Ivaporunduva
June 19-22 was a holiday weekend. On Thursday the 19th, Laurel, Raul, and I, along with Raul’s friends Tatiana and Pablo, loaded up his jeep and headed for the interior of Sao Paulo state. I was excited — it was my first journey of any significant distance away from the coast and the major cities.
It was a beautiful drive, as we headed into mountains covered by mata atlantica (Atlantic rainforest). We spent most of the day at Ivaporunduva, a Quilombo (”key-loam-bo”) community. The Quilombos are the descendants of escaped and freed slaves who founded their communities centuries ago. Here’s a shot of Ivaporunduva. The church in the photo is 250 years old:
“Quilombo_Village”
We rode in a small motor boat across the river. A group of a dozen or so Quilombos were hanging out and talking about the previous night’s futebol (soccer) match. They were happy to see Raul and chatted with him for a while. A lot of my preconceptions about the Quilombos were immediately shattered. They dress and look like millions of other Afro-Brazilians. Their village has electricity, and I even saw several satellite dishes (note: these are all over Brazil in rural areas). In short, nothing overly exotic.
Raul’s a lawyer for Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), an NGO that addresses social and environmental issues jointly, viewing them as being inextricably linked. ISA is working on a project with the Quilombos to grow and sell organic bananas. The methods used help preserve mata atlantica. Organic bananas command a higher price than conventional bananas, and the Quilombos save money on pesticides (which one villager told me cost $20/liter). As I understand it, agriculture is one of the few activities the Quilombos in that region can perform due to environmental restrictions. Raul gave a class to representatives of various Quilombo communities about the types of legal association in Brazil (associations, foundations, cooperatives, corporations), describing which ones would be good for the Quilombos’ political activities and which for their economic activities.
The Quilombos I met were deeply savvy. We had a beer with a leader of the movement (aaargh! I’ve forgotten his name) opposing the building of a dam that could flood their valley. He’s been all over Brazil and abroad in pursuit of the cause. I hope he succeeds.
The big question I had was why so many people I’ve met in Brazil – people I deeply respect – express such admiration and support for the Quilombos. My best answer is community. Almost all of the people I spoke to in the village spoke of rising or falling together. I asked one guy, really smart, a little younger than me, why he stayed rather than head for the city. He replied that he knew there was no chance of making a lot of money in the village. But heading for a favela was like a lottery: a few people got jobs and did well, while the rest lived in squalor. He’d rather live with the community, grow with them, make his living with them. It was uncannily like Duncan Kennedy’s description in Law & Development of why urban slums exploded in developing countries: a 1 in 100 chance of making 1000 times the income made it a rational choice for many villagers to leave for industrializing cities. But looking around the village and comparing it to favelas I’ve seen, I think the Quilombos made the right choice.
I don’t want to over-romanticize their way of life. They are materially poor. There were buildings in the village made of bamboo and dried earth (though most were made of brick or cement blocks). The church had no pews, only loose desks and chairs. The school was literally one room. But their communities represent a centuries-old, self-sufficient alternative to the way most of Brazil’s poor live. A better alternative, in my view.
I’ll admit I’m biased. Ivaporunduva is the only place I’ve been where people actally like lawyers. I said “Oi” (hi) to a toddler, and her mother said, “Diga oi ao advogado” (say hi to the lawyer). Mostly due to the efforts of folks like Raul (whose class was excellent, btw).
Addendum (July 19, 2003): Ivaporunduva is more prosperous than Quilombo communities in less fertile parts of Brazil, where the villagers often don
