The Earth Gives, the Earth Wants

This book by the late Brazilian activist and quilombo leader Antônio Bispo dos Santos offers an original perspective on ways of living and relating to others and to the land that is rooted in a quilombo cosmovision – the polytheistic, counter-colonial, confluential worldview articulated by Bispo through quilombola thinking in Brazil. It presents a fresh critique of capitalism and colonialism that emerges from a quilombola perspective.

Nêgo Bispo lays out a set of terms and concepts developed over his lifetime, based on ancestral quilombola knowledge. His key concept is "counter-colonialism" – a practice of confronting and undoing colonial domination through quilombola modes of life, struggle, and thought. He argues that the hyper-individualistic, capitalistic, colonial approach to cultivating the earth sees the land as subservient to its desires. A quilombo cosmovision, by contrast, understands that our desires are always in dialogue with the wants and needs of the earth – we must live in harmony with the earth, animals, and people, and if we take from the earth, we must also give to the earth.

This remarkable book introduces a new perspective on the debates about the destructive consequences of capitalism and colonialism and will be of interest to anyone who wants to think about how we live in relation to each other and to the earth.