{"id":19526,"date":"2015-01-12T12:23:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T15:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=19526"},"modified":"2018-01-15T13:11:44","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T16:11:44","slug":"the-port-gateway-to-rio-part-1-the-historic-whitening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=19526","title":{"rendered":"The Port, Gateway to Rio, Part 1: The Historic Whitening"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This is the first of a two-part series<\/a> on Rio de Janeiro’s Port Zone.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0Port Zone will be the gateway to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics:\u201d Since the port revitalization projects of Porto Maravilha<\/a>\u00a0began to be implemented in 2011, it has become\u00a0common to hear that the region encompassing the Port neighborhoods of Gamboa, Sa\u00fade and Santo Cristo will\u00a0be the gateway for tourists arriving in the city. The assumption is that a place receiving visitors\u00a0should be representative of the rest of the city, of its impressions of beauty, progress and development. But which Rio de Janeiro does\u00a0the Port Zone show, if we come through this \u201cgateway\u201d with a critical outlook, deeper and more nuanced\u00a0than a typical tourist? What can this place say about the rest of the city and the type of logic that directs\u00a0its development?<\/p>\n

For the photographer Maur\u00edcio Hora<\/a>, who\u00a0was born and raised\u00a0in Morro da Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, Brazil’s\u00a0first favela, today over 117 years old, the renovation projects accompanied by the exponential growth of living costs have built a Port Zone that is progressively excluding the poor and black population from the region and its projects: \u201cThey talk about\u00a0the ‘Circuit of African Heritage<\/a>‘ but where are the people? Where are the blacks who\u00a0live here? (\u2026) They are being removed. In a very subtle way, but they are being removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

When not caused by forced removals and expropriations, it is economic pressure that is driving the migration of historic residents, the resulting transformation of the communities formed there, and the selective erasing of the area’s history<\/a>. On Bar\u00e3o de\u00a0Gamboa Street, for example, lived Seu Paulo, Mauricio says: \u201cHe practiced an\u00a0Afro-Brazilian religion and had a terreiro<\/em>\u00a0[religious gathering\u00a0place] there. They suggested he sell the house and buy another one, and he left the region. Seu Paulo had to be here!\u201d\u00a0Seu Paulo’s\u00a0meeting place is not the only historically black space that’s been expelled from the region. Urban occupations in buildings that had\u00a0been abandoned for years have also disappeared after becoming targets of evictions in the last years, like the occupations of Zumbi dos Palmares, Casar\u00e3o Azul, Machado de Assis, Flor do Asfalto and Quilombo das Guerreiras<\/a>, all evicted in the last five years.<\/p>\n

The Port Zone has been a stage for\u00a0removals, evictions, demolitions<\/a> and the burial of memories, culture and black presence<\/a> in the name of \u201cprogress\u201d and \u201cbeautification\u201d of the city for a long time. One of the first urban planning documents of Rio de Janeiro, the Relat\u00f3rio Beaurepaire, makes this quite clear. Written by the military engineer Henrique de Beaurepaire Rohan in 1843, the report sought the \u201cmoral cleansing and beautification\u201d of the city. While the report recommended that this mission be\u00a0carried out in the districts where the elite were living through leveling and paving streets, recommendations for the port region include a \u201ccomplete reconstruction\u201d of everything between the Pra\u00e7a da Aclama\u00e7\u00e3o and the sea, what is today the area between the Pra\u00e7a da Rep\u00fablica and Rua Sacadura Cabral. This recommendation would mean\u00a0the demolition of 5,657 buildings, approximately 40% of the buildings existing then in the districts that today correspond with the neighborhoods of Gamboa and Santo Cristo.<\/p>\n

But why was there so much “concern” with this region of the city?<\/p>\n

In the Rio de Janeiro\u00a0of\u00a0the 19th<\/sup> century, not very different from\u00a0the Rio de Janeiro of today, urban space was rigidly divided in hierarchies. Those districts that today correspond to the area between Pra\u00e7a XV and Candel\u00e1ria, for example, were reserved mostly for the aristocracy, the merchants and the religious elite. There you\u00a0would\u00a0find the most luxurious churches, lawyers’ offices, the historic house of the Portuguese royal family, etc.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The New Blacks Cemetery – Location in registered plan of measures in the 1871 plan. Source: Tavares, Reinaldo Bernardes. New Blacks Cemetery: an attempt at spatial delineation (2012).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Isolated by mangroves, the districts of Sant\u2019Anna and Santa Rita–today Cidade Nova–and the hills of Concei\u00e7\u00e3o, Livramento and Sa\u00fade in the Port Zone were destinations for what\u00a0the bourgeoisie didn\u2019t want to see. Despite sheltering one of the most important ports of the Americas, and thus being central for the functioning of the capitalist economy based on slavery, the region was seen as\u00a0a space reserved for what the white elite considered to be dirty, undesirable, sick or disposable.<\/p>\n

That region had been, before the publication of the Relat\u00f3rio Beaurepaire, the place where enslaved Africans arrived, where they were sold, buried, caged. The Cais do Valango<\/a>\u00a0slave wharf, installed in the region of Gamboa in 1811, was built\u00a0there because of a need to move the slave port\u2014and consequently the presence of black men and women that were just arriving from a cruel and degrading trip\u2014far from the district of S\u00e3o Jos\u00e9, in the current Pra\u00e7a XV.\u00a0During those twenty years, it acted as a receiving port for between 500,000<\/a> and two million<\/a> Africans held as slaves\u2014more than double the estimated total number of Africans brought to the United States over the entire course of the US slave trade (450,000<\/a>).\u00a0Cais do Valongo drove an intense market of slaves in the present Camerino Street and the Cemit\u00e9rio dos Pretos Novos (New Blacks Cemetery)<\/a>\u00a0presently located on\u00a0Pedro Ernesto Street which functioned as a space for getting rid of urban trash and where the bodies of Africans recently arrived dead or who died prior to sale were crushed and buried.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the black men and women who\u00a0survived the trip, and\/or gained liberty from forced work, could be criminalized. When that happened they were sent to the prison that existed on what is today Acre Street until 1835 or treated like lunatics, for their culture and religion, and imprisoned\u00a0in the Nossa Senhora da Sa\u00fade Insane Asylum from the 1850s.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cO<\/a>
\u201cO Aljube,\u201d later called Prison of Relations, on Prainha Street (now Acre Street). The figure imprisoned on the right suggests which part of the population, even at that time, was criminalized and incarcerated. Drawing by Thomas Ender (c. 1817).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Beyond the wharf, the markets and warehouses, the cemetery, the prison and the mental\u00a0asylum, the region was also associated with black identity–and therefore everything was \u201cdisposable\u201d<\/a> for the white elite–due to the cultural, religious and political resistance that dominated the territory that was occupied by black men and women from\u00a0the 19th<\/sup> century through\u00a0the 20th<\/sup>. This resistance was, for example, what transformed the area of the current Campo de Santana from a whipping post to a space of batuque<\/em>, capoeira and dance on Sundays during the second half of the 19th<\/sup> century. It was also the same resistance that brought veterans of the War of\u00a0Canudos<\/a>\u00a0to establish\u00a0the first favela<\/a>, Morro da Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, in protest of the non-fulfillment of the promises of residency and dignity at the end of the same century. It was also\u00a0there, in the neighborhoods of Sa\u00fade and Gamboa, that the police of Pereira Passos met a\u00a0large resistance when the population revolted against obligatory vaccination<\/a> and the abuses of the sanitation commission in 1904.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Port Zone\u00a0has been\u00a0historically associated with black people whose exploitation was encouraged and economically \u201cnecessary,\u201d but whose presence was frightening and undesirable. It\u2019s not surprising, therefore, that governments in the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> centuries have wanted to disassociate the commercially important port area from what was considered sick, non-human or dangerous. Before and after the publication of Relat\u00f3rio Beaurepaire, the intention of the authorities has always been to\u00a0erase the black people from that space and what was associated with\u00a0them.<\/p>\n

There came the recommendation to demolish many buildings in 1843, the burying of Cais do Valongo to make the Cais do Imperatriz the same year, and the prohibition of the construction of tenement housing accessible for poor men and women, free or not, in 1873, 1889 and 1892. The historical roots of the region were\u00a0the targets of Pereira Passos’ superficial beautification work that extended the conceptions of European beauty to the region with the transformation of Cais da Imperatriz into the public square, and with the construction of the Suspended Gardens of Valongo. It makes sense that together with this logic of burials, cleansing and beautification of the city, the same government of Pereira Passos had Morro da Provid\u00eancia as the target of removals in the first years of governing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Cais do Valongo in March 2014, on the day of the centenary of Abdias do Nascimento: a space of black fight and memory taken back.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey have always wanted to destroy the favela,\u201d says Mauricio. \u201cProvid\u00eancia was a favela that in its formation was dangerous, and the government isn\u2019t stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maur\u00edcio’s words remind us that, even though we live in very different times,\u00a0the authorities’ discourse about\u00a0the region has changed very little. The current wave of removals, demolitions and expropriations\u00a0and\u00a0the lack of effective and inclusive housing\u00a0are today justified by a discourse of \u201crevitalization\u201d that depicts the region as one of crime and lack of progress. The importance of the region for black memory and culture was only recently included in the official discourse after strong pressure from popular black leaders who demanded it.<\/p>\n

Still, the incorporation of black culture and memory in the City’s official discourse in the form of the creation of the ‘African Heritage Circuit<\/a>‘ was made selectively, as will be discussed in the following articles of this series. The capitalization and de-politicization of black culture and memory in the Port Zone allows for\u00a0the systematic expulsion of the population that still suffers the consequences of a racist system that only gives value to short-term monetary riches, that does not permit the occupation of spaces that the historic exploitation of their\u00a0work constructed.<\/p>\n

This is the first part of a series of two\u00a0articles<\/a> about the Port Zone of Rio de Janeiro. <\/em><\/p>\n

Eduarda Araujo is from Rio de Janeiro and is a student of African Studies and the African Diapora at Brown University. She researches structural racism and black resistance in the processes of formation of urban space in Rio de Janeiro. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas This is the first of a two-part series on Rio de Janeiro’s Port Zone. \u201cThe\u00a0Port Zone will be the gateway to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics:\u201d Since the port revitalization projects […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":19527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1293,1267,1288,335,1282,328],"tags":[315,662,772,1261,504,11,170,188,282,296,148,146,1347,144,124,1189,270,2634,1544,279,1511],"writer":[1451],"translator":[407],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-gentrificationwatch","9":"category-highlight","10":"category-policies","11":"category-research-analysis","12":"category-understanding-rio","13":"tag-african-diaspora","14":"tag-afro-brazilian-culture","15":"tag-cais-do-valongo","16":"tag-central-rio","17":"tag-culture","18":"tag-forced-evictions","19":"tag-historic-preservation","20":"tag-history","21":"tag-housing","22":"tag-occupation","23":"tag-port-region","24":"tag-porto-maravilha","25":"tag-pretos-novos","26":"tag-morro-da-providencia","27":"tag-race","28":"tag-racism","29":"tag-resistance","30":"tag-series","31":"tag-series-port-gateway","32":"tag-slavery","33":"tag-valongo","34":"writer-eduarda-araujo","35":"translator-elizabeth-gladding"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19526"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=19526"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=19526"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=19526"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=19526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}