Maroon settlements were communities of self-emancipated enslaved people. They existed across the Americas since at least the sixteenth century. In the Spanish colonies of Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, these communities were called cumbes and palenques. In the French colonies of the Caribbean and South America, they were referred to as villages marrons (maroon villages). In Brazil, the Portuguese colony in South America, a maroon community was referred to by several names such as ladeira, magote, and mocambo. However, quilombo became the most common name for these settlements.

Among these maroon settlements, Brazil was home to one of the most significant—the Palmares quilombo. Established in the seventeenth century, Palmares was the largest and longest-lasting maroon community in the Americas. It was located in northeastern Brazil, in the Alagoas captaincy (a colonial administrative division), in present-day Pernambuco, a region dominated by sugarcane estates.

The word quilombo is associated with the term kilombo, which has several meanings in West Central Africa. Kilombo refers to a West Central African male initiation society and military association of the Imbangala, a Kimbundu-speaking people based in the northwestern region of today’s Angola. Kilombo probably had several other meanings, such as a permanent or temporary camp of commercial caravans or a military camp. It could also simply refer to a gathering of people.

It is hard to establish a precise date for the emergence of Palmares. Yet, as early as 1612, Brazil’s Portuguese colonizers attempted to destroy it. The various runaway settlements that gave birth to Palmares were initially scattered refuges situated in a region of mountains and forests forty-five to seventy-five miles from the Atlantic coast.

Most members of Palmares were fugitives from sugarcane plantations. Many residents of Palmares were enslaved men born in West Central Africa and their Brazilian-born descendants. However, archeological research indicates that freedpeople, mixed-race persons, Indigenous peoples, and even Jews of Portuguese heritage escaping religious persecution also resided in Palmares over the years.

Mirroring the organization of West Central African society, Palmares functioned as an independent state and was governed by a monarchy. Palmares was well organized. Protected by palisades (fences of wooden stakes) to protect the community from Portuguese and Dutch attacks, the quilombo comprised hundreds of dwellings.

Palmares was to some extent self-sustainable. In addition to practicing agriculture, its residents used palm trees (so the name “palmares”) to build houses and beds and its fibers to fabricate a variety of items. They also tapped the palm trees to make wine from its sap, ate the palm hearts, and extracted oil from the kernels to produce butter. As most enslaved Africans in the area came from the region of present-day Angola, already a Portuguese colony in the seventeenth century, evidence suggests that the residents of Palmares spoke a common language based on Kimbundu.

Palmares grew during the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco between 1630 and 1654, despite the Dutch attempts to destroy it. The Portuguese continued leading expeditions against Palmares after they expelled the Dutch but failed to destroy the quilombo. Historians estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 people lived in Palmares in 1670.

In 1677, the Portuguese attacked Palmares destroying many mocambos and capturing hundreds of prisoners. In 1678, this provisional defeat led Palmares’s ruler, Gana Zumba, to sign an agreement with the Portuguese. Gana Zumba promised to relocate Palmares to the region of Cucaú and deliver to the Portuguese fugitives from slavery born outside the quilombo. In exchange the Portuguese would liberate the prisoners they took during their attacks against Palmares.

But Zumbi, Gana Zumba’s nephew, protested the deal. He refused to deliver all fugitives who were born outside the quilombo. Eventually, in 1678 Gana Zumba’s opponents assassinated him by poison, and Zumbi became Palmares’s ruler. Meanwhile, the residents of Palmares who had relocated to Cucaú joined Zumbi. In 1680, the Portuguese retaliated. They destroyed the site where the quilombo had been relocated and re-enslaved its residents.

Over the next fifteen years, Palmares resettled in the area surrounding a mountain range named Serra do Barriga. After leading another war against the quilombo, the Portuguese eventually succeeded in destroying the settlement in 1694. Portuguese troops killed Zumbi on November 20, 1695. Despite the end of Palmares, its remnants survived and new smaller quilombos emerged in the region. Palmares’s memory remains alive in Brazil, and November 20 is now a federal holiday.