Firewalls & Freedom: Where Ancestry Meets Encryption
In a country that kills Black youth daily and sells WiFi as salvation, a new generation is building its own Internet underground: coded, encrypted, and rooted in the wisdom of rebellion.
i. from escape to encryption: the origins of the quilombo
The word quilombo comes from the Kimbundu word "kilombo," meaning "war camp" or "encampment," brought to Brazil by enslaved Central African peoples. During the colonial era, quilombos were fugitive communities founded by Africans who escaped slavery, often joined by Indigenous allies and poor whites. The most famous, Palmares, resisted Portuguese and Dutch forces for nearly a century. It wasn't just survival. It was infrastructure: agriculture, defense, politics, religion. A parallel world.
Today, the term survives in law and identity, referring to both historical settlements and their descendants. But it also mutates into metaphor. In Brazil's digital periphery, digital quilombos reclaim that legacy—no longer hiding in forests, but in code, clouds, and classrooms. If Palmares was a citadel against enslavement, the modern digital quilombo is a firewall against erasure.
The "digital quilombo" project, a network connecting quilombos through digital technology, began taking root around 2010. According to Dutty Artz, it started with partnerships between Casa Tainã and state-backed digital inclusion programs, establishing Internet telecenters in quilombos in southeastern Brazil. The initiative aimed to foster a "quilombo network" that has since expanded across many Brazilian states.
ii. hacking as ancestral practice
Forget the Silicon Valley myth of the hoodie-wearing genius. In the alleys of São Paulo's Capão Redondo, or the informal networks of Salvador, coding happens in open air. Power outages, state neglect, and racist algorithms aren't bugs. They're the default settings.
Digital quilombos flip the paradigm. They don’t teach kids to "join the tech industry." They teach them to build their own protocols. Whether it’s learning how to encrypt communications using open-source apps or programming mesh networks that function without centralized internet, the goal isn’t market success. It's autonomy.
Workshops combine tech with memory: you might learn HTML alongside oral storytelling or Samba de Roda. It’s code as rhythm. Code as ancestry. Because for many of these young hackers, survival is the primary application.
iii. digital colonialism and the politics of infrastructure
Brazilian tech culture is still dominated by monopolies and myths. Internet access is unequal by design, skewed towards urban, white, and wealthy populations. In many favelas, so-called access means data-capped services pre-loaded with Facebook, not the open web. Surveillance is rampant, and state-sponsored facial recognition disproportionately targets Black bodies.
Digital quilombos reject this infrastructure. Instead of relying on telecoms, they build community networks using DIY hardware. They create encrypted apps to communicate beyond WhatsApp. They use offline clouds to share files within local networks. Their tools aren’t just alternatives—they’re refusals.
These labs don’t believe in trickle-down innovation. They believe in bottom-up sovereignty, with protocols defined by community needs. Not optimization, but protection.
iv. terreiro tech: where cyberpunk meets cosmology
If Silicon Valley is the cathedral of rationalist futurism, digital quilombos are more like terreiros—the sacred Afro-Brazilian spaces where orixás are invoked, and history isn’t linear. Here, coding coexists with candomblé. Data is spiritual. Servers are altars.
This is what some call terreiro tech or Afrocyberpunk – speculative computing grounded in Afro-Brazilian cosmology. It’s not just about who gets to participate in tech, but what kind of future is being coded. When a trans coder in Bahia writes an app for documenting police abuse, or a quilombola elder learns to digitize ancestral knowledge, they aren’t adapting to tech. They’re reimagining it.
Digital quilombos aren’t waiting to be included. They’re rewriting the interface.
v. the network is the message
Each quilombo is different. Some run on solar panels. Others use 3D printers made from scrap. But they share one principle: community before code. It’s not about scalability. It’s about survival, dignity, and imagination.
They resist funding models that demand metrics. They favor collectivity over competition. Many use open-source everything. Their aesthetic? Recycled, patched, improvised. A broken laptop with stickers. A Linux terminal beside a religious altar. A fiber optic cable running through a favela alleyway, transmitting not just signal, but sovereignty.
Digital quilombos don’t seek to disrupt. They exist because the system is already disrupted—for them.
And they’re building new ones.
Examples of digital quilombo practice:
PretaLab (RJ/SP)
A Black women-led collective advocating for racial and gender inclusion in tech. Offers coding workshops, public advocacy, and research.
Olabi (RJ)
A social innovation lab that runs creative technology programs, especially with peripheral youth and Black creators.
Baobáxia (national)
A "cloud of the quilombos," allowing communities to archive, share, and control their own cultural content offline.
GatoMIDI (SP)
A collective making DIY musical instruments and circuit-bent devices, rooted in noise, funk, and anti-capitalist electronics.
Rede Mocambos (national)
One of Brazil's earliest digital quilombo networks, focused on Afro-descendant empowerment through tech training and infrastructure.
Coding Rights (Brasília)
A feminist digital rights group tackling surveillance, algorithmic bias, and online violence against marginalized groups.
