The southern coast of Rio de Janeiro has undergone many changes since the opening of the Rio-Santos highway in the 1970s. This fact has caused several socio-environmental conflicts as a result of an intense process of real estate speculation and several conservation units were created, which controlled traditional community practices and so, reorganized their territories in different ways. In 2014, the water crisis in southeastern Brazil also affected rural communities in Paraty, including the Quilombo Campinho da Independência community located in the Carapitanga river basin. We sought to understand if the local water crisis occurred solely as a result of climate variability or if it was enhanced by recent socio-environmental changes. Thus, the historical social processes that led to changes in land use in the region were analyzed, focusing on quilombola communities and their forms of resistance and adaptation to different historical contexts. Then, local environmental variables were analyzed, such as the historical distribution of precipitation in the Carapitanga basin and the geo-hydroecological results of traditional management. To this end, three areas were selected in Quilombo do Campinho that were used at different times: 30- and 50-year-old forests regenerated after the abandonment of swiddens and an agroforestry area, recently implemented (10 years). The variables monitored, collected and analyzed throughout the research were: precipitation, forest interception, soil moisture, litter water retention capacity, physical properties and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat) of the soil, phytosociological survey of regenerated areas after use and the classification of tree species into ecological groups. The results indicate that the management of these communities produces a vegetation mosaic in the landscape at different successional stages with different geo-hydroecological functions. Among these functions, the three areas stood out differently. In general, the agroforestry showed higher values of Ksat and soil moisture, consisting of an area of greater water recharge and storage, in addition to the cultivated species serving as food for the fauna, strengthening ecological interactions. The 30-year-old forest had the greatest diversity of tree species and the 50-year-old forest the greatest structural diversity of individual trees and, consequently, the greatest precipitation interception. Although the struggle and resistance of traditional communities have produced advances, more recent policies and dynamics in the region, combined with rainfall trends for the Brazilian Southeast, raise alerts, once again, for the socio-environmental consequences of the dominant political and economic model.