Zumbi was born around 1655 in the quilombo (self-sufficient community formed by escaped slaves and Indians) called Palmares. As an infant, he was captured during an attack on Palmares and given to the Portuguese priest Antônio Melo, who baptized him with the name Fransisco. When he was fifteen years old, he fled and returned to Palmares, where he found his true family; his relative Ganga Zumba was the leader of the quilombo at the time. Zumbi fought successfully against the dozens of attacks that the Portuguese sent against Palmares, becoming the community’s leader after Ganga Zumba’s death and rejecting various peace treaties offered by the slave masters.

Zumbi was betrayed by a colleague named Antônio Soares and stabbed in the stomach; even so, he fought until the end, managing to kill one of his attackers and wound others. After his death on November 20th, 1695, his body was mutilated and his head put on display in order to discourage those who considered him immortal. However, this did not stop Zumbi from becoming an eternal symbol of resistance to oppression and the fight for liberty and justice.