When I heard the news of the tragic assassination of Mãe Maria Bernadete Pacífico on the night of Aug. 17, I was stunned, deeply troubled, and saddened. Bernadete Pacífico was a leader of the quilombola movement in Brazil, and was the former Brazilian secretary of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality. She also was a prominent priestess, known as mães de santo or Iyalorixá, in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion. The reaction to news of her assassination was swift from the Brazilian government, Latin-American and Caribbean news outlets, as well as from family, friends, and the many people whose lives she touched. She was 72.
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Early in the morning after Bernadete Pacífico’s murder, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued this statement: “With regret and concern, I learned of the murder of Mãe Bernadette, a quilombola leader who was shot dead in Salvador. Bernadete Pacífico was Secretary of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality in the city of Simões Filho and demanded justice for the murder of her son, also a quilombola leader. The federal government, through the Ministries of Racial Equality and Human Rights and Citizenship, sent representatives and we await the rigorous investigation of the case. My condolences to Mother Bernadete's family and friends.”
The current Minister of Racial Equality of Brazil, Anielle Franco, whose sister Marielle was assassinated in 2018, issued this statement: “Dismayed by the murder of mother Bernadette, yalorixá, former Secretary of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality and leader of the quilombola community of Simões Filho, in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador. She was cowardly killed on Thursday night with gunshots to her face.”
Constance Malleret reported for The Guardian:
Human rights organisations in Brazil are clamouring for justice following the murder of a Black community activist who had been receiving threats.
Maria Bernadete Pacífico, a community and religious leader in the Pitanga dos Palmares quilombo – an Afro-Brazilian settlement of descendants of escaped slaves in the north-east state of Bahia – was killed on Thursday evening.
The 72-year-old, known as Mãe Bernadete (Mother Bernadete), had spent years demanding answers for the unsolved murder of her son Fábio Gabriel Pacífico, who was gunned down outside the community’s school in 2017.
She was killed on Thursday when two men wearing helmets entered her house and reportedly fired more than a dozen shots at her face.
The final results from that first-ever 2022 census the government reported:
- The Northeast Region is the home of 69.19% of the quilombolas in Brazil. Bahia concentrates 29.90% of this population, followed by Maranhão, with 20.26%. The two states account, together, for 50.16% of the quilombola population in Brazil.
- The 2022 Census found 473,970 housing units with at least one quilombola resident.
- Among the 5,568 municipalities in Brazil, 1,696 had quilombola residents. ...
- A total of 494 quilombola territories were officially found in Brazil, being inhabited by 167,202 persons. So, only 12.6% of the quilombola population lived in officially recognized territories. …
- In the Legal Amazon, the 2022 Census found 426,449 quilombolas, which meant 1.6% of the population in this area and almost one third (32.1%) of the quilombolas in the country.
It remains to be seen if the Brazilian government will provide better services and assistance to quilombo communities and arrest and convict their opponents who are clearly willing to murder to prevent them from retaining and maintaining their lands and communities.
The Guardian reported, “It is an immeasurable loss for the [quilombola] movement. She was a warrior, a fighter, she fought for human rights for everyone,” said Sandra Maria Andrade, the executive coordinator of the national quilombo association Conaq, of which Pacífico was a representative.
Sentidas condolências à família de Mãe Bernadette. Condolences to the family of Mãe Bernadette.
Orando você receberá justiça. Praying that you will receive justice.
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Author Note: I felt this story would be appropriate to cover here in Caribbean Matters. Though while not geographically considered to be part of the Caribbean sea basin, Brazil, as the second-largest Black nation in population in the world (Nigeria is number one), shares much of the history of the transatlantic slave trade with its Caribbean island and mainland continental neighbors, and shares many aspects of Afro-Caribbean cultures. Settlements of escaped African people and their descendants are also part of the history of enslavement—across the Caribbean and here in the U.S.