40% of people in Rio were slaves in 1888, the year slavery was abolished in Brazil.
10/23/2012, "Brazil comes to terms with its slave trading past," Guardian Weekly, Nicolas Bourcier
"Groundworks for the 2016 Olympics bring questions of ethnicity to the surface."
"Just a step from the centre of Rio de Janeiro, at the heart of the docks undergoing a massive facelift in preparation for the 2016 Olympics, two workers await the verdict of three archaeologists at the bottom of a trench. Municipal workers have once again stumbled on the remains of the Valongo wharf, where the largest number of slaves imported to the [western hemisphere]...disembarked. A place to remember, a place of suffering long buried under the paving stones of this dazzling city....
Since work started in 2010, a huge
variety of bracelets, precious stones and personal items has been
unearthed, tens of thousands of objects, says Tania Andrade Lima, who
heads the dig.
Work on the wharf has also revealed the scale of the slave trade in Brazil. Of the 9.5 million people captured in Africa and brought to the New World between the 16th and 19th century, nearly 4 million landed in Rio, 10 times more than all those sent to the United States.
Work on the wharf has also revealed the scale of the slave trade in Brazil. Of the 9.5 million people captured in Africa and brought to the New World between the 16th and 19th century, nearly 4 million landed in Rio, 10 times more than all those sent to the United States.
But for the last century Brazil has tried to forget its past, refusing to accept the legacy of the slave trade. It has sought to project the image of a country of mixed descent, where the colour of a person's skin does not count, a land unfettered by racism where cordial relations reign between citizens of Indian, European and African descent.
Brazil was the last...nation [in the western hemisphere] to abolish slavery, on 13 May, 1888. At the time Rio represented the largest urban concentration of slaves since the end of the Roman empire, more than 40% of the population, almost a complete city in irons. Rio city council now plans to turn part of Valongo into an open-air archaeological site. "This heritage can finally be recognised, shown off and used to combat our collective amnesia [...] regarding the black community," Lima suggests. The country is certainly changing. There are few people in Rio who would still describe it as a "racial democracy", a term coined by the sociologist and writer Gilberto Freyre.
Black movements tend to refer to "institutionalised racism", a view endorsed, among others, by the Catholic church, which condemns discrimination and the persistence of a slave-based mindset.
According to census results published in 2011 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), brancos (whites) account for less than half the population for the first time since the 19th century. Approximately 51% see themselves as preto (black, 8%) or pardo (mixed, 43%), up by more than 5% on 2000....
According to a 2007 survey, coloured people only account for 3.5% of executives, 10% of university students, 5% of members of parliament, 3% of the judiciary. So there's room for more change.
President Dilma Rousseff's 36-strong coalition government includes only one black minister, Luiza Helena de Bairros, secretary of state for racial equality. She is a worthy successor to Edison Arantes do Nascimento, aka Pelé, the first coloured man to serve as a minister (of sport) in 1994. All the figures confirm this situation, contradicting the impressions of passing visitors.
"Racism in Brazil is well hidden, subtle and unspoken, underestimated by the media," says Joaquim Barbosa, the first black judge to sit on the bench of the supreme court in Brasilia. "It is nevertheless extremely violent."...
In a sensational decision this April [2012] the 10 supreme court judges unanimously ruled in favour of positive discrimination in higher education, declaring that the racial quotas in Brazilian universities were constitutional and redressed the "social debt of slavery". Dozens of expert witnesses were heard and the ruling was televised live. In August the senate passed a bill requiring federal universities to reserve half their places for students from state schools. Rousseff has signed the whole text into law; universities have till 2015 to comply....
Opponents of the quota system have condemned the "racialisation" of Brazil, rooted in an increasingly ethnic approach to social affairs. Above all the ensuing debate seems to have put an end to the myth of racial democracy, in which skin colour does not count.
A major change is apparently underway in what the sociologist Alberto Guerreiro Ramos called "the most racist country in the world", during the military dictatorship in the 1980s, a view endorsed by most of the experts Le Monde talked to. "The quotas are the only alternative to the mechanisms of concealment and social exclusion set up since the end of slavery," says Spiritos Santos, the author of a lively blog on racial issues....
Since independence in 1822, the Brazilian elite has sought to deny the nation's African roots. "In an effort to glorify the past, while making no concessions to the Portuguese, the elite started by promoting the Indians, the original masters of the land and no threat to the slave-makers," says the historian Richard Marin. Blacks were sidelined. Even the abolitionist writer Ruy Barbosa de Oliveirato, then finance minister, authorised much of the government records of slavery to be destroyed in 1890.
When slavery was finally abolished the former captives were left to fend for themselves. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, who established 4,000 schools for former slaves, Brazil did not open a single one. "With no land nor education, cut off from any social organisation, the enfranchised blacks were condemned to misery," according to historian Alain Rouquié. "The long-awaited abolition ultimately entrenched inequality.
Prior to the financial crisis of 1929 the boom in coffee production attracted 4 million immigrants from Europe with little concern for the country's colonial past. On the grounds that this young and prosperous nation could not flourish with a largely black population, European immigration was encouraged in order to "whiten" Brazil, to limpar o sangue (cleanse the blood)....
There was a big gap between the supposed racial democracy and the actual condition of many Afro-Brazilians, the victims of racism....
The debate on quotas started in the 1990s under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He set up working groups to discuss public action to promote the black community and made it compulsory for official documents to indicate skin colour. In 2002 Bahia State University introduced racial quotas, gradually followed by about 60 other establishments....
The streets of the Valongo neighbourhood have just been paved over and re-opened to traffic. This evening the first episode of a telenovela (soap), Lado a Lado (side by side) will be broadcast. It is the story of a black community after the abolition of slavery. "It is an exciting and as yet little known period," said the lead actor, Lazaro Ramos. Could he be joking?"
"This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/23/brazil-struggle-ethnic-racial-identity
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Added:
2015 Brazil population over 205 million:
Above, Brazil on world map, copyright Ontheworldmap.com
Above, Angola
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Added: Published in Feb. 2015:
"African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World by Ana Lucia Araujo," cambriapress.com
"Description: This book explores the history of African tangible and intangible heritages and its links with the public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. The two countries are deeply connected, given how most enslaved Africans, forcibly brought to Brazil during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, were from West Central Africa. Brazil imported the largest number of enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade and was the last country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery in 1888. Today, other than Nigeria, the largest population of African descent is in Brazil. Yet it was only in the last twenty years that Brazil’s African heritage and its slave past have gained greater visibility. Prior to this, Brazil’s African heritage and its slave past were completely neglected.
Even after the abolition of slavery in Brazil, African culture continued to be marginalized. Carnival, religious festivals, as well as Candomblé ceremonies, and capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial art) created important spaces of black assertion and insurgency. These cultural traditions were contested by white elites and public authorities, but starting in the 1930s, capoeira became a national symbol and Candomblé temples were gradually officially added to Brazil’s list of heritage sites.
In spite of these developments, the Atlantic slave past has remained absent from the public landscape of Brazilian and Angolan former slave ports, suggesting how difficult it is for these countries to address the painful legacies of slavery. African art and material culture also continued to be excluded from museums and other official institutions. In the rare instances that African artifacts were shown, they would be confined to only certain places dedicated to popular culture and associated with the religious sphere.
Even though public attention on slavery was growing internationally through national and international initiatives (e.g., The Slave Route Project by UNESCO), Brazil and Angola developed very few initiatives for the memorialization of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. This has started to change slowly in the last decade as Brazil has begun engaging in more initiatives to memorialize slavery and underscore the importance of its African heritage.
Brazil’s slave past and African heritage are emerging gradually in urban and rural areas through different kinds of initiatives led not only by activists but also by scholars in association with black communities. Although in their early stages, most of these projects are permanent programs supported by official agencies. This new configuration suggests that––unlike the case in Angola––in Brazil, slavery and the Atlantic the slave trade are becoming recognized as foundational chapters of the country’s history.
This is the first book in English to focus on African heritage and public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. This interdisciplinary study examines visual images, dance, music, oral accounts, museum exhibitions, artifacts, monuments, festivals, and others forms of commemoration to illuminate the social and cultural dynamics that over the last twenty years have propelled––or prevented––the visibility of African heritage (and its Atlantic slave trade legacy) in the South Atlantic region."...
Image of book cover from cambriapress.com
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