Rio de
Janeiro,
Brazil,
August
3, 2018:
Cais do
Valongo
(Valongo
Wharf),
an
archaeological
site
reconized
by
Unesco
as a
World
Heritage
Site. It
was the
largest
port of
landing
of
slaves
in
Americas.
(Photo
by
Rodrigo
S
Coelho) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
More
than
four
million
slaves
were
taken to
Brazil
over
three
centuries.
That is
40% of
all
slaves
brought
to the
Americas.
(Getty
Images) |
|
More
enslaved
Africans
came to
the
Americas
through
this
port
than
anywhere
else.
Why have
so few
heard of
it?
By
Terrence
McCoy
washingtonpost.com
RIO DE
JANEIRO
- When
tour
guide
Pedro
Andres
arrived
at the
site
historians
call the
most
important
physical
evidence
of the
arrival
of
enslaved
Africans
to the
Americas,
the
scene he
found
was
familiar.
The
Valongo
Wharf
was
empty.
Addressing
a family
of
Paraguayan
tourists,
Andres
described
its
historic
significance.
At the
height
of the
transatlantic
slave
trade,
nearly 1
million
enslaved
Africans
arrived
on its
cobbled
stones,
likely
more
than
anywhere
else in
the
world,
and
twice as
many as
were
trafficked
to all
of the
United
States.
UNESCO
has
called
the
wharf,
discovered
in 2011
during
an urban
renovation
project,
a
“unique
and
exceptional”
place
that
“carries
enormous
historical
as well
as
spiritual
importance
to
African
Americans.”
But
Andres,
who
brings
tourists
to the
wharf
out of
his own
volition
and not
because
it’s
recommended
by his
tour
agency,
saw
little
indication
of that
remarkable
history.
There
are no
memorials.
Only a
single
sign
above a
large
puddle
far
removed
from the
street.
The
wharf
has been
unearthed
but is
still
ignored.
Even
people
who live
nearby,
whose
ancestry
leads
back to
this
point,
don’t
know of
its
existence.
“Sad,”
said
Andres,
26. “Sad
that
slavery
ever
happened,
but also
sad that
its
history
is being
neglected.”
How that
history
is
honored
at the
site,
and who
gets to
make
those
decisions,
are
questions
at the
core of
another
struggle
over
race and
memory
in the
country
that
brought
the most
enslaved
Africans
into the
Americas.
The
dispute,
which
pits
federal
prosecutors
and
historians
against
the
right-wing
presidency
of Jair
Bolsonaro,
echoes
an
ongoing
racial
reckoning
in
Brazil
that in
recent
years
has
taken on
some of
the
country’s
darkest
moments
and most
enduring
contradictions.
Brazil
historically
has
demurred
on
questions
of race,
preferring
instead
to
understand
itself
through
the lens
of
class.
Its
intellectual
elite
have
long
described
the
country
as a
“racial
democracy”
forged
by
intermarriage
and
unencumbered
by the
racism
plaguing
other
countries.
But it
also
imported
nearly 5
million
enslaved
Africans
— an
estimated
40
percent
of the
transatlantic
slave
trade —
and in
1888 was
the last
country
in the
Western
Hemisphere
to
abolish
slavery.
Historians,
federal
prosecutors
and
advocates
for
racial
justice
say the
Valongo
Wharf
presents
a unique
opportunity
for
Brazil
to fully
address
that
original
sin and
the
racial
inequality
it
imparted.
But they
say the
government
under
Bolsonaro
has
failed
to meet
the
historic
moment,
perhaps
intentionally,
and
Brazil
is once
more
choosing
to
ignore
the
injustices
of its
past.
“The
least
that
Brazil
can do
is
recognize
this
crime
against
humanity,”
said
Brazilian
anthropologist
Milton
Guran,
who
worked
on the
UNESCO
world
heritage
application
for the
site.
“The
Valongo
Wharf is
a way to
recognize
that
Brazil
was the
country
that
most
received
enslaved
peoples
and,
therefore,
is the
country
that has
the
greatest
debt to
Africa
and the
descendants
here,
who
represent
the
largest
Black
population
outside
of
Africa.”
But
instead,
federal
prosecutors
alleged
in a
lawsuit
filed in
September,
the
government
has
failed
to honor
commitments
made
during
the
administration
of
President
Michel
Temer in
2017,
when
UNESCO
recognized
the
wharf.
A
tourism
welcome
center
has not
been
built.
Almost
all of
the
African
artifacts
that
have
been
recovered
— rings,
amulets,
religious
items —
remain
locked
away out
of
sight.
The site
itself
has at
times
been
littered
with
trash or
flooded.
The
drainage
system
has
repeatedly
malfunctioned.
A city
worker
was
electrocuted
in 2020
while
trying
to drain
the
site.
The
United
States
and the
Chinese
state
utility
company
have
each
donated
$500,000,
but the
money
has
yielded
few
improvements.
There is
still no
concrete
management
plan for
the
site.
“All of
this
depends
on the
federal
government,”
federal
prosecutor
Sergio
Gardenghi
Suiama
told The
Washington
Post.
“But the
federal
government
today
hasn’t
met its
commitment
to work
with the
local
community,
let
alone
advance
an
anti-racist
agenda
to honor
its
African
heritage.”
Bolsonaro’s
office
deferred
comment
to the
National
Institute
of
Historic
and
Artistic
Heritage,
the
federal
agency
charged
with
overseeing
the
site.
The
institute
declined
an
interview
last
week and
did not
respond
to
written
questions.
The
biggest
point of
contention
has been
the
dissolution
of the
site’s
civic
management
committee.
It was
assembled
to give
the
local
community,
specifically
Afro-Brazilians,
a chance
to
advise
and
oversee
government
officials
working
on the
site.
But the
group
was
disbanded
in 2019
when
Bolsonaro
dissolved
many
such
committees
to help
“de-bureaucratize”
the
Brazilian
government.
The
presidential
decree,
Bolsonaro
tweeted
at the
time,
was to
“reduce
the
power of
politically
equipped
entities
that use
beautiful
names to
impose
their
will,
ignore
the law
and
purposefully
slow
Brazil’s
development.”
But the
elimination
of the
wharf’s
committee
left
Black
community
members
feeling
excluded
and
without
a voice
in the
site’s
management.
“This
isn’t
neglect,”
said
Luiz
Eduardo
Negrogun,
who sat
on the
committee.
“This is
a
coordinated,
clear
and
explicitly
racist
action
to
deconstruct
and undo
our
attempts
to
rescue
the
site.”
He
added,
"I’m not
sad. I
have a
hate
that
runs
deep.”
In legal
filings,
the
federal
heritage
institute
that
oversees
the
wharf
defended
its
management
and said
improvements
were on
the way.
The
agency
said it
was
under no
international
obligation
to work
with a
civic
management
committee.
The
local
community
can
still
participate
in the
site’s
management,
it said,
by
attending
public
meetings
and
following
the
agency’s
online
news
page.
“There
is no
plan by
the
Brazilian
Government
to
impede
the
participation
of the
interested
community,”
the
institute
said in
court
documents.
“The
absence
of the
management
committee
does not
imply
that
there is
an
absence
of
management.”
But what
has been
absent,
advocates
say, is
a full
telling
of the
story.
It
begins
in the
1700s,
when
Rio’s
original
slave
market
was in
the city
center.
The
daily
spectacle
of
trading
people
and
separating
families
had
begun to
discomfort
the
urban
elite.
They
demanded
not the
end of
the
market,
just
that it
be moved
out of
sight.
So it
was
relocated
to the
Valongo
Wharf,
where
hundreds
of
thousands
were
sold.
Mass
graves,
filled
with
people
killed
by
disease
or
malnourishment
from the
journey
across
the
Atlantic,
are
spread
out
around
the
wharf.
After
Brazil
banned
its
slave
trade in
1831,
the
Valongo
Wharf
was
remade
into a
port to
greet
the
Brazilian
emperor’s
future
wife, an
Italian
princess.
Then it
was
built
over
again in
1904 and
made
into a
municipal
plaza.
For more
than a
century,
the
wharf’s
slave
history
lay
hidden
under
two
layers
of
infrastructure,
buried
and
largely
forgotten
until it
was
brought
to light
once
more in
2011
during
an urban
renewal
project.
“An
archaeological
treasure,”
the
newspaper
O Globo
said at
the
time.
Monica
Lima, a
historian
at the
Federal
University
of Rio
de
Janeiro,
said the
misery
embedded
here is
so
extreme
that the
wharf
should
be
categorized
among
humanity’s
most
notorious
sites
and
commemorated
with the
same
international
recognition.
“It’s
for the
pain and
suffering
that
happened
there,”
she
said.
“The
Valongo
Wharf is
similar
to the
concentration
camp
Auschwitz-Birkenau
or
Robben
Island
in South
Africa
or other
places
that
have
been
recognized
for a
history
of pain
and
suffering.”
But on a
cloudy
recent
afternoon
at the
wharf,
few were
contemplating
that
history.
Children
rode
bikes
through
the
nearby
city
plaza. A
father
worked
on his
daughter’s
bicycle,
fixing a
broken
spoke.
He lived
in the
neighborhood
above
the
site,
Morro da
Providência,
the
oldest
favela
in
Brazil,
populated
by the
descendants
of
enslaved
Africans.
But he
said
he’d
never
heard
the
truth
about
this
place.
“I knew
there
was
something
old
here,”
said
Luiz
Cláudio
Coutinho,
34. “But
I didn’t
know
what it
was
exactly.”
Down
below,
at the
base of
the
steps,
looking
out at
the
stone
remains
was
Larissa
Rodrigues
Mouzinho
Lugarini,
28. She
came
here as
a
history
student
a decade
ago,
when the
port was
rediscovered.
But she
has
rarely
been
back
since.
She
shook
her
head,
frustrated
to see
how
little
the site
has been
improved.
“It’s
been 10
years,”
she
said.
“But
it’s
still
the
same.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|