Community-Based Tourism (CBT)

Community-based tourism (TBC), also known as solidarity tourism, is defined as tourism that emphasizes collaborative management. It is a tourist activity that features collective management, transparency in use, and destination resources.

Community-based tourism (TBC), emerged as a response to a series of debates about the type of tourism desirable, mainly to traditional, indigenous communities, riversides, and quilombolas, and on the need to create new forms of tourism, built on a fairer and more equitable model.

Community-based tourism is not a segment but rather a style of practicing tourism, in which residents (typically rural, poor, and economically marginalized) became the leading figures.

Some experience involved visiting their villages and overnight lodging or just one day tour. At least a portion of the tourist revenue is set aside for projects that benefit the entire community.

By all means, some residents in the region become local tour guides and provide services to guests through community-based tourism. It also gives the communities the chance to contribute to the movement of production elements and trade of products and services in a specific location.

To summarize, the biggest tourist attraction in community-based tourism is the local population’s way of life.

What is a quilombo in Brazil?

Quilombo, also known as Mocambos, was a settlement founded by fleeing enslaved in colonial Brazil. Quilombos were sites of the anti-slavery struggle, where the communities survived on farming and raiding in inhospitable terrain. The quilombos were spaces established by black African enslaved and Afro-descendants who fled captivity in quest of a better life in Brazil during the colonial and imperial periods. Quilombolas do not live in a particular territory or originate from a specific location. The African lineage of enslaved blacks who fled the horrors of slavery and sought safety in the woods is the common root of the quilombo remains.

Why visit a Quilombo?

Black Brazilian intellectual Abdias Nascimento once said: “The quilombos are one of the first experiences of freedom in the Americas.”

Quilombos are a community structure based on African cultural values ​​with a democratic political organization. In quilombos, one agricultural production is diversified to provide for its livelihood. Exchange and exchange relationships with surrounding populations, such as happens in Quilombo Astrogilda, are very common.

“Quilombismo proposes this legacy as a basic reference for a proposal for the political mobilization of the Afro-descendant population based on their own historical and cultural experience.

Florencios Tour takes you on this amazing Community-Based Tourism experience

We will be visiting Quilombo Cafundá Astrogilda, “Griô Action” – A community-based tourism project in which the goal is to integrate myth, art, science, life history. Live storytelling by a wise resident about all the traditional knowledge and practices of the Quilombo Cafundá Astrogilda community-based tourism experience.

The Quilombo Cafundá Astrogilda was founded in Vargem Grande, Rio de Janeiro, about two centuries ago. The Palmares Foundation recognized and verified it in 2014.

The name Astrogilda is a tribute to the wonderful matriarch who left a legacy for her efforts in assisting people without seeking profit, serving the entire local community for free.

Quilombo Cafundá Astrogilda is the seat of the Quilombo community of Vargem Grande, Rio de Janeiro. The Cafundá Astrogilda Quilombo has its cultural configuration, as seen by its architecture, language, food, interaction with the forest, water, and traditional solid family agriculture.

The Cafundá Astrogilda Memorial

The Santos Mesquite family, Astrogilda descendants, the hosts.
The Santos family is working to resurrect their memories and paths.
Besides, those of other families living inside the quilombo territory.

Altogether, this Community-based tourism experience is a symbolic product that contains a range of the communities group’s experience and affectivities. The personality and conscience of the family group materialize in a meaningful group of religious items. The Santos Mesquite family began constructing a small museum using old building techniques in response to the quilombo’s increased exposure and a growing number of visitors.

We from Florencios’ Tour offer suitable packages (8hs Full Day Tours) for you to live this Community-based tourism experiences:

▶Quilombola Experience Tour with Rural Breakfast at Quilombo Cafundá Astrogilda;
▶ Water Circuit Tour with Trail (45min.) + Waterfall Bath inside the Cafundá Astrogilda Quilombo territory
▶ Water Circuit Tour without trail (20min.) Light walk + Waterfall Bath at Cafundá Astrogilda territory.