Brazil's only slave memoir to be published in Portuguese for first time

[a la izquierda]

Waking after a night’s heavy drinking at the court of a strange king, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua found his companions gone and his hands tied.

It was the start of a nightmarish journey that saw the low-ranking Muslim civil servant from west Africa sold into slavery and shipped to Brazil in the middle of the 19th century.

Years later, a free man living in Canada, he recounted the horrors of his experiences in a dictated memoir – the only autobiographical account of an African-born slave in Brazil.

“I imagine there can be but one place more horrible in all creation than the hold of a slave ship, and that place is where slaveholders and their myrmidons are the most likely to find themselves some day,” he wrote.

MORE AT LINK
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/17/brazils-only-slave-memoir-published-portuguese-mahommah-gardo-baquaqua

[Judi Lynn]

1. So good to learn this is going to be read, and known. Hope Baquaqua did finally make his way home.

It was wonderful Canada was there as a haven after the Underground Railway found a way to help him escape and go North.

How rare this really is! Don't you wish there were chances more people in his position could have found someone to help get their stories committed to paper?

From the Guardian article posted above:

A law passed in 2003 mandated the teaching of black Brazilian history in schools, but until now there has been a severe lack of engaging teaching materials.

Funded by Brazil’s ministry of culture and the Canadian government, Project Baquaqua is the initiative of Bruno Verás, a doctoral candidate at York University, Canada, and a former history teacher from the north-eastern state of Pernambuco.

“When I taught in high school, whenever we taught slavery we would just have a few small, indistinct images of black people working on a sugar plantation,” he said. “The point of this project is that you can see the real people affected by slavery.”

Brazilian television slowly confronts country's deeply entrenched race issues

More than 4 million Africans, or some 40% of all the slaves that crossed the Atlantic, landed in Brazil. Yet despite the African population’s profound impact on the country, the teaching of Afro-Brazilian history still encounters serious resistance.

“I think it’s shameful that slavery has not been examined very deeply in Brazil,” Verás said. “It’s a past that those in power want to forget. But this legacy for a part of the population that is still marginalised should not be forgotten.”

It's time to rip the whitewash off this vile crime against humanity, and let the light in.

I hope this story will be translated into English soon.

Time the racists among us started HAVING to face the truth. They can't ####ing hide forever.