{"id":25458,"date":"2015-11-20T07:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T10:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=25458"},"modified":"2020-03-15T19:11:05","modified_gmt":"2020-03-15T22:11:05","slug":"mapping-the-slave-trade-and-growing-black-awareness-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=25458","title":{"rendered":"Mapping the Slave Trade and Growing Black Awareness in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Today, November 20, is Brazil’s\u00a0Black Awareness Day, a day to celebrate Black Brazilian history\u00a0and\u00a0resistance<\/a> to oppression. While May 13\u00a0marks the adoption of the ‘Golden Law<\/a>‘ that abolished slavery<\/a>\u00a0in 1888 with the signature of then Imperial Regent Princess Isabela, November 20\u00a0celebrates<\/span>\u00a0the death of Zumbi, the last leader of\u00a0the Quilombo dos Palmares<\/a>. Palmares was\u00a0<\/em>a runaway slave community<\/a> that resisted Portuguese and Dutch military campaigns for nearly all of the 17th<\/sup> century. Though black social movements have celebrated the day since the 1970s, it was not officially added to the public school calendar until 2003, and a 2011 law signed by President Dilma Rousseff<\/a> made Black Awareness Day an optional holiday at the municipal level. Today Zumbi is regarded as a national figure and Brazilians of all racial backgrounds celebrate\u00a0the history of democracy and resistance that he embodies through marches<\/a>, occupations<\/a>, film festivals<\/a>, music performances<\/a>, seminars<\/a> and parties<\/a> throughout the month of November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Talking about slavery around the celebration of Black Awareness on November 20 is not necessarily taboo, but it can reinforce the narratives that paint the black experience in Brazil as always about slavery. However, Brazilians generally and cariocas<\/a> more specifically have rarely sought to contend with their history of slavery and racism<\/a>. The myths of a benign, colonial slave society<\/a> predicated on benevolent master-slave relationships and of 20th<\/sup> century racial democracy<\/a> based on racial equality following abolition (i.e. since\u00a0there was no institutionalized racism<\/a> and segregation<\/a> in Brazil like there was in the United States) have rendered slavery a historical fact that rarely receives\u00a0national reflection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With the US as paradigm of slavery and racism in the Western Hemisphere, little attention has even been paid to the Brazilian slave trade, despite its sheer magnitude. Brazil imported and enslaved nearly five\u00a0million Africans<\/a>, over ten times the number that reached the US and Canada and nearly half of the more than ten million people brought to the Western Hemisphere as slaves. Two million enslaved Africans<\/a> arrived to the Americas at the port of Rio<\/a>\u00a0alone.<\/p>\n

When speaking about large scale institutions and markets like slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Trade, it is easy to forget the individuals and small acts that comprised and sustained them. An interactive map produced by Slate<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0based on archives of slave ship manifests compiled by Voyages-The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database<\/a>, shows both the incredible scale and the minute, everyday-ness of the trade.<\/p>\n

The map is a time-lapse of the trade from 1545 to 1860, representing, as the byline succinctly and powerfully puts it, \u201c315 years. 20,528 voyages. Millions of lives.\u201d Each dot is one voyage and the size of the dot represents the number of enslaved people forced to endure the Middle Passage<\/a>. By pausing the map and clicking on a dot you can learn details about that particular voyage\u2014the crew\u2019s flag and state affiliation, route, the number of other journeys the ship made, the number of people who disembarked from Africa, and the number of enslaved people who actually survived the journey to the Americas.<\/p>\n

\"'The<\/a><\/p>\n

You can also note geopolitical and national trends related to the slave trade. Portuguese and Spanish vessels dominated the early years of the trade, with hundreds of ships going to ports throughout the Caribbean and Cartagena in present-day Colombia. As European colonizers\u2014primarily Dutch, French, English, Spanish and Portuguese\u2014vied for dominance of industries like sugar, cotton, and coffee, their fortunes were increasingly linked to their ability to monopolize the slave trade.<\/p>\n

Small details like the ships going to Europe serve as a reminder that chattel slavery was not only an institution of the Americas, but also one of European states and empires. The nature of these empires even saw slaves being sent from the Americas back to Africa. In the Portuguese Empire, banishment to other colonies was a common punishment. A 1749 Royal Proclamation prohibited even free blacks and mulattoes from dressing like whites and suggested exile to S\u00e3o Tom\u00e9 as a suitable punishment for repeat offenders.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

The Portuguese Empire in Africa, coupled with the favorable trade winds, made the importation of enslaved Africans to Brazil relatively cheap. Decrees throughout the colonial period implored slave masters to actually feed their slaves or at least allow them plots of land to grow their own food, as many owners made the calculation that simply importing new, healthier people could prove cheaper than taking care of their slaves.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

A common 17th<\/sup> century refrain in Brazil, \u201cwithout sugar, no Brazil, without slaves, no sugar, without Angola, no slaves<\/a>,\u201d speaks to the entrenched political, economic, and cultural early links between Brazil and Angola. However, routes changed as sugar production in the Northeast was replaced by goldmining and coffee production in the South, making Rio rather than Salvador in Bahia the Brazilian port through which most Africans entered the country, and at times shifting the trade up Africa\u2019s Western Coast to present-day Benin and Nigeria.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a><\/strong>
\nThere is a dramatic drop in the number of ships going to the island of Hispaniola following the end of the Haitian Revolution<\/a> in 1804. As European power waned in the hemisphere following the independence movements of the late 18th\u00a0<\/sup>and early 19th<\/sup> centuries, ships from Brazil dominated the trade. This was especially the case following Britain\u2019s attempts to abolish the Trans-Atlantic Trade. Though Brazil passed laws ending the importation of enslaved Africans, they were \u201cfor the English to see<\/a>,\u201d with over a million people imported between 1826 and 1850, the height of Britain\u2019s ideological and naval campaign against the trade.<\/p>\n

\"Brazil<\/a><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The significance\u00a0and legacy of the slave trade and slavery is emphasized by\u00a0black musicians and activists. O Rappa\u2019s 1994 song \u201cTodo cambur\u00e3o tem um pouco navio negreiro<\/a>\u201d (\u201cAll police-wagons have a little bit of slave ship\u201d) decries the racial profiling tactics of police. Similarly, the lyrics to Emicida\u2019s recently released \u201cBoa Esperan\u00e7a<\/a>\u201d (Good Hope) symbolically link favelas and slave ships while the video<\/a> depicts a modern day revolt. Just as the slave trade operated on a perverse ideology that rendered black lives dispensable and disposable, young black men in Rio are routinely the victims of police violence<\/a>, comprising the majority of the 1,519 police killings in the last five years as documented in a recent Amnesty International Report<\/a>. Raull Santiago of Coletivo Papo Reto<\/a> has frequently referred to favelas alternatively as senzalas<\/em> (slave quarters) due to the exploitative relationship between the city proper and favelas, and as quilombos<\/a><\/em> (run-away slave communities) due to their connection to a long history of territorial and emancipatory struggles.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>,\u00a0[2]<\/a>\u00a0Conrad, Robert Edgard. Children of God\u2019s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil<\/em>. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Reist is pursuing both a Masters in Public Policy and a PhD in Latin American Studies at Duke University. In Rio, she worked as a Felsman Fellow at Projeto Ra\u00edzes Locais, a community-based project run by Associa\u00e7\u00e3o Terra dos Homens,<\/a> in Mangueirinha, Duque de Caxias. Her research looks at center-periphery dynamics, belonging and citizenship, and land rights.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Today, November 20, is Brazil’s\u00a0Black Awareness Day, a day to celebrate Black Brazilian history\u00a0and\u00a0resistance to oppression. While May 13\u00a0marks the adoption of the ‘Golden Law‘ that abolished slavery\u00a0in 1888 with the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":25463,"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":[1288,1282,328,1329],"tags":[2271,1645,310,662,1041,1606,1734,188,878,254,1370,17,148,450,124,1189,270,421,279],"writer":[1716],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-research-analysis","9":"category-understanding-rio","10":"category-by-international-observers","11":"tag-for-the-english-to-see","12":"tag-piv","13":"tag-africa","14":"tag-afro-brazilian-culture","15":"tag-black-awareness-month","16":"tag-coletivo-papo-reto","17":"tag-haiti","18":"tag-history","19":"tag-international-comparison","20":"tag-mapping","21":"tag-music","22":"tag-police-brutality","23":"tag-port-region","24":"tag-quilombo","25":"tag-race","26":"tag-racism","27":"tag-resistance","28":"tag-segregation","29":"tag-slavery","30":"writer-stephanie-reist"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25458","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\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25458"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=25458"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=25458"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=25458"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=25458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}