1990-2000: Palmares is reborn in Brasília

A political project for Brazil from a Black point of view

Even in the context of the centenary of abolition and the new Constitution, national elites used the myth of racial democracy as a shield to keep structural inequalities untouched and to relativize the relevance of Black People to national life. Meanwhile, an increasing number of Black activists shared the position that assume the centrality of racism in the country and articule the demands of the majority of the population in defense of their right to citizenship would be fundamental actions to the country avoid see itself as a denial of its own story.
A national march by the Black Movement in Brasília would be the best expression of autonomy for this collective social being, who had at the time the historical conditions to offer a deeply democratic Political Project for Brazil. This is evident in the testimony of Edson Lopes Cardoso, a member of the MNU and leader of the National Executive of the March in 1995.

“We are arriving...”


“The good news travels all over the country: Black people are getting ready to go to Brasília. It is no longer a matter of saying that the State omits itself and that the State does not do anything. We are going to Brasilia to say what the State should do. [...] Idealized by the Black Movement, the March is being built as a unified action involving new partnerships, which attest to the growth of our social base and the widening of the fronts of struggles against racism: unionists, popular sectors, women, students , non-governmental organizations, rural communities ”.

This was a small part of what the National Executive of the Zumbi dos Palmares March against Racism, for Citizenship and Life had to say when it released 400 thousand copies of the Jornal da Marcha in October 1995. The bulletin ratified what was being organized over the past few decades. The call also reached families, religious and cultural groups, domestic workers and others who felt affected by the mobilization. It was an unprecedented experience for the Brazilian black militancy, in its commitment to the consolidation of a mass movement at the end of the 20th century. Ieda Leal, current national coordinator of the MNU, recalls how the mobilization was in the state of Goiás.

After three days dedicated to the 1st National Meeting of Black Rural Communities, representatives of 16 Quilombo communities joined the march in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the immortality of Zumbi dos Palmares. The meeting marked the foundation of the National Coordination of Articulation of Black Rural Quilombo Communities (Conaq). Although the legitimacy of entities such as Cedenpa (PA), CCN (MA) and Coisa de Negro (PI) was recognized in the struggles for the regulation of Quilombo lands at the time, it was necessary to point out the specificity of Quilombo people demands. This way, their demands would not be lost among the Black Movement's urban sector priorities. Sociologist Givânia Maria da Silva, quilombola from Conceição das Crioulas, Salgueiro (PE), assesses the importance of this articulation to this day.

The document of Zumbi dos Palmares March to Brasil

“We believe today on the possibility to do not dispute anymore the spaces within other projects for our problems, which are considered by them to be minor. But we are believing on the possibility that, through our questions, we can effectively touch, and touch very deeply, on issues that concern society as a whole.”


This statement by Luiza Bairros opens the Document of the Zumbi dos Palmares March against Racism, for Citizenship and Life. Symbolic, it marks a position dear to sectors of the Black Movement in the following years. In order to record how the purposes mobilized through the march would be carried out, the notebook gathers a diagnosis regarding the themes: racism and school, racial division of labor, health, racial violence, foreign relations, and democracy in question; followed by a “Program to Overcome Racism and Racial Inequality”. It also incorporates contributions from the 1st Meeting of Black Rural Communities; the presidential decree that created the Interministerial Working Group to value the Black population; and the bill sent by the Movement for Reparations (MPR).

“The struggle keeps on”

After the 1995 march, the Black Movement, of course, was not limited to the Interministerial Working Group. Struggle agendas established in the 1970s continued to be disputed at the local, state and federal levels. The pressure in defense of public policies to combat racism was expressed, among other examples, in the enactment of Law no. 10.639, which made the teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian history and culture mandatory from 2003; in the first experiences of affirmative actions for the access of black students to higher education, starting at UERJ in 2000; and in the debates around the Racial Equality Statute, which would be approved in 2010, in the form of Law no. 12.288. Another important experience that precedes the Zumbi +10 March was the participation of the Brazilian delegation in the III World Conference against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

Pamphlet of Zumbi +10 March – November 16th

Ìrohìn – Zumbi +10 March Special Issue

In a Special issue , full of photographs taken by Carlos Moura, Lindomar Cruz, Cláudia Santos, Alexandra Martins and Jeferson Souza, the Ìrohìn newspaper documented both formal records and the list of 167 entities that took part in the March and the Manifest to the Nation, delivered to President Lula; as for affective memories such as those of Eustáquio Lawa, who offered an account of the hardships and joys experienced during the thirty hours between the reception of the delegations and the closing of the march.

Zumbi +10 March poster – November 22th

Multiple paths


Regarding the debates that marked the ideological and organizational disparities for the Zumbi + 10 March, Gilberto Leal, from the National Coordination of Black Entities (Conen), affirms that the main point of debate and determinant for the institutions that supported the March held at November 22th was the “immediate approval of the [Racial Equality] Statute”. In the audio, Gilberto gives more details about the context and the process.

The March’s newspaper - 2005

The March’s newspaper was a newsletter produced by the entities that carried out Zumbi +10 March on November 22th. The newspaper summarizes the history of the Black Movement in Brazil, its demands and struggles. It demonstrates how the demands of Black people were attended by the State, however, already showed “the political difference of the sectors of the Black Movement”.

Black Women’s March – November, 2015

In 2015, there was no March Zumbi +20, but the March of Black Women against Racism and Violence and for the Good Living. Although Black women's organizations played a key role in carrying out the Zumbi +10 March and could propose the continuation of the previous editions, the final proposal, raised by Nilma Bentes in 2011, turned to the statement of July 25: The African-Latin American and Caribbean Women's Day.


A curious fact is that the first national edition of the March of the Black Women was supposed to have happened on that date, but several setbacks caused the center of Brasília to be occupied again in November, on the 18th, this time by 50 thousand people, black women in their vast majority.