FREEDOM SONG

Brazil’s quilombos, communities created by the formerly enslaved, are portals into hidden history.

- JOEL BALSAM

“Watch out there, buddy!” Flávia Martins—a guide, storyteller, and basket-weaving instructor—called with a grin as a neighbor balanced on one leg to trim some bushes. Seconds later, a different neighbor handed Martins a baby. She continued giving my tour without a blink.

Martins was walking me through Campinho da Independência, a quilombo, or settlement, founded outside the port town of Paraty at the end of the 19th century. Like many of the more than 7,500 other