DOS PALMARES, ZUMBI (1655–20 November 1695), Afro-Brazilian antislavery leader, military strategist, and the last king of Palmares.
Zumbi was born free in the quilombo of Palmares, a community of Afro-Brazilian maroons that at its height in the early seventeenth centuy had a population of thirty thousand. Located in the Brazilian hinterlands, quilombos were autonomous, self-sustaining settlements founded by fugitive slaves.
Zumbi was likely descended from Kongolese royalty. His mother had been sold as a slave and brought to the Americas after the Battle of Mbwila, in which the Portuguese defeated the Kongolese resistance forces. When he was around six years old Zumbi was captured and sold as a slave to the Catholic priest Father António Melo, who baptized him and renamed him Francisco. At age fifteen Zumbi escaped back to Palmares, where he became a well-respected fighter and military strategist.
In 1678 Pedro Almeida, governor of the state of Pernambuco, approached Zumbi’s uncle King Ganga Zumba of Palmares with the offer of freedom to all runaway slaves if Palmares surrendered to the Portuguese. Zumbi—who had assumed command of Palmares’ armed forces three years earlier—distrusted the Portuguese, and so when it appeared that Ganga Zumba was seriously entertaining the proposition Zumbi killed him and became king of Palmares. Needless to say, he rejected Almeida’s offer.
Between 1680 and 1686 the Portuguese launched six military expeditions against Palmares, all of which failed, and it was not until 1694 that the Kingdom of Palmares finally fell to Portuguese armies. Zumbi was killed and decapitated and his head mounted on a pike.
To this day Zumbi is revered by the Afro-Brazilian community, and his legacy remains a symbol of liberation and resistance. He is celebrated every year in Brazil on November 20, Black Awareness Day.