Displacement and Quilombos in Alcântara, Brazil: Modernity, Identity, and Place
Author(s)
Silberling, Louise S.
Abstract
For the past two decades, rural residents of a peninsula in northeastern Brazil have been struggling against eviction by Brazilian authorities. In Alcântara, Maranhão state, 155,000 acres have been slated as off-limits in order to accommodate the needs of a rocket launch base, the CLA (Alcântara Launch Center). The issue of quilombos leads us to see how entitlements may be gained through special rights claims, but also how trying officially to territorialise and define the property rights, practices, and identity of a special group can lead to fixing identities. Expulsion from the land in the launch-site case reframes the question of identity in terms of opening up for questioning the links between place (as a relation) and identity (as a relation). The quilombos facing resettlement and expulsion from Alcântara end up being a challenge to that historical link of ethnic identity with historical ties to place. Would they still be a quilombo if they were moved? Who decides, and how?
