Felipa Maria Aranha

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Filipa Maria Aranha formed a quilombo with more than three hundred enslaved fugitives, who supported themselves for many years. Located at the headwaters of the Itapocu river, a tributary of the Tocantins river – currently in the municipality of Cametá, Pará – the quilombo was called Mola or Itapocu. Coming from the Mina Coast, Filipa was enslaved and taken to Belém, in Grão-Pará, from whence she went to work on a sugarcane plantation in Cametá. She fled in 1750 and created a quilombo, which she headed with political, social and military organization. Memories and legends tell that Filipa helped to structure the Confederation of Itapocu, an entity composed of several quilombos (currently the remnant quilombola communities of Mola, Laguinho, Tomásia, Boa Esperança and Porto Alegre).