Войти
Traditional black community in Rio is a bastion of resilience
A courtyard with coconut and guava trees, some banana trees, a floss silk tree, and a few abiu trees scattered here and there is home to the 14 families of the Ferreira Diniz Urban Quilombo. The traditional community is located in Rio’s Glória neighborhood, and has been listed as a historic site by Brazil’s national heritage authority IPHAN.
The listing covers the entire property on Cândido Mendes Street, including the courtyard and the mansions, as well as cultural landmarks and shared areas. As part of its preservation efforts, IPHAN also plans to conduct an inventory of the quilombo’s cultural assets and traditions.
One of the community’s most popular attractions is the feijoada of Aunt Cida, as Maria Aparecida Ferreira is affectionately known. Early every Friday morning, she can be found stirring the feijoada pots. The dish is served to visitors in the courtyard, which works as both a gathering place and a culinary hub.
The site has become a gathering place for lovers of Aunt Cida’s traditional feijoada and also symbolizes the quilombo’s resilience amid real estate speculation.
History
The Ferreira and Diniz families have lived on the property since the 1950s, when the matriarch Maria Isabel Ferreira – a descendant of enslaved Africans from Minas Gerais state – moved into the main mansion after marrying the building’s caretaker, Antônio Dias Pessanha. The property had previously served as an inn.
The extended family and the mansions – abandoned by their former owners – have stood the test of time. The Ferreiras and the Dinizes, both groups with roots in Minas Gerais, grew in number, and in 2023, because they maintained ties that reflect the colonial past, they were recognized as quilombolas by the Palmares Cultural Foundation. At that time, the courtyard was already welcoming customers to Aunt Cida’s, who, after the pandemic, turned the space into a restaurant as a means of survival, as well as to raise awareness for the cause.
Aunt Cida is a well-known cook in Rio. She worked in retail and sold packed lunches until the courtyard became a hot spot for food influencers. That’s when demand really took off. A recent tradition in the neighborhood, Aunt Cida’s feijoada Friday involves other community members, who help serve the food. The proceeds go to the families and also fund community initiatives.
“I feel honored to make this feijoada; it reminds me of my mother and my older sisters,” said Aunt Cida. She says that the first beans she ever cooked “were a catastrophe.” Then she decided she would “make the best bean dish in the world.”
“Today, when I cook, I focus on passing on health and strength to the people who eat my food, so they leave the courtyard happy.”
A stronghold of resistance
One of the 13 urban quilombos in the state of Rio de Janeiro – out of a total 54 – Ferreira Diniz attracts locals and tourists alike. Many come for the feijoada, but they are also interested in its history, psychologist Brenda Pimentel Torres noted. She gathered her family for lunch there and said that being in a place that stands as a symbol of resistance is what really sets it apart.
“There’s an erasure of black history [in Brazil], and these people here are resisting – and even surviving – racism,” Torres said. She celebrated the area’s designation as a historic site and noted that slavery in Brazil was a recent phenomenon. “Society still needs to understand what happened and how these people resisted and continue to resist – just as they do here in the quilombo,” she pointed out.
Located in South Rio, the quilombo was the first in the state to be designated a historic site by IPHAN, a move that recognizes the community’s historical and cultural significance, as well as the challenges faced by its residents, such as the high cost of living.
The property, the authority reports, is “a kind of green island” amid tall buildings and “resists the individualistic logic of the surrounding apartments” as well as gentrification.
“The listing serves multiple purposes,” Rio’s IPHAN Superintendent Patricia Corrêa declared during the ceremony that formalized the decision – “a legal one, as it establishes restrictions on demolition, alteration, and interventions incompatible with its recognized cultural value; a territorial one, as it consolidates the recognition of the space as a collective cultural asset rather than mere real estate; a symbolical one, as it publicly affirms the historical and social significance of the black presence in that urban territory; and a reparative one, as it addresses the erasure and expulsion of black communities from central and high-value areas.”
The quilombo
The courtyard, designated by IPHAN as a gastronomic and cultural hub – and which, in addition to serving feijoada, helps fund the maintenance of the mansion – is the heart of the community. Children play ball, residents organize parties – some of them religious, such as the Folia de Reis and São Jorge celebrations – celebrate birthdays, and hold capoeira circles, among other activities.
The main mansion, built in the neoclassical style – a prime example of the luxury homes constructed in the neighborhood in the early 20th century – is where the families’ living spaces are subdivided. They have converted the spacious rooms of the former inn into their apartments. The building is in need of renovation to provide better living conditions for its residents.
Érida Ferreira, president of the Ferreira Diniz Community Association, hopes that the listing will spur Brazil’s National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) to recognize the property’s collective ownership. When contacted by Agência Brasil, the institute responded that the process is still in its early stages.
The community now hopes to access renovation programs for the mansion. Land regularization also protects the community from expropriation and the possible sale of the property in separate parcels by the group’s heirs.
Ferreira and her family celebrated the listing and announced a samba party on Saturday (Sep. 26). A historian with a degree from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), she explained that what makes IPHAN’s decision special is that it included the community as part of the listed assets.
“The listing encompasses the culture, the living heritage, the community, as well as our history, which is rooted in the Glória district,” she added. “Providing the community with the means to remain here is to ensure a future with greater diversity,” she said.
For the community to be recognized by INCRA, it must complete a series of steps. The first of these is the preparation of a technical study, to be conducted by the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF).
Professor Ana Carmen Amorim Jara Casco is responsible for compiling the families’ histories and documenting their way of life on the land in a report that the community should submit to INCRA by the end of 2026. She has been observing the community for the past three years and says that the community has much to teach not only about the past and the formation of Brazil, but also about the future of humanity.
“In the quilombo, a child, for example, is not the child of ‘so-and-so,’ but everyone’s child. Everyone takes care of them, worries about them – whether they go to school, have a snack, have eaten lunch, or are sick. It’s a collective way of life completely different from what we see in an apartment building or a gated community,” she noted.
Understanding the origins of the quilombos and of the Brazilian black population itself, the scholar added, means “recognizing their invaluable role in building the country and shaping who we are today. Brazil would not be Brazil without the contribution of these people,” she declared.
