ABSTRACT
In the Brazilian national discourse, ‘quilombo’ is commonly used to refer to a runaway slave community. Currently, the term no longer refers only to this historical process. The increasing prevalence of the word quilombo in Brazilian society marks subtle changes in Brazilians’ perceptions of their identities, which have resulted from citizens considering their society less ethnically homogeneous and more multicultural. Brazilians are embracing some kind of African ancestry, often doing so by demanding particular public policies. Statistics from the last two decades of census data published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reveal this trend. In fact, the IBGE has begun to adopt the category of ‘self-identification’ as the basis for its categorization of ‘race/color’.
