Paper short abstract:

My presentation discusses the process slavery heritage making in the port region of Rio de Janeiro. The material presented shows how memorialisation interweaves with processes of urban regeneration and the present scenario of racial politics in Brazil.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation discusses the process of slavery heritage making in the port region of Rio de Janeiro, after the prolonged institutional forgetting of the city's slave past. Since 2011the city council of Rio has created a Circuit of African Heritage, whose pillar is the archaeological remains of old slave-trade docks, which came to surface in the same year during works on the local pipeline system. The material presented shows how memorialisation interweaves with processes of urban regeneration of Rio's waterfront in view of the 2016 Olympics and with the present scenario of racial politics in Brazil. In spite of its inclusive aims, I discuss that the making of slavery heritage in Rio also exposes old and new social imbalances. Some imbalances are revealed, for example, by the racialised power that certain actors (i.e. white governors and heritage expert) retain in the making of heritage policy in comparison to other (black social movements and favela residents). For the presentation I will also use excerpts of my brand-new documentary "Other Africas: unearthing Afro memories in Rio de Janeiro".