The largest black slave gravesite in the Americas
When a nation is built on twin genocides, the first logistical problem is where to bury the dead.
In 1996, Merced Guimarães and her husband Petrucio made a chilling discovery in their new home during an extensive renovation project: workers excavating in the soil beneath their house in the neighborhood of Gamboa in Rio de Janeiro’s Port Region unearthed human bones. After calling the authorities, leading to an investigation of the site, it was discovered that this crime scene was in fact the site of a mass grave, the until-then rumored Cemetery for New Blacks. It was here that tens of thousands of captured Africans were buried from around 1791 to 1831. With bodies weakened during travel across the Middle Passage, they died shortly after arriving to Brazil’s shores and prior to sale, and were discarded into large pits, their remains periodically crushed and burned along with trash.
This unexpected exhumation of a horrific past marked the starting point of Merced’s life work. After an initial archaeological survey, the city government was prepared to cover the cemetery once again. Merced could have very well proceeded with her renovation plans and all would have been forgotten once more. Instead, she decided it was her duty to dedicate this space to the memory of the tens of thousands of lives buried there and to the history of slavery in the Port Region of Rio. After a nearly ten-year battle, she was able to inaugurate the New Blacks Institute (IPN) on May 13, 2005. The Institute serves as a museum, memorial and research center exploring the history of the cemetery and the Port Region, and celebrates Rio’s black heritage. It is a nonprofit organization, and depends largely on the support of individual small donors. It is the only stop on Rio’s Black Heritage Circuit where detailed historical information is exchanged and people are regularly available to answer questions and deepen the visitor’s understanding of the tragic and dramatic history of the world’s largest slave port.
Studies estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 bodies were buried at the New Blacks Cemetery. It is the largest known cemetery of captured and enslaved Africans in the Americas. Moreover, the cemetery is only one of numerous historical markers in the Port Region of Rio that reveal the area’s role as the world’s largest slave port. Of the five million captured Africans forced onto Brazilian shores, 2 million arrived in Rio de Janeiro alone, nearly four times the total amount to reach the United States. Sadakne Baroudi is a North American historian based in Rio de Janeiro. Her extensive research of the history of chattel slavery in Rio de Janeiro and throughout Brazil is published on her website AfroRioWalkingTour. She has been a long-time supporter of the IPN and her tours of the Port Zone bring visitors to the Institute every year: “’this [funding] is an obligation of the government. Operational costs of the IPN are the tiniest of obligations we have for what happened in this city. It was the largest slave port…
Cemetery of the New Blacks
The Cemetery of the New Blacks was operational from 1769 until 1830 as part of the Valongo complex. The Valongo was the main slave market, but when that market was moved from outside of the Imperial Palace, all of the logistics of this trade had to move with it. Since the cargo was human, it wasn’t possible to just move the point of sale. The Valongo would be the point of disembarkation, and so along with the market, there had to be a place of quarantine for the sick. The island of Villegagnon was used for this purpose and came to be the place where anyone with smallpox was exiled. There was also a “fattening house;” a warehouse where newly arrived Africans who were in no condition to be sold were kept and fed until they could be sent to the market. The Valongo complex also required a cemetery.
n all, over 10 million captured and enslaved Africans were brought to the New World alive during the Transatlantic slave trade. It remains one of the most horrifying chapters in human history. And yet the world remains largely devoid of museums and memorials dedicated to its memory. Caribbean countries have made numerous attempts to demand reparations from Europe, so far to no avail. That being said the world is not want of successful models of how to grapple with an unspeakable past: most German students visit at least two concentration camps before graduating from high school. Memorials within and outside Europe compel visitors to revisit the atrocities of the Holocaust. Why then is there such a violent resistance to the remembrance of slavery? “One of the common myths about slavery and race and racism is that racism is what caused slavery. And that is not true. Racism is constructed, it’s invented after the Transatlantic slave trade is already institutionalized… When we look back at history and we ask what do we do with this now–we have to deal squarely, face on and bravely with the problem and the question of racism,” asserts Sadakne.
Brazil is home to one of the world’s largest black populations, only second to Nigeria. Nevertheless, national recognition of black contributions to Brazilian culture and history is often limited to feijoada, capoeira, samba and carnival. As Sadakne points out, “what about democracy as a black contribution? What about voting as a black contribution? Rebouças’ name is everywhere in the city of Rio de Janeiro. How many people know that he was black? If you want to talk about black contributions, the city of Rio de Janeiro is a black contribution to Brazil!”
Despite the challenging road ahead for IPN and Rio’s Port Zone, recent developments in the uncovering and preservation of its brutal past such as the Cais do Valongo are unprecedented. Had it not been for the organizing and resistance of the local community, these spaces would have already disappeared from view. #IPNResiste is yet another chapter in this difficult but indispensable journey. Please support in any way you can and publish your own testimonials with #IPNResiste to help spread the word.
Bio
Newly arrived Africans were called “Pretos Novos” or “New Blacks.” We can think of them as “unbroken” Africans. After some time enslaved in Brazil, they were called “Ladinos” or “Seasoned.” We can think of them as “broken by slavery”. The third category was “Criolos” or “Creoles” and they were the Blacks born enslaved in Brazil. To this day, “criolo” is one of the most hateful epithets one can hurl at a dark-skinned Brazilian, worse than the linguistic equivalent of the “n-word.”
The Archeology
The cemetery itself rose from its own burial in 1996 when the family living at 36 Pedro Ernesto Street began a renovation project on their house. When the workers began to dig, every shovelful of soil brought forth bones. The owners of the property contacted the authorities and an archaeological dig ensued. The survey logged 5,563 fragments. Twenty-eight bodies were identified, most of them young males between the ages of 18-25, along with youths between 12 and 18 years old, and children from 3-10 years of age. The analysis confirmed that the bodies had been burned, cremated after the flesh had decomposed. Most were Bantu people bearing tribal marks of the Angolans. You can read about the details of this crime scene here:
Bones That Talk (Revista Pesquisa, Dec. 2011)
Even more horrifying, studies concluded that the site had been simultaneously used as a trash dump. Bodies thinly covered with dirt and trash would collect until the fetor became unbearable and it would be lit afire. After the blaze, a new layer would be added on top of the ashes. And so on, and so on. Just to give an idea of the volume, in the last 6 years before the cemetery was closed, 1824-1830, around 6,000 bodies were interred in the Cemetery of the New Blacks. That’s about 3 per day.
Have you ever heard of a site that is designated as a dump and a cemetery? I haven’t. I’ve heard of archaeological digs in trash pits and I’ve heard of old graveyards. What are we saying when we agree to call this place both a trash dump and a cemetery? And doesn’t a cemetery have graves in it? A trash dump is where people throw away things that have passed a point of usefulness. A cemetery is where people honor their dead in sacred rituals. Perhaps this place is most accurately called a Crime Scene, as it, in fact, is a mass grave in a trash dump, and not a cemetery at all.
A new archaeological project was done in 2017 where, after six months of careful excavation, scientists were able to dig deeply enough to uncover a fully intact skeleton. A young African woman, perhaps in her early 20’s, she was dubbed “Bakhita” and, following great discussion with various concerned community groups, it was decided that her remains should be on permanent display.
Timeline of burials
- 1500-1769: Bodies were buried sometimes near churches, but often left on the beaches or in the streets to rot.
- 1582-present: Santa Casa da Misericórdia was the first hospital in Rio de Janeiro. Today, the organization oversees 11 public cemeteries, 2 private ones and a crematorium. Records from the early 19th Century comprised the primary source material for Mary Karasch’s seminal work
- 1655-1709: Near what is now Largo da Carioca, the Franciscans designated land to cope with the ever growing numbers of Indigenous and African corpses.
- 1758-1768: Saint Rita Church had a small plot that was used when the market was at Praça XV.
- 1769-1830: Cemetery of the New Blacks, Rua Pedro Ernesto, 36, Gamboa, Rio de Janeiro.
Resource:
CCTV
Catalytic Communities, the Brazilian NGO and USA 501 nonprofit that runs RioOnWatch, can act as a fiscal sponsor for those who would like to make a donation to IPN online.