WHERE DOES THE EXPRESSION “QUILOMBO” COME 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 often comes across a word: 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 true 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 jargon that its semantics are almost endless... 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 which in turn generates more chaos.
In Argentina no one says "traffic is chaos": at the popular level, the simplest and clearest thing for everyone is to say "traffic is a quilombo". The same when the national political climate becomes dense: obviously... "it's a mess."

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 a lot of people, they say that "this party is a mess."

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 20th century.
The largest number of foreigners came from Italy and Spain, despite the fact that there were immigrants from all parts of Europe. Each one arrived with their own language and, while learning Spanish with difficulty, they came into contact with other immigrants who spoke different languages and even dialects within their own.

Newly arrived immigrants settled in the already famous tenements where they lived with the lower classes of the city. There these language exchanges took place: Italian and the confusions were mixed with the gaucho, aboriginal and African words that were already used previously.
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 colonial 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 from slavery, specifically in Brazil, locations 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 indigenous descendants, as well as all kinds of outlaws and those fleeing 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, like the time-adaptable communication tool that it is. Thus, ''quilombo'', in Spanish, became synonymous with an outlawed, expatriated and -for some- problematic place, coming today to mean all these things that we Argentines express.

Source: good vibes
Comments to the post by Diego Weinstein