WHERE THE EXPRESSION “QUILOMBO” COMES FROM

We cannot deny that the word "Quilombo" is in the popular heritage and in our vocabulary. Obviously like many words or expressions we say them and we don't know where they come from. Let's see then how this word arises in Argentines;

When a foreigner arrives in Argentina, he comes across a word every so often: quilombo. What is a quilombo in Argentina? What does this popular term mean?
It is one of the most used terms in the streets of Buenos Aires and throughout Argentina. However, the origin and provenance is a real unknown for the vast majority of Argentines. We tell you where the word quilombo comes from and what this popular term means to us.
It is one of those words so common in urban slang that its semantics are almost unfathomable... Beyond its etymology, the word is used today to express a large number of ideas that, although they are fairly similar, will mean different things according to the intention of the one who pronounces it.

Generally in Argentina, someone refers to a situation as "quilombo" because there is a conflict, a problem that is difficult to solve and that in turn generates more chaos.
In Argentina nobody says “transit is chaos”: at a popular level, the most plain and clear thing for everyone is to say “transit is a quilombo”. The same when the national political climate gets dense: obviously... "it's a quilombo."

However, for a long time, Argentines also used this term to refer to brothels, charging in this case almost a representative entity. Going to a quilombo literally meant going to a house where prostitution was practiced.

But to make everything a little more complex, the same word quilombo also has a positive meaning among its interpretations. For example, when a party or a meeting is fun because there are many people, it is said that "this party is a quilombo".

The word is undoubtedly one of the most important in Argentine lunfardo. Lunfardo is one of the most notable characteristics of the speech of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires, originally linked to the lyrics of tango but which arose from the arrival of millions of immigrants to the Río de la Plata at the beginning of the XNUMXth century.
The largest number of foreigners came from Italy and Spain, despite the fact that there were immigrants from all over Europe. Each one arrived with his own language and, while learning Spanish with difficulty, came into contact with other immigrants who spoke different languages ​​and, even, dialects within their own.

The newly arrived immigrants settled in the already famous conventillos where they lived with the lower classes of the city. There these idiomatic exchanges took place: Italian and confusions were mixed with the gaucho, aboriginal and African words that were already used before.
But why does this word have that meaning of mess, hubbub, complicated situation? Quilombo comes from kilombo, a term from the Kimbundu language spoken in Angola. In the colonial era of Latin America, the concept was used to name the place where black slaves met.

"Quilombo" then originally refers to the settlement of people who fled slavery, specifically in Brazil, sites where fugitive slaves who achieved freedom, escaping from the plantations to which they were condemned to work by the Portuguese colonizers, settled during almost 200 years.

There, the freedmen were joined by their descendants, indigenous people, as well as all kinds of outlaws and refugees from Portuguese justice of all races and conditions, reaching in some cases, as in the case of the Quilombo de los Palmares (state of Alagoas, Brazil), almost 20.000 inhabitants and a fortified perimeter of 6 km.

Luckily, language, a living element of human culture, modifies words at will, as the communication tool adaptable over time that it is. Thus, ''quilombo'', in Spanish, became synonymous with a proscribed place, expatriate and -for some- problematic, coming today to mean all these things that we Argentines express.

Source: good vibes
Comments to the post by Diego Weinstein