um herói brasileiro”), noted to Superinteressante magazine that historical documentation about Zumbi is not only very scarce but also usually written by Europeans sources:

É difícil saber, porque você não tem descrições diretas do Zumbi. Você tem descrições das batalhas. Você tem descrições das organizações do Quilombo. Agora sobre o Zumbi especificamente você não tem quase dado nenhum.

It is hard to know because you don't have direct descriptions of Zumbi. You have descriptions of the battles, you have descriptions of the organization within the quilombo. About Zumbi specifically you almost have no data at all.

Around 1680, Palmares would start a period of decay, and a decade later, an expedition was sent to annihilate it. The settler leading this mission was promised land in the region and also the agreement that he could turn some of the inhabitants into his slaves. Zumbi fled for over a year, as the story is usually told.

On November 20 1695, after one of his companions exposed his whereabouts, Zumbi dos Palmares was ambushed and killed. His head was cut off and displayed in a public square in Recife, Pernambuco's state capital.

Today, the term quilombo is used to define hinterland settlements in Brazil and “quilombolas,” the people who live in it. According to the 2022 census, the country has 1.3 million quilombolas living in 7,666 communities and 8,441 places. The northeastern region concentrates 68.1 percent of this population. The Palmares Cultural Foundation, which is responsible for officially recognizing the territories, has already issued 3,103 certificates.

A group to remember 

The date marking the death of Zumbi was first suggested in the 1970s as a remembrance day by the cultural and political activist Palmares Group, in Porto Alegre, the capital of the southernmost state of Brazil.

Palmares’ members wanted a day that would celebrate and center on Afro-Brazilian people, opposing May 13, the day commemorating the abolition of slavery that used to remember Princess Isabel‘s role more than any Black personality. She signed the Golden Law in 1888, caving to the growing abolitionist movement, after its approval in Congress, while her father, Emperor Peter II, was abroad.

One of the main markets of the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean, Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. It is estimated that the country received the largest part of the 12 million African people abducted by traffickers and brought by force to the Americas.

On November 20, 1971, members of the Palmares Group held an event to celebrate the date for the first time, and this would later inspire movements in other regions. At the time, Brazil had been living under a military dictatorship for almost a decade already, and the group was monitored by the regime, as told in a story published by local news outlet Matinal in 2021.

Matinal mentions documents available at the National Archive that include a file on the poet Oliveira Silveira, one of Palmares Group's leaders and one of the people responsible for the ideation of Black Consciousness Day. One of the records says: ”The insistence of ‘awakening a Black consciousness’ among Brazilians of African descent raises concerns.”

The monitoring of the group was no exception. As it did to other social movements, the military dictatorship that lasted 21 years in Brazil also eyed Black movements, monitoring, persecuting and causing their militants to become victims of actions that tried to stop the advancement of racial discussions, as remembered by the government site Revealed Memories (“Memórias Reveladas”).

Naiara Silveira, Oliveira's daughter, told Matinal the group had to ask for permission to have their 1971 event as well. Now, more than 50 years later, she celebrated the day by honoring her father's legacy and the gaucho southern heritage of Black Brazilians.

On November 21, the federal government, acting in the name of the Brazilian state, apologized for enslaving people and the effects of slavery later on. As reported by Agência Brasil, the Human Rights Minister Macaé Evaristo said:

A gente sabe que essa memória está na construção da sociedade brasileira de mais de 300 anos de escravatura, ela não acaba no 13 de maio. Porque o 14 de maio começa com o total abandono da população negra no país. Ele começa com a total ausência de políticas públicas. Ele começa com a negação da nossa humanidade.

We know that this memory is built into Brazilian society from over 300 years of slavery, it doesn't end with May 13 [when the abolition was signed]. Because May 14 starts with the total abandonment of the African descent population in this country. It starts with a total absence of public policies. It starts with the denial of our humanity

Written by Global Voices Brazil