Quilombo dos Palmares (nonfiction)

Map of Brazil. The state of Alagoas is highlighted.

Palmares, or Quilombo dos Palmares, was a fugitive community of escaped slaves and others in colonial Brazil that developed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694.

It was located in what is today the Brazilian state of Alagoas.

The modern tradition has been to call the settlement the Quilombo of Palmares. Quilombos were settlements mainly of survivors and free-born enslaved African people. The Quilombos came into existence when Africans began arriving in Brazil in the mid-1530s and grew significantly as slavery expanded.

No contemporary document calls Palmares a quilombo; instead the term mocambo is used.

Palmares was home to not only escaped enslaved Africans, but also to mulattos, caboclos, Indians and poor whites, especially Portuguese soldiers trying to escape forced military service.

Fiction cross-reference

• Novo Palmares - name give to Quilombo dos Palmares after its unexplained disappearance in 1694.

Nonfiction cross-reference

External links:

• Palmares (quilombo) @ Wikipedia