July 28, 2023

10:07

Daleth Oliveira – Amazon Agency

BELÉM (PA) – For the first time, a Demographic Census in Brazil investigated how many quilombola residents there are and where they live. The survey conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) released on Thursday, 27, shows that Pará is the state with the largest number of officially delimited Quilombola Territories (TQs) and the 1st in the country in number of quilombolas living within TQs.

In total, there are 87 TQs delimited in Pará that bring together a population of 44,533 quilombola residents, or 32.98% of the total quilombola population in the state. Outside the territories, there are 90,500 quilombolas, or 67.02% of the total.

For Edileia Teixeira, from Quilombo de Abacatal, in Ananindeua, metropolitan region of Belém, the Census should bring more visibility to the communities of the country.

“We have so many desires. We need improvements in education and health. Today, in our community, we only have up to elementary school, but we need to study beyond elementary school. All of Pará needs more health and here is no different, we quilombolas also need it. So, this Census is very important for us and now with this data, we hope that public services for us will improve”, says Edileia Teixeira.

The unprecedented survey was supported by the National Coordination of Articulation of Rural Black Quilombola Communities (CONAQ) and included households inside and outside officially delimited Quilombola Territories.

Thrilled to participate in the historic launch, the coordinator of CONAQ in Pará, Valéria Carneiro, also celebrates the visibility that quilombolas will have with the data obtained by IBGE and hopes that the public authorities will look more towards the peoples.

“This was a long-awaited moment for us quilombolas. Having access to public policies is much more difficult for us, because our territory is very distant. But with this Census, IBGE brings hope for progress in public policies for our territories,” she celebrates.

The 2022 Census revealed that Brazil has 1,327,802 quilombola people, of which 10.17% reside in Pará, bringing together the fourth largest quilombola population in the country: 135,033 people. The state has 42,697 households with at least one resident who self-identifies as quilombola.

According to IBGE data, Pará also has the third highest average number of residents per household in terms of households with at least one quilombola person: 3.77 people (the Brazil average was 3.17 quilombolas). Above Pará are the states of Amazonas, where the concentration of people in quilombola households is 4.71 people; and Amapá, where the density is 3.89 people per household.

Quilombola Territories

Titled Quilombola Territories are areas that have been fully titled by the state. The 2022 Census considered “officially delimited Quilombola Territories” to be all those that had some formal delimitation in the land collection of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) or of the bodies with land competences in the states and municipalities on July 31, 2022 (reference date of the 2022 Census).

Brazil has 494 officially delimited Quilombola Territories.Of the total Quilombola population in the country, only 12.59% live within officially delimited Quilombola Territories (167,202 people) and 87.41% live in households located outside these areas (1,660,600 people).In the list of the 10 Quilombola Territories (TQ’s) with the highest absolute number of quilombola people, Pará stands out: the TQ that involves the communities of Alto Itacuruçá, Baixo Itacuruçá and Bom Remédio (in Abaetetuba) appears as the 2nd in Brazil in absolute population, with 5,638 quilombola residents, which represents 3.4% of the total quilombolas in Brazil living in TQ’s.

In 4th place, the TQ that agglutinates the communities Igarapé Preto, Baixinha, Panpelônia, Teófilo (municipality of Baião) appears in 4th place in Brazil in absolute population, with 4,073 quilombola people (2.4% of quilombolas in Brazil in TQ’s); in 7th place, they have the TQ Cabeceiras (in Óbidos), with 2,929 quilombolas (1.5% of the total in Brazil in TQ).