Felipa Maria Aranha was the leader of the Mola or Itapocu quilombo; a locality located at the headwaters of the Itapocu stream, a branch of the Tocantins River, where the municipality of Cametá now exists, in the state of Pará.
She organized a quilombo in the second half of the 18th century, consisting of over 300 escaped enslaved people who self-sustained for many years without being threatened by legal forces. It is believed she came from the Mina Coast region, in the Gulf of Guinea, where the countries of Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria are located today. She was likely born between 1720 and 1730 and was captured sometime after 1740, in one of the most important regions for the slave trade undertaken by the Portuguese. Sold as a slave, she was taken to the area of Santa Maria de Belém do Grão Pará (now the capital of the state of Pará). She was then sent to work on a sugarcane plantation in the community of Cametá.
Unable to endure the mistreatment, Maria Aranha escaped with other enslaved individuals in 1750, and in the lower Tocantins region, they created the Mola quilombo—specifically at the headwaters of the Itapocu stream, in the territory of Cametá—a space led by her that displayed a high degree of political, social, and military organization, making it one of the greatest models of resistance to slavery found in historiography. Indeed, when they began to suffer from colonial repression, it was thanks to Maria Aranha's military leadership that they were victorious in expelling Portuguese forces and various incursions by slave hunters.
Possessing great political articulation skills, Maria Aranha structured an entity composed of five quilombos (Mola, Laguinho, Tomásia, Boa Esperança, and Porto Alegre), known as the Confederation of Itapocu. This entity inflicted severe defeats on the slaveholding forces and, unlike the example of Palmares, only ceased its struggle against the slave authorities when Portugal offered political amnesty and declared the quilombolas subjects of the crown.
Maria Aranha died in 1780, still leading the Confederation of Itapocu. But she set an example. In the early 19th century, in addition to Felipa's leadership, a quilombo formed near the Trombetas River, close to Óbidos, still in the Amazon, led by the cafuzo Atanásio, which reached over 2,000 inhabitants who, in addition to planting cassava and tobacco, sold products harvested from the forests of Dutch Guiana. Everything suggests that these quilombolas were respected by the neighbors, with their children baptized in nearby churches. Furthermore, recent research conducted in the lower Tocantins region, utilizing oral history, is demystifying the supposed subalternity of black women.
Today, many other stories are known about how, within the Mola quilombo, other black women played leading roles and left numerous stories for the memory of their descendants. The black woman Maria Luiza Piriá or Piriçá recorded her presence in the Mola quilombo, organizing and leading the Dança do Bambaê do Rosário and managing the lives of the quilombolas who lived there. Juvita was another of these women who made her own history and that of her communities. After leaving the Mola or Itapocu quilombo, she founded the Povoado de Tomázia and led it for many years. The women, Leonor, Virgilina, Francisca, Maximina, and others who were part of the Paxibal quilombo ventured into the forests and performed tasks generally considered masculine, such as hunting, constructing improvised housing (the tapiris covered and walled with palm leaves, like ubim and sororoca), planting crops, gathering fruits from the forest, fishing, and making clay utensils, sleeping nets, and clothing made from curuanã fibers and palm leaves.
As can be noted, the resistance and prominence of black women are historical and have deep roots in the traditions and cultures of their African ancestors. Through cunning, improvisation, and a great deal of resourcefulness, they reinvented their daily lives and their importance in the world, achieving better conditions for themselves and their communities. Cases like that of the Povoado de Tomázia, which joined the already mentioned Confederation of Itapocu; and the example of the Quilombo de Pixabal, in the municipality of Baião, formed under the leadership of the women Leonor, Virgilina, Francisca, and Maximiana, describe stories of black leaders who were not merely wives or companions. They took the lead and fought for their own paths and destinies in this territory of precarious and compromised freedom. The quilombo led by Maria Aranha only received legal recognition of its lands recently, in 2013.

FONTES / SOURCES: GOMES, Flávio.
PINTO,Benedita Celeste de Morais. «Escravidão, Fuga e a Memória de quilombos na Região do Tocantins». Revistas Eletrônicas da PUC-SP. Consultado em 25 de março de 2016
PINTO, Benedita Celeste de Morais. «História, Memória e Poder Feminino em Povoados Amazônicos» (PDF). Anais Eletrônicos - Encontro Nacional de História Oral - 2012. Consultado em 25 de março de 2016
MOURA, Clóvis. Dicionário da escravidão negra no Brasil. São Paulo: EdUSP, 2004. p. 47