Latin America’s Escaped Slave Colonies Are Still Left off the Map

The rise of big data and artificial intelligence has led to the use of weapons, exclusion, disenfranchisement, and exacerbated inequalities faced by oppressed communities. And in the United States, president Donald Trump’s repeated attempts to exclude immigrants from census data – as well as gerrymandering that has increasingly distorted district representation – show that the way population is counted matters. However, if data is counted and reported fairly, people can actually be seen, with all their needs and rights recognised.

In Brazil, one of the largest is the countless population centers of more than 5,900 quilombola communities across the country. Quilombolas are descendants of Africans who escaped slavery and established (often rural) communities, and declare themselves as having a racial identity distinct from the rest of Brazilian society. Quilombola communities span countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Suriname, Honduras, Belize, and Nicaragua, and have often been guaranteed specific territorial rights to protect their common ancestors, social fabric, and existence.

The rise of big data and artificial intelligence has led to the use of weapons, exclusion, disenfranchisement, and exacerbated inequalities faced by oppressed communities. And in the United States, President Donald Trump’s repeated attempts to exclude immigrants from census data – as well as gerrymandering that has increasingly distorted district representation – show that the way population is counted matters. However, if data is counted and reported fairly, people can actually be seen, with all their needs and rights recognised.

In Brazil, one of the largest is the countless population centers of more than 5,900 quilombola communities across the country. Quilombolas are descendants of Africans who escaped slavery and established (often rural) communities, and declare themselves as having a racial identity distinct from the rest of Brazilian society. Quilombola communities span countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Suriname, Honduras, Belize, and Nicaragua, and have often been guaranteed specific territorial rights to protect their common ancestors, social fabric, and existence.

A new study, published in the journal World Development Sustainability in June, found a significant lack of data on the territory and population of quilombola. The study highlighted the finding that of more than 5,900 quilombola communities in Brazil, only 494 are named and recognized through public records. For a careful analysis of the multiple stages of land rights acquisition in this study, sufficient data were available for only 313 of them. Thousands of quilombola communities remain invisible.

What this means is that these communities are not counted in any analysis of public data; Many of them do not appear on Google Maps; Most importantly, many of them do not have legal documents proving where their lands begin and end. This ambiguity creates great scope for territorial conflicts and means that there is no clear way for the Quilombolas to defend their lands once these conflicts begin.

This adds to a large list of existing challenges faced by quilombola residents, who already face poverty rates twice those of white Brazilians and who often lack access to basic sanitation, waste disposal, and even water. Above all, facing persistent and disproportionate acts of racism and violence does not make life easy.

Without direct evidence of the existence of quilombolas, it is easy to ignore these communities, including their rights, dreams, and demands. Insecure rights make it easy for land speculators to contest residents’ rights to their land—a pressing problem given that studies have estimated that more than 98 percent of quilombola lands are threatened by encroachment and violence due to mining, large-scale agricultural plantations, infrastructure development, overlapping of private property, and land grabbing. In addition, the lack of political representation makes it difficult for quilombola’s needs and demands to receive political attention.

Land conflicts also have global impacts on climate change. Many quilombola lands contain large proportions of rich tropical forest – with more than 3.4 million hectares of native vegetation – which includes habitats that could be destroyed if companies and private owners acquired claims to the land. Trying to determine what role these forests play is very difficult; How can researchers know whether their sample is representative when nearly 90 percent of this data is missing?

The study published in World Development Sustainability highlights that only 3 percent (or less) of Brazil’s quilombola lands have formal land tenure rights. This represents a severe underrepresentation compared to the 67 percent of indigenous territories with formal land rights in the country – despite land rights for both populations being guaranteed in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution.

The lack of data translates not only into a lack of rights to land, but also into an inability to access public policies that guarantee basic rights such as health care, education, sanitation and agricultural financing. Brazil’s indigenous population is more comprehensively represented by public statistics – recognition and rights that quilombolas also deserve. Recognizing land rights and preventing invasions cannot be done without data – written proof of the existence of quilombola lands and their inhabitants.

So why is there such a big data gap? There have been massive budget cuts and increased institutional barriers to quilombola recognition, and some scholars and academic activists claim that these efforts were intentional (see here , here , and here ).

First, the defunding of INCRA – Brazil’s National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, the government body responsible for land tenure for quilombola communities – crippled quilombola’s ability to obtain legal rights to land. In fact, funding for quilombola land demarcation decreased by 89 percent between 2014 and 2019, and the National Institute of Agrarian Reform achieved 58 percent budget cuts for these activities in 2019 alone.

Second, powerful groups in Brazil (such as members of the Brazilian Agribusiness Caucus) with strong anti-quilombola sentiment – ​​often backed by overt or covert racism – have put in place numerous institutional barriers, preventing quilombola communities from obtaining land rights by making it increasingly difficult to reach the end of the six-stage approval process.

Data justice for quilombola communities can be achieved by literally putting them on the map. Part of the project of land appropriation and colonialism has involved deliberately claiming that lands are “empty” or “available” to overthrow the rights of those who have lived in them for generations.

Much of this data could potentially be available, if we looked in the right places. The Brazilian organization CONAQ (National Coordination of Rural Black Quilombola Communities) and other civil society organizations made significant efforts to support quilombola interests, including through data collection, organizing, and public protests.

The 2022 Brazilian census also included quilombola for the first time in Brazilian history, as data on quilombola had not previously been collected in the census. However, the 494 officially recognized territories were not enough. More funding must be returned to INCRA, as well as increased support to CONAQ and other relevant civil society organizations, to uphold constitutional and human rights.

Data is power. With the next UN climate conference – COP30 – taking place in Belém, Brazil in November, as well as the growing need for effective long-term climate solutions, ensuring data for quilombola communities is a crucial way to advance environmental and data justice. The data could make powerful actors such as politicians, corporations and speculators accountable to the Brazilian constitution – and to legislation already in place to provide historic reparations.

Data can provide evidence used in court cases, research and public dialogue to protect quilombola rights. The data provides proof that quilombolas exist, and that quilombolas—like other Brazilians—deserve no less.