Ganga Zumba
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Ganga Zumba was the first of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares, or Angola Janga in the present-day state of Alagoas, Brazil. Zumba was a slave who escaped bondage on a sugar plantation and assumes his destiny as heir to the kingdom of Palmares and the title Ganga Zumba. Although some Portuguese documents give him the name Ganga Zumba, and this name is widely used today, the most important of the documents translates the name as "Great Lord" which is probably not correct. However, a letter written to him by the governor of Pernambuco in 1678 and now found in the Archives of the University of Coimbra, calls him "Ganazumba", which is a better translation of "Great Lord" (in Kimbundu) and thus was probably his name.
A quilombo or mocambo was a refuge of runaway slaves who were forcibly brought to Brazil mainly from Angola that escaped their bondage and fled into the interior of Brazil to the mountainous region of Pernambuco. As their numbers increased, they formed maroon settlements, called mocambos.
Gradually as many as ten separate mocambos had formed and ultimately coalesced into a confederation called the Quilombo of Palmares, or Angola Janga under a king, Gana Zumba, who may have been elected by the leaders of the constuient mocambos. Gana Zumba, who ruled the biggest of the villages, Cerra dos Macacos, presided the mocambo's chief councel and he was considered the King of Palmares. The nine other settlements were headed by brothers, sons, or nephews of Gunga Zumba. Zumbi was chief of one community and his brother, Andalaquituche, headed another.
By the 1670s, Gana Zumba had a palace, three wives, guards, ministers, and devoted subjects at his royal compound called Macaco.
In 1678 Zumba accepted a peace treaty offered from the Portuguese Governor of Pernambuco, which required that the Palmarinos relocate to Cucaú Valley. The treaty was challenged by Zumbi, one of Gana Zumba's nephews, who led a revolt against him. In the confusion that followed, Gana Zumba was poisoned and many of his followers who had moved to the Cucau Valley were re-enslaved by the Portuguese. Resistance to the Portuguese then continued under Zumbi.
The Brazilian film 'Ganga Zumba' was made in 1963 but was not released until 1972 because there was a military coup in Brazil in 1963, and films about revolutions, even those taking place in the 17th century, were considered politically dangerous.
[edit] References
- Ganga Zumba, 1963, film by Carlos Diegues
- Quilombo, 1985, film by Carlos Diegues about Palmares, ASIN B0009WIE8E
