An island of paradisiacal beaches, untouched Atlantic rainforest, and end-of-the-world silence lies less than a hundred kilometers from Christ the Redeemer, but you can't enter. Marambaia Island, between the municipalities of Rio, Itaguaí, and Mangaratiba, is a military area under the control of the Brazilian Navy since the beginning of the 20th century, and access is restricted to military personnel, accredited researchers, and the approximately 270 Quilombola families who have lived there for over 150 years, descendants of enslaved Africans who were fattened on those beaches like cattle. The Union acquired the island in December 1904, as recorded in the Brazilian Navy Archives, and has since installed a succession of institutions there, ranging from a fishing school to a training center for marines – each chapter more curious than the last.
It's the kind of place that, the more you get to know it, the more you suspect that the restricted access doesn't just protect national sovereignty. It also protects memories. Beneath the canopy of the preserved forest lie the ruins of a slave quarters. In the island's rocks there are caves that the older residents know as "Hall of Rats" or "Rat Den," about which the Navy swears they don't exist.
Some say the island is cursed. That the souls of enslaved people who died there never leave. That soldiers disappear into caves and reappear with inexplicable marks. Are these legends? Perhaps. But Marambaia has an irritating habit of making plausible what should be folklore: after all, between 1847 and 1888, on those idyllic beaches, thousands of illegally trafficked Africans were confined, fattened, and redistributed to farms – including more than 900 seized at once by the Imperial Navy itself between December 1850 and February 1851, as recorded by the Quilombola Observatory. The past here is not metaphor. It is archaeology.
Two worlds, one prohibition.
Before we begin this story, a geographical clarification is necessary. Although many Cariocas (residents of Rio de Janeiro) and sympathizers believe they are all the same, they are distinct areas that make up the same forbidden territory.
The restinga is a sandy strip approximately 43 kilometers long that separates the open sea from Sepetiba Bay, so narrow that in some sections it is only 19 meters wide – the width of a neighborhood street. But it's not just a pretty strip of sand; it protects the entire inner coastline from marine erosion. Without it, the Atlantic currents would reshape the coast of Itaguaí and Sepetiba with a violence that no retaining wall could withstand.
The island itself is the triangular, mountainous promontory at the western end of this sandbar: it has an area of 42 km² and its highest peak, Pico da Marambaia, reaches about 650 meters in altitude, according to the Navy Archives.
The restricted access has a simple explanation. The area is under the jurisdiction of the Armed Forces. The island belongs to the Navy, which has installed the Marambaia Island Training Center (CADIM) there; the eastern portion of the sandbar, closer to Barra de Guaratiba, belongs to the Army, where a ballistic weapons testing range operates; the central area belongs to the Air Force, used as a firing range for attack aircraft.
And on the other side of the military fences live generations of quilombola people whose ancestors built those lands with the sweat of slavery.
Why do they say she's cursed?
Basically due to the suffering of the thousands of enslaved people who passed through Marambaia and the thousands of souls who never left. It is estimated that almost five thousand Africans were illegally landed and subjected to a degrading "fattening" process. Some were sold in Guanabara and others destined for a life of forced labor on the coffee plantations of the Breves family.
To understand Marambaia, one must understand Joaquim José de Souza Breves, and to understand him, one must empty one's stomach. He was the most opulent coffee farmer in Imperial Brazil, planting five million coffee plants and owning more than six thousand enslaved people. It was said at the time that one could travel from the Atlantic Ocean to Minas Gerais without leaving his more than 70 farms.
In the minds of the soldiers serving on the island, stories of apparitions and inexplicable sounds in the dead of night are as common as daily lunch, fueling a mystique that the land exacts a price for its past. And it makes a certain sense. We don't wish for anyone's death, but we enjoy reading some obituaries. Commander Breves died exactly one year after the enactment of the Golden Law (Lei Áurea). His fortune, built on the shoulders of thousands of vilely exploited people, evaporated with a stroke of Princess Isabel's pen.
The ruins of the slave quarters still exist on Armação Beach and are considered a historical site by the quilombola community themselves, who are requesting their preservation. According to... Technical-Scientific Report on the Quilombo Remnant Community of Marambaia IslandAccording to a study coordinated by anthropologist José Maurício Arruti in 2003, the descendants of these Africans are the same ones who live there today, while the Brazilian State has been debating for decades whether they have the right to remain.
The sinister mystery of the sergeant in the Rat Room
This story is the pinnacle of Marambaia's urban legends and could easily rank among the Top 10 scariest stories in Rio de Janeiro. According to reports from soldiers of the Second Company of Actions and Commandos, during searches for a soldier who disappeared in the 80s, he was allegedly found in a cave with extremely difficult access called the Hall of Rats.
The scene described is worthy of a horror film. Regarding the cave entrance, the military claims there is a large fig tree (a tree full of symbolism in the esoteric world), whose roots encircle and form a kind of gate at the cave entrance. Inside, the missing sergeant was found seated, with his rifle in hand, but without his eyes or fingers.
The Navy doesn't comment on local legends, neither confirms nor denies the stories, and treats the cave as nonexistent. What the quilombola people know, the military pretends not to know. What the military knows doesn't appear in any public report. Marambaia functions as a kind of Brazilian Bermuda Triangle: there's no shortage of stories, just a lack of police reports.
The Navy arrives in the area.
After the Breves family went bankrupt, the land ended up in the hands of the Widow. And on June 6, 1908, the Brazilian Navy established the School for Apprentice Sailors of the State of Rio de Janeiro on the island, to operate in the former headquarters of the property, on Armação Beach.
Two years later, on June 9, 1910, the school was transferred to the city of Campos. The island was therefore left without military use for more than a decade. A period in which the quilombolas, descendants of the enslaved people of Breves, lived relatively peacefully, fishing and cultivating their fields.
According to the Navy Archives, starting in 1924, the island was made available to the Directorate of Ports and Coasts for the establishment of a fishing service, which would lead, in 1931, to the founding of the Z-23 Fishermen's Colony.
The brief chapter on the Apprentice School is also a portrait of late imperial bureaucracy: the Navy arrived, used the infrastructure of the old slave plantation for only two years, and then left. What is remarkable, at this point in history, is that no one had yet expelled anyone. The conflicts came later.
1948: When Marambaia became a war laboratory.
In 1927, the Ministry of War requested the handover of Restinga for the construction of an Artillery Firing Range – a space for shooting exercises surrounded by security measures. The Ministry of the Navy agreed, but retained jurisdiction over Marambaia Island for the installation of a fish farming station.
The Army's ballistic testing range, where conventional weapons are still tested today, occupies the part of the sandbar closest to the mainland. The tripartite arrangement (Navy, Army, Air Force) that divides the territory is the result of bureaucratic negotiations between ministries since the 1930s and 1940s, without anyone, it seems, having thought to consult the quilombola families who had already lived there for decades. This detail is an efficient summary of Brazil's history.
Training and conflicts in the 1970s
During the 1970s, in the midst of the Military Dictatorship, Marambaia became the preferred location for counter-guerrilla training maneuvers and activities of the Marine Corps on the sandbar. And it doesn't take a genius to imagine that the descendants of enslaved people were not at all happy to see their homes and survival threatened by bombings and military maneuvers.
The result was a four-decade land conflict between the Navy and the quilombola communities that occupied the region. The eviction actions and the pressure for them to leave the area generated organized resistance, which, in 1998, culminated in the founding of an association to defend their rights.
In 2006, the remaining quilombo community of Ilha de Marambaia obtained official recognition and title to part of its land. It was a legal milestone that ended a century-long process of invisibility.
But thanks to its restricted access, Marambaia has become an unparalleled ecological refuge. With 650 cataloged plant species, including 40 types of orchids, the place is a living laboratory. According to research from UFRJ and the Botanical Garden, the biodiversity there is so rich that it makes any Botanical Garden seem like a pot of ferns in an apartment.
Leave a comment