Amplifying the Voices of Quilombola Communities Through Community-Based Tourism and Cultural Preservation in Alcântara, Brazil

For centuries, the Quilombola communities in Alcântara have endured hardships from global and state violence and oppression – to which they have resisted and cultivated rich cultures and a shared sense of identity through collective ways of living. However, in the past few decades, the Brazilian state and international allies, such as the United States, have pursued renewed efforts to extract, displace, and exploit the Quilombola communities who call Alcântara home for the race to space. In the past few years, harmful patterns of the past have continued to materialize for the Quilombos in Alcântara through efforts to advance capitalist and international interests by expanding the Alcântara Launch Center (CLA)1,2,3.The CLA expansion, currently being mandated by the Brazilian government, would uproot 800 additional families, compounding the cultural genocide and experienced by the Quilombos in Alcântara. On that occasion, the Brazilian state displaced 312 families. Notably, state recognition of Quilombola land rights started only after the fact in 1988, when Quilombo remnant communities received Constitutional recognition.4 Despite these hardships, the common threads and diverse mosaics that define Quilombola communities of Alcântara have persisted and been sustained through age-old subsistence practices, vibrant cultural festivals, collective territorial identities, and the common goal to protect and preserve the social and physical landscapes that make up the abundant Brazilian Amazon Forest that many Indigenous, Quilombola, and traditional communities have called home for centuries.