#quilombolas

Rural slave descendants risk all to fight for land in Brazil | PLACE
▻http://www.thisisplace.org/i/?id=ec3a938a-df9a-4cd6-8fe1-dbf44f14f765

Rejane Maria da Costa has fallen out with neighbors and faced repeated death threats in her battle for Brazil to recognise her community’s claim to the land their ancestors inhabited.

Yet the 42-year-old, who makes a meager living growing cassava on a small patch of land behind her single-story home, is determined to keep up the fight for the rights of the small rural community descended from slaves.

“We won’t give up,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at her home in the poor neighborhood of Maria Joaquina on the outskirts of the coastal town of Buzios, about 170 km (105 miles) northeast of Rio de Janeiro. “I can’t be afraid. I’m not just fighting for something for me. I’m fighting for something for all of us.”

When Brazil abolished slavery 130 years ago this week, at least 4 million slaves had arrived there from Africa to work on sugar plantations and in other sectors of the country’s flourishing economy.

Many of those who escaped the harsh working conditions set up homes in settlements across Brazil that are known as quilombos.

The fight for a safe home by the 16 million #quilombolas, as the inhabitants of these settlements are known, is part of a struggle for land across Brazil.The country is rich in land for development but low on deeds and formal records, leading to enormous tension and conflict over property rights.

#Brésil #foncier #esclavage

Brazil’s quilombos face eucalyptus giant in land war | Brazil | Al Jazeera
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/brazil-quilombos-face-eucalyptus-giant-land-war-161123122742103.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2016/11/28/d46bf05e78d146cb80c36451396e6314_18.jpg

In Sape do Norte, in the far north of Espirito Santo, Brazil, 32 communities refer to the 111,000 hectares of land as the “green desert”. #Quilombolas, members of these communities, are the descendants of slaves who created settlements called #quilombos. The “green desert” refers to the eucalyptus plantation which has gradually spread over land that they claim is rightfully theirs.

The eucalyptus monoculture arrived in the region during the 1960s under Brazil’s military dictatorship. “The lands were not clearly divided or marked by fences,” community leader Domingo Firmiano dos Santos said. “The absence of land titles facilitated illegal occupation. Anyone who didn’t sell their piece of land at a bargain price was pressured, threatened, and forced to leave.”

Fibria Celulose, the global leader in bleached eucalyptus pulp and a paper company which exports to more than 40 countries, now owns and manages these eucalyptus plantations. The company said in a statement response for this article that it also owns all the disputed lands in question.

#Brésil #terres #plantations #eucalyptus