Rio 2016 opening could not ignore slavery

I’m sure there are many who are not aware that the nation with one the largest number of Africans and descendents of Africa it is not even on the African continent. Today Brazil, the host of the 2016 Olympic Games has nearly 100 million citizens of African descent.

Such was the scale of 300 years of Portuguese slavery that more than half its citizens have the DNA of enslaved Africans. Brazil, like Cuba and the Caribbean was a nation built on slavery, only the scale of the Portuguese endeavour was much greater and lasted a lot longer.

Like the Caribbean, ‘King sugar’ was the global industry that drove forced labour with some 95% of enslaved Africans working on plantations. As the country grew as an economic power house wealthy owners took Africans to work in their homes too.

Figures range from 5-8 million Africans taken from Africa with many dying on the middle passage. When one considers enslaved African offspring, it’s not difficult to calculate a workforce of some 20 million people toiling the land over a 300 year period. Sadly Brazil, like most of the modern world ignores the deafening cry for reparations and the debt to descendents. Equally too is the legacy of slavery that leaves most Black Brazilians impoverished the same that is does in the USA, and beyond.

In fact it’s worse in Brazil because for centuries there has been a collective denial about the nations slave history, and only in recent years have the authorities been forced to acknowledge the claim by Afro Brazilians.

Therefore, it was very welcome sight to see at Olympic Games opening ceremony that the nations darkest historic period was not ignored.

Creative director for the ceromony Fernando Meirelles chose to acknowledge the past by dramatically illustrating the middle passage , and the slave field with performers wearing shackles labouring in sugarcane plantations.

Having made the gesture to show the world a side of Brazil many didn’t even know existed, Black Brazilians will now be asking what next? Will it now start a real conversation about the debt owed and the continued legacy of racism, colourism and gross lack of opportunity, or will the nation revert to type, like the US and the UK and talk about slavery as something that happened in the past and that has no bearing on the present and future.

One thing for sure is that these games have galvanised Black activism in Brazil and across the Latin American continent as never before.

Simon Woolley