RIO DE JANEIRO and SALVADOR, Brazil In Rios Madureira neighborhood, a capoeira group performs the Afro-Brazilian dance of jongo while the crowd claps and sings in unison. Its a rainy Nov. 20, Brazil s Black Consciousness Day. In weeks, the country will inaugurate President-elect Jair Bolsonaro , a right-wing retired army general whose campaign was an exercise in demonizing marginalized groups, including black Brazilians.

But despite the dreary weather, the mood in Madureira is exuberant, even defiant. The dancers floral-patterned skirts billow as they spin, laugh and chant, repeating the lead singers choruses. Throughout history, these dances and drum rhythms have survived ordinances and rules that sought to legislate them out of existence, and now they seem suited not just to Black Consciousness Day but to the larger political movement against the far right as well. Its a good time for a choreography of resistance.

November in Brazil is informally known as Black Consciousness Month, a parallel of sorts to Black History Month in the United States. Its accompanied by a calendar full of events: festivals, panel discussions on diversity and racism, concerts, contests, pop-up shops and book fairs centered around blackness and what it means in a country where over half the population identified as either preto (black) or pardo (multiracial) in the last census.

Black Consciousness Day is an official annual observance. The date is symbolic. Nov. 20 is said to be the day when the Afro-Brazilian national hero Zumbi dos Palmares died. The military strategist is heralded for freeing enslaved people and protecting quilombos, settlements founded by runaways during the colonial period. After a long series of failed military campaigns against him, Portuguese and Brazilian raiders are said to have finally killed Zumbi on Nov. 20, 1695.