Revealed: Environmental racism in Brazil’s Black capital

As ironic as it might sound, environmental racism is rife in a city that’s home to more Black people than anywhere else outside of Africa.

Salvador, the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia, located in the country’s northeast, has a population of 2.4 million, 80 percent of whom self-identify as Black or mixed race.

But even in this cradle of Afro-Brazilian culture, Black communities are facing what they say is environmental racism perpetrated by Brazilian state institutions.

Once a major center for the Atlantic slave trade during Portuguese colonial times, the city is home to at least six quilombos, which are Afro-Brazilian communities originally founded by formerly enslaved people and now legally recognized in the Brazilian constitution.

These communities are fighting against the military, a petroleum refinery and a major industrial complex – all of which are polluting the waters from which they draw their livelihoods through fishing and shellfish harvesting.

What is environmental racism?

In Brazil, like in many other countries, Black and Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental health hazards. 

This is often because they are forced to live close to sources of pollution and toxic waste, such as power plants, mines, landfills and major roads.

Environmental racism is “the social and environmental injustices that fall relentlessly upon ethnic groups and vulnerable populations,” writes Tania Pacheco in a widely referenced article in Brazil.

Beyond the destruction of the environment and people’s ways of life, culture and work, Pacheco adds that these communities are also deprived of access to basic services such as clean water and sanitation, healthcare, jobs and quality education.

Thus, environmental racism operates systemically – especially in quilombos and Indigenous communities.

According to Daiane Batista de Jesus, a researcher at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and a native of Alto do Tororó herself, environmental racism begins with the very choice – made by both public and private actors – of where to install environmentally harmful projects that threaten the very existence and continuity of preserved territories.

“We always ask ourselves: why are we treated differently?” she says. “Choosing not to protect these communities is a political decision,” she says. 

Alto do Tororó: Under siege from the Brazilian Navy

Alto do Tororó is a quilombo founded by enslaved Africans and Indigenous Tupinambá peoples in the 18th century.

Located on a narrow peninsula at the northern edge of Salvador, between the Bay of All Saints and the Bay of Aratu, the territory was once a haven of tranquility.

Batista recalls growing up hearing how her grandmother used to run freely through mangroves, catching crabs in the surrounding waters.

But that all changed in the late 1960s, when the Aratu Naval Base was built, enclosing the community and restricting access to the waters of both bays.

Since then, the Port of Aratu and the Aratu Industrial Complex (CIA) – including a chemical plant and a shipyard – have also been built in the area, leaving the quilombo surrounded by highly polluting infrastructure.

“I never experienced my grandmother’s reality, but I missed what she described,” says Batista. “I felt like that was taken from me.”

Fátima Lima is a Quilombola leader and president of The Women’s Association Akomabu in Alto do Tororó. 

She says that the community has lost five coroas – areas where women traditionally harvest shellfish. Only four remain – and all of them have dried up, with very few shellfish left.

“They fenced us in, so now we live here like cattle,” she says.

Lima explains that aratu (Aratus pisonii) – a species of crab that gave its name to the bay – can no longer be found in the area, to the detriment of its 1,500 residents.

The quilombo is now also surrounded by two major roads, built to transport agricultural goods to and from the port. Some houses now have cracks in their walls due to the vibrations caused by the constant stream of trucks and other vehicles.

“Freedom was taken from the community,” says Lima. “A community that used to be free to use the land, explore the forest and care for the animals and the woods is now restricted.”

For Batista, environmental racism boils down to a simple question. “If the Port of Aratu contributes so heavily to Bahia’s GDP, why don’t these communities grow along with it?” she asks.

“We file complaints, but no one comes to see or fix anything, because what is destroying us is legal – they have environmental licenses,” Lima reveals.

“We used to live off [fishing and shellfish gathering]. Today, we just survive, because what we earn can barely sustain us.”

Ilha de Maré: Poisoned by petroleum

Just off the coast of Alto de Tororó lies Ilha de Maré, an island in the Bay of All Saints where 90 percent of the population are Black or mixed race – more than any other neighborhood in Salvador.

Not only is the island near the Port of Aratu, but it’s also close to an oil refinery, as well as several chemical plants.

Once operated by state-owned oil company Petrobras, it was privatized during Jair Bolsonaro’s administration in 2021 and is now owned by UAE-based Mubadala Capital, part of the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi.

Here, residents suffer from high rates of cancer, lack access to basic sanitation and face a shortage of healthcare services to treat allergies and illnesses related to water pollution.

These include lead poisoning, which has serious effects on neurological, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and hematological systems.

In 2010, a study of 116 children from Ilha de Maré found that 89 percent of the children had blood lead levels above 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood (μg/dL), with some reaching as high as 19 μg/dL.

In comparison, the World Health Organization (WHO) considers up to 5 mg/dL acceptable, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) emphasizes that no value above zero is “free of all risk.”

When the Port of Aratu was inaugurated in 1975, it was the first time the community had seen electricity up close – even though it wasn’t connected to the electrical grid itself until 1980, and piped water only came at the end of the 1990s.

At the time, community leader and resident Marizelha Lopes – whose granddaughter was one of the children studied – recalls her grandfather saying: “This is the end of our people.”

“Today, we see that he was a prophet,” she reflects.

The 2010 study found that the higher the frequency of fish and seafood consumption in a child’s diet, the higher the concentration of lead in their blood and hair.

Since then, another academic study has confirmed high levels of lead contamination in the shellfish consumed by the community.

Lopes’ sister, Regina Menezes Lopes, is a shellfish gatherer and resident of the Bananeiras quilombo on the island. Since the port and the industrial complex were built, she has counted 90 people who have died from cancer in her quilombo alone. She presented those findings at a public hearing at the Legislative Assembly of Salvador earlier this year.

“Far more women are dying than men,” she says, her voice breaking. “In the past, people lived to be over 100 and died of old age. Now we’re losing children to cancer.”

“I myself lost a sister to intestinal cancer at age 50,” she adds.

In 2016, the neighborhood mourned the death of a 12-year-old child with bone cancer. “At first, they amputated her arm, thinking that would solve it. But then they found metastases, and she didn’t survive,” Marizelha Lopes recounts.

She also notes that doctors refused to mention in the medical report that the girl lived near a petrochemical complex, as the community had requested.

Reflecting on environmental racism, she recalls the deep and ancestral relationship Quilombola communities have with the land. “If we have activities that depend on fishing, then we’re also talking about economic impacts, beyond health.”

“The racism we experience is institutional and structural,” she says. “The same people who enslaved us are the ones still making the wrong decisions. No one can survive without water, land, food or culture. What they’re doing to us is extermination.”

Gessivalda dos Santos Alves, also a shellfish gatherer, has noticed the changes in Ilha de Maré since the arrival of the petrochemical hub and heavy industry.

“We used to be an island rich in fruit and birds,” she says. “Today, we no longer have that abundance.”

Alves says she often wakes up in the middle of the night thinking she left the gas on – such is the strength of the foul odor emanating from the surrounding industrial complex.

“But we speak, speak, speak – and no one listens,” she laments.

Fighting environmental racism in political spaces

According to Quilombola leaders, the main arena for transforming environmental racism is the political sphere.

It was with this agenda – and an ecological vision – that Eliete Paraguassu was elected to become the first Quilombola woman to serve as a city councilor in Salvador last year.

Born and raised on Ilha de Maré, she says she has experienced persistent racism from her fellow councilors.

“Salvador is one big quilombo,” she says. “What sustains the city are its waters and fishing.” Still, she points out that the city has yet to create public policies that take this reality into account.

“They don’t want me inside here [in the city council]. Politics was not made for bodies like mine,” she adds.

For Paraguassu, speaking out is her most powerful tool in the fight against racism. Her daughter was one of the children in the 2010 study. 

“That study only confirmed what we’d already been denouncing, albeit without proof or official data,” she explains. “We were always told that only with data could we take legal action.”

As a councilor, she has been advocating for epidemiological testing of all residents of Ilha de Maré and that levels of heavy metals be measured in both the environment and the community’s fish and seafood.

“We want the Bay of All Saints to be decontaminated,” she says. “We are the guardians of this city, and we want to build it through buen vivir.”

“We are small fish fighting against sharks”

The communities understand that the problem they face is systemic – due in large part to racism.

That’s why they are demanding solutions that range from financial reparations for the loss of their livelihoods to the implementation of broader measures at the federal level.

Still, Lima acknowledges the imbalance of power they face: “We are small fish fighting against sharks.”

Alto do Tororó is calling for a public hearing so that the Brazilian Navy can officially take notice of the situation and the government can act to ensure the safety of the community, preventing further damage to local homes.

They are also requesting compensation for the shellfish gatherers, who have lost their primary source of income.

On Ilha de Maré, the proposed solutions are also systemic.

“We want a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) to be created to investigate issues with environmental licensing,” says Marizelha Lopes. “We can’t prove anything yet, but we have strong suspicions that there are irregularities.”

“We also reject this model of expansion at the cost of nature,” she adds. “No more development projects, no more oil wells. We want zero deforestation and to stop everything that harms the forest, mangroves, rivers and the Atlantic Forest.”

These local activists are going up against an entire system: the economic activities surrounding their communities make up a large share of Bahia’s GDP.

The Port of Aratu, for example, handled over 6.5 million tonnes of cargo in 2024, representing 48 percent of the state’s total port activity.

In May, the Brazilian federal government announced a record investment package for the Port of Aratu and two other ports in Bahia, totaling BRL 1.5 billion (USD 272 million).

This is expected to increase the cargo capacity of the Aratu complex sixfold, from 2 million to more than 12.5 million tonnes per year. The main goal is to more efficiently export Bahia’s grain production.

Meanwhile, the refinery near Ilha de Maré now accounts for 17 percent of Bahia’s state tax revenue and 10 percent of the state’s GDP.

“They think GDP is more important than the way of life of a traditional community,” reflects Batista.

For her, removing a port is a complex issue when the current development model itself is at stake.

“It’s as if they view the community as a drag on Bahia’s progress – as ignorant, backward, a place of non-development. So, in the end, two very different models are at odds.”

These conflicts span federal, state and municipal authorities, as well as private actors. The Ministry of Racial Equality (MRI) says it cannot speak for the Brazilian government as a whole on this matter.

“Still, over time, we have come to understand that the best way to create impactful public policy is through listening and building solutions through dialogue,” says Ronaldo dos Santos, the Secretary for Policies for Quilombolas, Peoples and Traditional Communities of African Descent, Afro-Brazilian Religions, and Roma at the MRI.

The secretary points to the national and international policies developed by his ministry and emphasizes that this agenda must be addressed through constant cooperation with other government bodies.

Despite the daunting outlook at the macro level, the communities have no intention of leaving. Instead, they’re exploring ways to bring visibility to their struggle.

In Alto do Tororó, the community is reviving traditions that had faded over the past decades, such as the Shellfish Gatherers’ and Fishermen’s Festival.

Taking a public stand against ‘sharks’ can also come at a price. Brazil remains the world’s second-deadliest country for land defenders, and a friend of Lima’s, Quilombola leader Bernadete Pacífico, was murdered in 2023.

Still, Lima is unfazed.

“I’m not afraid of the fight,” she says. “I’m afraid of losing my essence.”