In a rundown part of Rio de Janeiro’s harbor district, archaeologists are digging up fragments of a history many Brazilians would rather ignore.
 |
| Anthropologist Juliana Mol unearths ruins from the 1800s in Rio de Janeiro’s port area when it was key to the slave trade [Credit: Victor R. Caivano/Associated Press] |
Up to a million men and women forced into bondage in Africa emerged from the bellies of ships onto the Valongo wharf of what was once the world’s busiest slave-trading port. Today, as Brazil surges forward on the world stage, scholars hope the trove of beads, bracelets and statuettes they are finding will also prompt Brazilians to look backward with greater interest at their slave heritage.
The wharf that was intentionally buried in 1840 and replaced by a new port is coming back to light as part of a $5 billion project remaking Rio’s port region for tourism and business ahead of the 2016 Olympics.
Brazilians have long viewed their country as a racial democracy free from prejudice and the discrimination that marked U.S. history.
“There was a real desire to erase Valongo, to erase this history, to take it right off the map,” said Tania Andrade Lima, chief archaeologist of the dig, as she pointed out Valongo’s uneven stones. “These were sidewalks made for slaves to tread,” she said, contrasting them with the checkerboard of polished flagstones of the wharf that replaced it.
“Brazil never came to terms with this part of its history,” she said. “The people who landed here were never able to tell their stories.”
Brazil took in nearly half of the approximately 10.7 million men and women shipped across the Atlantic, compared with about 645,000 taken to the U.S. It abolished slavery in 1888 — the last country in the Americas to do so — and the legacy weighs heavily on its descendants.
By 1821, nearly half of the city’s population was held in bondage, according to a census taken then. They all passed through Valongo; many stayed in the area, giving rise to neighborhoods that still have deep links to Afro-Brazilian heritage.
Valongo came into existence because the neighbors complained. They hated the smell and health hazards that came with having slaves paraded naked and often sick through residential areas. So a new wharf, away from residential areas, was needed, and Valongo opened in 1811.
“The slave trade even then was already understood as inhumane, even though it was practiced, so it was necessary to hide their arrival,” said Washington Fajardo, Rio’s head of cultural heritage and urban renewal.
Many of the artifacts are amulets or religious objects linked to the idea of shielding the body, Lima said. “These were bodies that were so abused, so violated, that they covered themselves in amulets meant to give them strength.”
Author: Juliana Barbassa | Source: Associated Press [March 26, 2012]
