Djukas/Palmeras

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In Dutch Guiana (Surinam) communities of Djukas, descendants of slaves who fled into
the forest, have survived for three centuries across the Courantyne River. In
these villages "obeah shrines like those in Guinea can be seen, ceremonial
dances are performed that could take place in Ghana, and the people talk with
drums, which are made like Ashanti drums." The first big revolt in Guiana
occurred one hundred years after the flight of the Djukas: the Dutch recovered
the plantations and burned the slave leaders in slow fires, but in Brazil a little
before the Djuka exodus, fugitive slaves had organized the black kingdom of
Palmares in the Northeast, and throughout the eighteenth century had
successfully resisted dozens of military expeditions sent to suppress them, first by the Dutch and then by the Portuguese. Assaults by thousands of soldiers were fruitless against the guerrilla tactics which, until 1693, made the refuge invulnerable. The independent kingdom of Palmares--a call to rebellion, a banner of liberty--was organized as a state, similar to the many that existed in Africa in the seventeenth century. It extended from near Cape Santo Agostinho in Pernambuco to the northern Rio Sao Francisco zone in Alagoas, an area one-third the size of Portugal and surrounded by dense,wild forests.
The ruling chief was elected from among the wisest and most
skillful: the man, of greatest prestige and success in war or command. When
the sugar plantation was at its height of omnipotence, Palmares was the one
corner of Brazil where agriculture was being diversified. Guided by their own
experience or that of their ancestors in African savannas and forests, the blacks
raised corn, sweet potatoes, beans, manioc, bananas, and other foods. The
colonial troops, assigned to bring back the men who had crossed the sea in
chains and deserted the plantations, believed--and not without reason--that the
destruction of these crops was their main purpose.