Residents’ Perceptions of a Favela River: Memory, Environmental Recovery and Community Belonging on the Banks of the Cascata River

Original art by Natalia S. Flores

My Favela, My Quilombo, My Research

I decided to research my own community, the place where I grew up with my family and friends. I have always understood the favela as an extension of the quilombo, spaces socially organized by Africans and Afro-Brazilians. Quilombos were formed primarily during times of slavery, to organize pockets of life with freedom, without the domination and the violence perpetrated by enslavers. The term ‘favela’ appears en masse after the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888 and becomes central to questions of the territorialization of Black resistance and the struggle for housing in the country. Quilombos and favelas are both, to some degree, types of autonomous territories that emphasize collectivity as a mode of social organization.

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This article is part of a series created in partnership with the Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies at San Diego State University, to produce articles for the Digital Brazil Project on water issues and the LGBTQIAP+ population in Rio’s favelas and in the Baixada Fluminense for RioOnWatch.