Maroon Societies in the Americas

Communities formed by Maroons—self-liberated enslaved Africans and their descendants—dotted the fringes of plantation America, from Brazil to Florida, from Peru to Texas. Maroon communities, called palenques in the Spanish colonies and mocambos or quilombos in Brazil, ranged from tiny bands that survived less than a year to powerful states encompassing thousands of members that lasted for generations or, in some cases, centuries. Marronage represented a major form of slave resistance, whether accomplished by lone individuals, by small groups, or in great collective rebellions. Throughout the Americas, Maroon communities stood out as a heroic challenge to white authority, as the living proof of the existence of a slave consciousness that refused to be limited by the whites’ conception or manipulation of it. In the 2020s, Maroons still form semi-independent communities in several parts of the Americas, for example, in Suriname, French Guiana, Jamaica, Belize, Colombia, and Brazil. As the most isolated of Afro-Americans (the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas), they have since the 1920s been an important focus of scientific research, contributing to theoretical debates about resistance to slavery, the heritage of Africa in the Americas, the process of creolization, and the nature of historical knowledge among nonliterate peoples.