Santarém Federation of Quilombola Organizations (FOQS)

The federation aims to contribute to the process of awareness and strengthening of the ethnic identity of quilombo communities in Santarém and the region. Thus, they can play an active role in defending their ethnic, political and land rights, demanding the implementation of effective public policies for the collective titling of quilombo communities’ territories and ensuring protection and maintenance of the lifestyle and culture of these communities.

With respect to the guarantee of land rights, FOQS monitors the administrative proceedings of titling of affiliated quilombo communities’ territories and assists in the resolution of conflicts involving the tenure and limitation of these lands. FOQS performs liaison between quilombo communities of Santarém and the region through weekly meetings at the headquarters of FOQS, events and other meetings.

FOQS’ coordination is decentralized and composed of members of all communities, which makes the work of political advising for resolving conflicts and internal problems of the communities easy. FOQS is also integrated with other networks and organizations, actively participating in events related to the quilombo theme. Annually, during the afro-descendant awareness week, FOQS holds a meeting of all communities in order to define action strategies.

Project

With support of the Brazil Fund, the organization seeks to widen the knowledge of ethnic and land rights of quilombo communities of Santarém; to improve the monitoring of the administrative proceedings of titling already started before Incra – National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform; to train young people and leaders to initiate new administrative proceedings and monitor the existing ones, as well as to be multipliers of the knowledge acquired in the communities; and to produce educational materials on quilombo communities’ land rights for dissemination.

With its activities, the federation keeps contributing to the realization of the human right to the recognition of quilombo communities’ lands. During this process, it faces the lack of knowledge about the rights of quilombo communities; the absence of human, logistic and financial resources to support communities wishing self-recognition and to initiate the titling proceeding; and the lack of monitoring of the titling proceedings and pressure on state agencies for the realization of this right.

Context

According to the data from the Federal Government, 20 years after the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, from the 3,524 communities mapped until January 2010, only 173 had received the property title – less than 5% of the total. Since the creation of the Brazil Quilombo Community Program, in 2004, the rates of public budget implementation have always been very low – in 2009 only 17% of the authorized budget forecast was spent. Over 80% of the 948 cases of quilombo titling pending before Incra did not pass the first stage of the procedure – four of these from Santarém; and dozens of procedures – three from Santarém – are just waiting for the formal procedure of publicizing the land recognition by Incra’s President.