Garopaba: Quilombo offers sweets and guided tour – 05/07/2023 – Tourism

Famous among surfers, Garopaba is full of natural beauties. Its beaches, dunes and waterfalls attract tourists from north to south of the country and make the city in Santa Catarina a common destination for summer lovers.

But in addition to adventure trails and rocky shores with fresh water, Garopaba is also a quilombola municipality.

With just over 24,000 inhabitants, the city encompasses the communities Aldeia, in the Campo D’una region, and Morro do Fortunato, which is close to the Macacu lagoon and has become a tourist route in recent years, with the sale of sweets and snacks. of educational tours.

“You have to be aware that you are in a quilombola community, with humble people. You will not be welcomed with a red carpet, a mansion or a swimming pool”, says Maria Aparecida Machado Batista, 49, president of the Morro do Fortunato association. “Of course we are well educated, but this is our reality.”

Interested in the past and present of the black territory, tourists go there in search of stories, traditional dishes and landscapes rich in nature.

Visits are made in groups of at least 30 people and a maximum of 60, says Batista, better known as Dona Cida. The amounts charged by quilombolas range from R$20 to R$40 per visitor, with different packages available.

Among the activities offered are a walk through the village, preparing breakfast or lunch, displaying the organic garden, showing handicrafts and trying sweets and snacks.

The report of Sheet visited the area and tasted some of the delicacies — including the different types of banana sweets, which, according to the sellers, are the most popular among tourists.

Purplish, the banana jelly made by Quilombola Edna Isabel, 33, is famous mainly among those who want to control glucose in the body, since its recipe has no sugar, she says, pointing to the product’s label.

The taste, of course, oozes the smell and taste of the fruit. Sweetened, however, it would hardly make anyone guess that it does not have sucrose.

“The secret itself I won’t reveal,” she says, laughing. “But I can say that it takes four to five hours in the fire to be ready.”

The woman from Santa Catarina also sells sweet bananas with sugar. But, interestingly, he is less striking than the other.

Under the Delícias na Mesa label, it also sells strawberry and ginger, pineapple, orange, red cranberry, blackberry and blackberry jams. Her priority, she says, is working with fruit harvested in her own backyard.

Isabel also sells cookies. With crunchiness, they melt in the mouth and are not very sweet – both in terms of recipe and flavor. Options include butter, sprinkles with fresh coconut and cornmeal with coconut.

According to her, the idea to cut back on sugar came when she entered the nutrition graduation course. Today, his jelly without the item is on the school lunch menu in the municipality.

“We sell to the PNAE [Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar] and the IFSC [Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Santa Catarina]. We also participate in public notices. It’s an extra income”, says Mercedes Machado, 51. “We also accept orders and sell at the Market Producer de Garopaba fair.”

Also part of Delícias na Mesa, Mercedes cooks at two other brands in the community, Doce do Fortunato and Grupo do Pão.

“From here, we harvest butiá, passion fruit, guava, banana, blackberry, jabuticaba and various other things. From outside, we get fruits like oranges, tangerines and grapes. We want to plant more to avoid taking them from outside”, he says.

Its butiá jelly, free of gluten, has a strong flavor. It’s slightly sour, but still sweet. The banana variety —from the Doce do Fortunato brand— proved to have acidity, despite containing doses of lemon.
—used as a preservative.

Of the breads, the most famous is the sweet potato one, says the cook. “The lunch lady says the kids love it.”

Whether from the cooks’ individual plantations or the community’s organic garden, the fruits and vegetables used to prepare the delicacies are related to the territory’s past.

Known as the community’s storyteller, Maurilio Machado, 65, told the reporter the trajectory of his ancestors and their connection with food production.

He begins by explaining who the founder of the quilombo was, Fortunato Justino Machado, also called Pai Nato, his great-grandfather.

“Some say that Fortunato bought the land with the money from a coffee harvest. [Ignácio Pereira da Silva]which at the time was called ‘vacant lands’.”

What is known, as official records analyzed by the Palmares Foundation show, is that Fortunato made many plantations in that territory, probably with an eye on the profit he could make, since, in the second half of the 19th century, Garopaba lived in the impulse of agricultural activity and became part of an important commercial food route.

“Fortunato planted a lot of bananas and coffee”, says the accountant. “The coffee plantation or the banana plantation that he built no longer exist. But I remember that I saw it when I was a child.”

He then describes other productions orchestrated by his great-grandfather. “A lot of pigs were raised, and the lard was used as oil. They raised chickens, made flour and sugar. They planted maize, beans, cassava, garlic, peanuts”, he says.

“The community’s coffee was transported by oxcart to Garopaba and from there to Florianópolis by speedboat. Fortunato became very rich. That’s why our community has always been talked about.”

But if one day the quilombo obtained income at the expense of agricultural production, today it derives lesser income from the activity. The cooks claim that they cannot support themselves with sales alone and need to buy a lot of ingredients outside the community. What really helps, they say, is indoor planting.

In the organic garden, “there’s a bit of everything”, says Ana Paula de Machado, 45, while resting for a few minutes after weeding the land. “We have five types of lettuce, eggplant, sweet potato, corn, beans, peanuts, cassava, papaya, sorrel, anyway. Lots of stuff.”

Visitors can, in addition to snooping around the greenery that grows in the garden, buy what has already been harvested.

For Dona Cida, the guided tours contribute to the main struggle spearheaded by residents: the titling of Morro do Fortunato.

Certified by the Palmares Cultural Foundation in 2006, the quilombo is one of the thousands of communities in Brazil that still do not have their right to land formalized by a title, as provided for in the Constitution

“It’s a pleasure to pass on knowledge. To show what the community is like, our day to day. To explain what a quilombo is”, says the leader. “It’s also a way to get the community’s name out there, in addition to breaking racist taboos and helping with titling.”