In this history of the black peasants of Amazonia, Oscar de la
Torre focuses on the experience of African-descended people
navigating the transition from slavery to freedom. He draws on
social and environmental history to connect them intimately to the
natural landscape and to Indigenous peoples. Relying on this world
as a repository for traditions, discourses, and strategies that
they retrieved especially in moments of conflict, Afro-Brazilians
fought for autonomous communities and developed a vibrant ethnic
identity that supported their struggles over labor, land, and
citizenship.
Prior to abolition, enslaved and escaped blacks found in the
tropical forest a source for tools, weapons, and trade--but it was
also a cultural storehouse within which they shaped their stories
and records of confrontations with slaveowners and state
authorities. After abolition, the black peasants' knowledge of
local environments continued to be key to their aspirations,
allowing them to maintain relationships with powerful patrons and
to participate in the protest cycle that led Getulio Vargas to the
presidency of Brazil in 1930. In commonly referring to themselves
by such names as "sons of the river," black Amazonians melded their
agro-ecological traditions with their emergent identity as
political stakeholders.