6A
NEWS/SIt Clarlattt $Mt
Thursday, January 5, 2005
LONG-RDRGOTTEN BURIAL GROUND
RioaimstofecoMir
inteired Africans
By Peier Muello
THE ASS(X:iAJU) PRESS
RIO DE JANEIRO. BrazU -
Tile remodeling project at a
19th century home in Rio’s
old Gamboa district came to
an abrupt halt. Laborers dig
ging in the yard to check the
foimdations had found
human bones. Hiousands of
them.
Tlie homeowner, Ana de la
Merced Guimaraes, soon dis
covered that her house was
sitting on the Cemeterio doe
Pretoe Novoe - Portuguese for
Cemetery of New Blacks - a
crude burying ground for
African slaves that histcsians
had thought was lost.
Tbn years later, the city
wants to preserve the find as
a rare window into Brazil’s
colonial past - and one of the
daricest pages of its history
“It’s certainly one of the
city's most important discov
eries,* said Andre Zambelli.
head of the Rio’s Ctiltural
Heritage Department. “It
shows how the slave trade
happened, confirms what’s in
textbooks, puts history in our
hands."
Workers have recovered
5,563 bone fragments and
teeth, some rounded or
carved in styles characteristic
of people that lived along the
Congo River in Mozambique
and South Afiica. They also
found pieces of fine Engiish
china, stoneware and African
clay pipes, dishes and metal
ornaments dumped in the
graves as trash.
Rio consulted experts fitnu
New Yoric, where the African
Burial Ground was discov
ered in lower Manhattan dur
ing construction of a sky
scraper in 1991, with the
remains of at least 419 slaves
or fiw blacks buried in colo
nial times. The U.S. govern
ment designated the site a
National Historic Landmaik
in 1993.
“It’s the same connection, a
re-encounter with African
history, labor and culture,"
Zambelli said.
Rio believes its cemetery
was bigger. More than 20,000
bodies probaWy were buried
there between 1769 and
1830, Zambelli said, but no
one knows exactly because no
records were kept. ITiey were
the bodies of slaves who died
before they could be were
sold.
Brazil was the New World’s
bluest market for African
slaves. Of an estimated 10
million Africans brou^t to
the Americas, nearly half
came to Brazil, where they
wori^ed in gold and diamond
minftfi or cm coffee and sugar
plantations.
When Rio became Brazil’s
capital in 1763, residents
scxm b^an objecting to the
squalid slave market in
downtown streets, near the
palace where the Portuguese
royal family took up resi
dence after fleeing Portugal
ahead of Napoleon’s invading
army in 1807.
So the market was relocat
ed to the marshy Gamboa
district, which became the
unofficial graveyard for
slaves after a Freinciscan
churchyard filled up. Bodies
were piled in stacks on the
street and often burned
before burial under a few
shovelfuls of soil.
The treatment still rankles
ri^ts activists.
“It was Rio’s holocaust,”
said Marcelo Monteiro at the
Municipal Council for the
Defense of Black Rights.
“Few people know about it.
We’re rediscovering a story
that was erased from history"
Haidar Abu Talib, of the
Muslim Charity Society, said
many of the slaves buried in
the cemetery were Muslims.
He said former slaves
remained “invisible” even
after slavery was abolished in
1888 and some Brazilians
would like to keep it that way.
“When slavery ended, the
government - run by the
elites that always benefited
from slave labor - wasn’t con
cerned about makii^ ex-
slaves full citizens,” Talib said
at a ceremony for Black
Consciousness Day. “Even
today, their descendants are
victims of social irgustice.”
Although nearly half of
Brazil’s 183 million people
are black or mixed-race, the
country's cherished self-
image as a “racial danocracy”
is a myth. Most of tl^ poorest
Brazilians are black.
Blacks comprise 70 percent
of the poorest tenth of
Brazilians and just 16 per
cent of the wealthiest tenth,
the United Nations
Devdopment Program said
recently Afix)-Brazilians
earned an average of 173
Brazilian reals (US$74J a-
month in 2000, less than half
the pay for whites in 1980, it
said.
“The data merely corrobo
rate what is already visible to
any observer The farther one
goes up along the power hier
archy, the whiter Brazilian
society becomes,” the U.N.
report said.
Rio officials want to bring
black history more in the
open by creating a walking
tour and putting the ceme
tery on tourism routes.
“We want to make an opai-
air museum, with a tour fix)m
the docks to the cemetery
with bilingual folders^and a
map showing where slaves
were displayed and sold,”
Zambelli said. “Afiica con
tributed to the founding of
the dty”
But Guimaraes is skeptical
the city will invest in the
cemetery that her workers
stumbled on. Officials have
done little to pres«*ve the
bones, she said, and rains
washed away some of the
exposed remains. Her neigh-
bors resent that she told the
city about the cemetery
‘T don’t have anybody's sup
port,” she said. “People ask
me why I’m doing this, but
the more I learn about how
the Africans were abused and
realize it’s been forgotten, I
swear they won’t foi^t it
here, not while I have the
strength”
On the Net:
Pretos Novos cemetery (in
Portuguese):
H’WH'prvtosnovos xrom hr
Progeny of former slaves gather
Continued from page 1A
names of 973 slaves who once helped clear the
lanid. harvest the tobacco and design the build
ings of Stagville. She has pulled information
from tax records, bills of sale and personal let
ters of Stagville owners Duncan Cameron and
Richard Bennehan. She’s also had help fixnu
several descendants who still live in Duiham.
The first phase of the worit started in the
19808 at the University of North Carcdina at
Chapel Hill. A student who interned at
Stagville sifted through all the Cameron-
Bennehan papers on campus and documented
the name of every enslaved black he came
across. The thick binder filled with pages of
names such as Orange. Tbast, Mittie, Solomon,
Moses and Little Lot sat unused imtil Fariey
arrived
“I though! ft amazing that nothing was
being dcoie about it,” she said
The woik is difficult, hindered by a lack of
birth certificates, which often were not issued
for slaves. When a birth record existed, it usu
ally did not include the father’s name, said
Tbny Burrou^is, a genealogist whose coD^>any
specializes in tracing the roots of black
Americans
“Plantation owners did not keep records on
enslaved blacks for genealogical purposes,"
Burrou^is said ‘The reccads owners kept
were fcr business purposes, either as profits or
sale or taxes. Ekich (slave) had a value on them
based on a pn^joly valtie."
Farley has had an easier time than other
plantation researchers because Camercai and
Bennehan - eaxiy trustees at UNC-Chapel Hill
- kept meticulous records of the plantaticoi.
Farley also has benefited frtou the proximity
of Stagville’s black descendants, many of whom
live within 10 miles of the site.
Ricky Hart of Duriiam is one (ff them His
father and other family members lived on the
Stagville plantation as sharecroppers until the
1950s. Hart grew up a few miles away on land
that had once been part of Stagville.
Hart had heard rumors that his family
woiked on the plantation, and after his father
died in 1986, Hart said he felt drawn to learn
more about his family
“One thing that got me is, b it real?" he said.
Ts it true what they are talking about that
there b a slave plantaticm in Duriiam?"
During a visit to Stagville later that year, he
found the cabin that he later learned hb fami
ly had lived in fix)m 1812 until the 1950s. Hb
Stagville roots go back to the 1780s with the
sale of hb great-great-grandfather to the plan
tation.
Hart woiked to piece leather hb family tree.
When he got stuck, he approached Fariey hop
ing to trade information.
Other ancestors now conie to Fariey with
photc^raphs, names to add to the links, oral
histories and information about other people
who may help fill in blanks. She shares with
them what she knows.
But there are hundreeb of names in the
binder that she has not yet connected to the
w^ of family members and there are probably
others she will never know about
Fariey hopes her woik will personalize the
pdi^t c£ slaves, as b evident when she packs up
a Uack and white photograp>h of a somber
woman. Her name was Amy Shaw and she
was bom into slavery at Stagville.
Tf thb were my grandmother and I knew
someone treated her that way, I would ache,’
Fariey said T want people to understand the
sheer number of pec^e who were owned by
these two families. I want it to hit them in the
face."
Why read The PostP Unique perspective
■| think it's important to have the perspective of all parts
of the community on public policy. The Post provides a
unique perspective and I value that perspective."
Dumont Clarke. Mecklenburg County commissioner
Call (704) 376^96
to link with news that's
important to Charlotte
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