Zumbi dos Palmares

Zumbi was a Brazilian quilombola leader and one of the pioneers of resistance to slavery of Africans by the Portuguese in colonial Brazil. He was also the last of the kings of the Quilombo dos Palmares, a settlement of Afro-Brazilian people who liberated themselves from enslavement in the present-day state of Alagoas, Brazil. He is revered in Afro-Brazilian culture as a symbol of African freedom. Zumbi was born free in Quilombo in 1655. His mother Sabina was a sister of Ganga Zumba, who was the son of princess Aqualtune, daughter of an unknown King of Kongo. Zumbi and his relatives were of Central African descent. Zumbi was kidnapped as a child by Portuguese soldiers and given to a priest by the name of Father Antonio Melo. He was baptized with the name Francisco and taught Portuguese and Latin. But in the year 1670, at only fifteen years old, he fled from the parish and returned to his original home in the Quilombo. He soon became a respected military strategist and an expert in the Capoeira self-defence, the art of escape used by the people to defend against repeated attacks by Portuguese colonizers seeking free labour for growing sugar plantations. By 1678, the governor of the captaincy of Pernambuco approached the Quilombo dos Palmares leader Ganga Zumba with an offer to give freedom to all runaway slaves if Palmares would submit to Portuguese authority. Zumbi did not trust the Portuguese and refused. He said he refused to accept freedom for the people of Palmares while other Africans remained enslaved. Zumbi rejected Almeida’s proposal and challenged Ganga Zumba’s leadership. After the death of Ganga Zumba, Zumbi became the new leader of the Quilombo and continued in leading the fight against slavery and Portuguese oppression. He was said to have challenged several European settler military expeditions, forcing the king of Portugal at the time to write him a letter urging him to surrender and live under the Portuguese laws. He still refused to kowtow to the Portuguese and insisted on full freedom for his people. Zumbi was betrayed by one of his allies, Domingos Jorge Velho, who revealed his whereabouts to the Portuguese. On November 20, 1695, Zumbi was surrounded by Portuguese troops and killed in battle. His head was cut off and displayed in the central square of Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, as proof that Zumbi was not immortal and as a warning to other African resistance fighters. However, his legacy of courage and resistance lives on in the hearts and minds of many Afro-Brazilians who celebrate his date of death as the Day of Black Consciousness.