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COP30
Fabio Nogueira, a leader of the Menino Jesus Quilombola Afro-descendant community, stands in front of a proposed landfill, which is 500m from their homes. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 20 2025 (IPS) – Just 30 minutes from where the UN climate negotiations are unfolding in the port city of Belém, Afro-descendant communities are engaged in a fierce struggle for the full recognition and legal titling of their ancestral territories—critical as their security and livelihoods are compromised by businesses wanting to set up contaminating landfill sites and drug cartels.
A boat ride along the expansive Amazon basin takes you inside the forest. It is the largest rainforest in the world, estimated to be 5.5 to 6.9 million square kilometers and spanning eight countries.
In the forest are the Quilombos or communities founded by descendants of Africans who escaped enslavement. They have defended their rights for generations. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, they may be known by different names, but they are all Afro-descendant communities with shared histories.
Well over 130 million people in Latin America identify as Afro-descendant, descendants of those forcibly brought to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. In Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, and Suriname, these communities collectively hold recognized management rights to nearly 10 million hectares, or nearly 24 million acres, of land.
Açaí is harvested in an Afro-descendant community near Belém, Brazil, where COP30 is underway. Açaí is part of the daily diet and is historically known as a source of subsistence. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
But the Amazon is the backdrop for the struggle for the full recognition and legal titling of their ancestral territories, as guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution of 1988.
IPS spoke to Fabio Nogueira, a leader among the Menino Jesus Quilombola community home to 28 families about their struggles and successes.
“Without titles, Quilombolas are exposed to invasion and displacement from big companies, ranchers, farmers and land grabbers.”
Alarmingly, criminal gangs target the Quilombola communities and their leaders for illegal activities.
Increased surveillance and drug seizures on direct routes from Latin America to Europe have turned the Amazon into a drug corridor. In Brazil, drug traffickers use ‘rios de cocaine,’ or cocaine rivers, jeopardizing the safety of the Quilombos along the Amazon rainforest.
Major rivers and remote areas in many Quilombola territories serve as key “cocaine corridors” for drug trafficking. The lack of state presence and land titling makes these communities soft targets.
Today, the Amazon rainforest is also the scene of a fierce struggle against landfills or sites for the disposal of waste material. He says landfills in the Amazon cause significant problems,