O teu sal, ó mar, são lágrimas de dor.
Representação do tráfico de africanos escravizados no Rio de Janeiro. Pão de Açúcar aparece no topo da tela e, envoltos na moldura de madeira, corpos de africanos no que seria o interior de um navio. Brasil Atlântico do Período Colonial, Arjan Martins, 2014.
All the beauty of a seaside city, surrounded by mountains in shades of green and blue, with white sand beaches and rivers that carry the ocean's waters in and out of itself, cannot erase or make us forget that this salty sea was both setting and protagonist in stories of death and pain.
Estimativa de africanos escravizados embarcados e desembarcados entre 1501 e 1866. Em destaque, o sudeste, região em que está localizado o maior porto de desembarque de africanos do mundo – o Valongo
If Brazil is the country that, for the longest time and on the largest demographic scale, received enslaved African men and women in the history of the diaspora, Rio de Janeiro was the largest slaving port on this coast. When the Cais do Valongo, located in the city's port area, was recognized as a World Heritage Site, this fact was the most relevant argument for its designation. In this city, captives from different African regions disembarked for centuries, and especially in the early decades of the 19th century, with a frequency and intensity not experienced in other parts of Brazilian territory, or even in other slaving ports in the Americas.
No mapa acima, o Sudeste brasileiro aparece como uma das regiões que mais recebeu cativos (mais de 2 milhões), desde o início da colonização. Fonte: SlaveVoyages
Port of arrival and starting point of a painful rebirth process, which also gave birth to this city, which emerged with all its Africanities, created out of the condition of captivity and contact with other peoples of other cultures in this land — indigenous peoples, Portuguese, immigrants from so many places. Rio Atlântico is marked by this suffering, but also by creation, the resistant and resilient affirmation of its protagonists.
Lavagem do cais do Valongo, em homenagem à memória dos milhões de africanos escravizados. Julho de 2013. Fonte: Agência Brasil