The Brazilian government’s land war against rebel slave descendants
Communities made up of fugitive slave descendants have been forced from their lands and denied their rights, a situation that may only get worse under newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro.
The elders gather in the entrance room of the matriarch's home and search in the recesses of their memory for the traditional songs they and their forebears used to sing. A woman rocks her grandson on her lap. Her husband stands silent in the doorway, as an energetic granddaughter races about his calves.