SAAMAKA GAYS IN QUILOMBOS?

Abstract

This brief article raises the possibility that, over the course of the twentieth century, a small number of Saamaka homosexual men may have sought and found a comfortable living environment in Brazilian quilombos. It describes a concrete case from the mid-twentieth century, with the help of information from José Luis Ruíz-Peinado Alonso, a Catalan anthropologist who worked with remanescentes de quilombos in the Brazilian Amazon. Definitive proof of this phenomenon remains lacking but the data are suggestive. It would seem that Brazilian quilombos may have served as a preferred refuge for Saamaka men who did not fit into their homophobic surroundings along the rivers of Suriname.