COLLECTING OUR UNTOLD & FORGOTTEN HISTORIES

In 2011, during the excavations carried out as part of the
revitalization works in the Rio de Janeiro port area for upcoming
Olympics, two wharves - the Cais do Valongo and Imperatriz - were
discovered, one on top of the other, and, along with them, a
large number of amulets and objects of worship from Congo, Angola
and Mozambique. It was the site of the landing and trading
500,000 to one million Africans to be enslaved in Brazilian
territory from 1811 to 1831. Until 2011 it had been neglected,
hidden, covered up. The wharf was officially designated a World
Heritage Site in 2017.


Brazilians Leticia Caetano, a native of Rio de
Janeiro, history teacher, mother, activist and tour guide of the
Pequena Africa (Little Africa) neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro,
and Anderson H. Gonçalves, a native of
Cachoeira, Bahia whose research is on quilombos (Brazilian Maroon
communities), racial terror and the Black Atlantic, discuss this
topic with Heather Mac Intosh of Trinidad &
Tobago.


The conversation was originally conducted in Brazilian
Portuguese. This version is with interpretation voice-overs in
English.


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