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Ethnic groups in Brazil

Quilombo Machado community, one of 11 quilombo communities in Porte Allegro, Brazil, 2017. 

‘Existing and resisting’: Black quilombo communities fight for land, rights in Brazil

Human rights

Monday is Black Consciousness Day in Brazil. It falls on day of death of Zumbi dos Palmares, the leader of Palmares Quilombo, a community of runaway slaves and their descendants, in 1695. There are still thousands of quilombos across Brazil, and many continue to fight for their land and their rights.

Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa during welcome ceremonies outside the 16th century Jeronimos monastery in Lisbon, Saturday, April 22, 2023. 

Portugal’s president says country should apologize, ‘assume responsibility’ for slave trade

Conflict & Justice
Felled trees on Karipuna territory in the Amazonian state of Rondônia.

Lula empowers Brazil’s Indigenous peoples with their own ministry. But environmental protection remains a key concern.

Environment
Gold sits in a pan moments after being torched to eliminate any mercury left, at an illegal mine the Amazon jungle, in the Itaituba area of Para state, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 21, 2020.

‘Mining kills’: A gold rush in Brazil threatens the Yanomami Indigenous people

Violence
A woman receives a plate of food donated by the Leao Xlll Foundation amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 7, 2021.

Hunger, unemployment, health care inequity: The pandemic’s devastating impact on Brazil’s Black communities

a confederate party in brazil

Brazil’s long, strange love affair with the Confederacy ignites racial tension

Identity

The Confederate flag debate has arrived to Brazil, pitting black activists against the Brazilian descendants of soldiers who fled the South after the Civil War to a country that still had slavery.

Brazil

In Rio, the descendants of slaves try to hang on to their historic communities

Culture

Of course, Afro-Brazilians do not need to escape slavery anymore, but in a country riven by racial inequality and historic injustices, the quilombos now serve as focal points for resistance of a more contemporary kind.

Jack Andrade of Rio de Janeiro parades by a panel of judges for Miss Black Power Brazil. Judges included writers, designers, a university professor, and a model, who evaluated the candidates according to “diverse criteria, including political responsibili

Black Brazilian women are building up their power — and they’re even showing it with their hairstyle

Culture

Despite over half of Brazilians claiming African descent, black Brazilians face widespread racism — which often manifests itself in violence. For the women of Miss Black Power Brazil, resistance against racism comes from a natural place — their hair.

A model presents a creation from the Cola Cola 2013/2014 summer collection during Rio Fashion Week in Rio de Janeiro April 18, 2013.

Black is the new white at Rio’s Fashion Week

Arts, Culture & Media

Rio de Janeiro’s Fashion Week has long been criticized for using almost exclusively white models in a country that is mostly non-white. But no more. A new agreement ensures at least 10 percent of models on Rio’s runways will be non-white.

Brazilians increasingly moving back and forth from U.S. in search of opportunity

Business, Economics and Jobs

The economic boom in Brazil has given more mobility to Brazilians looking to make it big, leading them to come to the United States. But as economic opportunities wax and wane here and there, increasingly, more Brazilians are moving back and forth, searching for their best option.