ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the struggles of Kalunga for empowerment moving from a past marked by slavery to an ethnic group recognition. It seeks to evaluate the elective affinities between the growing demands for an ecological ethno-cultural tourism, group empowerment and ethnodevelopment. The chapter argues that institutional and organisational interventions in line with ethnic expectations and demands have been a critical resourceful empowerment source for the people of the largest traditional black community of Brazil, the Kalunga Community. It aims to use the word quilombo rather than maroon. The results were obtained from an ethnographic study based on participant observation which took place in the Kalunga community in the west centre of Brazil between 2004 and 2012, with a literature review in 2015 and 2016. The results show that the Kalunga configuration contradicts the assumed essentialism of an authentic romantic origin for the group.
