Brazil’s national bar association, the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil, is calling on the nation’s federal government to present a formal apology for African slavery. Just last year, the OAB created a “National Commission for Truth About Black Slavery in Brazil” consisting of lawyers, academics, activists and consultants.
Earlier this month, the Commission announced the first part of its findings and issued a call for a formal apology to be made for African slavery in the form of a presidential decree so that the importance of the apology will be recognized throughout the country.
In a 316-page report, the Commission details the history of African enslavement in the South American nation, looking at what life was like for enslaved Blacks while living under laws and within societies created by the empire of Brazil, the kingdom of Portugal and the Catholic Church. Each of these governing entities employed criminal practices against innocent Blacks, the report, states: the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity.
These crimes could not have occurred if Brazil, Portugal and the Catholic Church had not collaborated, each playing a crucial role in a criminal network, the Commission’s rapporteur, Wilson Prudente, explains in this first part of an official report, which is expected to take at least another year to complete. The crimes committed included kidnapping, “tearing African people from their families and communities never to be returned,” abduction and the kidnappers forcing their victims to work in agriculture while awaiting the ships that would transport the victims off to slavery.
In the mid-1450s, the Catholic Church’s Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal a monopoly on specifically enslaving sub-Saharan Africans through a papal bull. The Church of Rome justified this act by claiming that although their bodies were enslaved, the Church was saving their souls by mandating that each victim of the slave trade be baptized into Christianity. In Brazil, Blacks were forced to work on sugar plantations and in gold mines. The Commission’s rapporteur said that the ultimate crime of murder was integral to every phase of the crime of slavery; murder was the end result that would come from trafficking in persons, slavery, torture, rape and sexual abuse.
One of the central missions of the report is to debunk the popular myth that has been promoted internationally that African slavery in Brazil was somehow milder, utilized less enforced labor and was of a more cordial nature than was found in places such as the United States and other nations founded upon slavery. The report ends with the conclusion that Brazil should not celebrate May 13, 1888, as the day slavery ended in the nation, even though that is the day when the “Lei Aurea” (“Golden Law”) abolishing slavery was enacted. The Commission’s report concludes that slavery did not truly end until the Nov. 22, 1910 “Revolta da Chibata (The Whip Rebellion),” when first class seaman Joao Candido Felisberto and other Black sailors rebelled against the corporal punishment and brutal living conditions they suffered under with the Brazilian Navy. Even after formal slavery ended though, the myth of Brazil as a “racial democracy” became a smokescreen that has for decades held Brazil back from advancing as a nation, the report states.
Wilson Prudente, the Commission’s rapporteur, said that if the Brazilian government does not formally apologize for enslaving Africans, it would convey the idea that it has no problems with the racism, poverty and lower life indices Afro-Brazilians suffer today, which are direct results of Black enslavement. On top of an official apology, Brazil should also look into granting reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans, the report states. The Commission is also hoping that the Vatican and Pope Francis will commit to making a statement about the crimes the Catholic Church participated in. Doing so will give the liberal-leaning Pope Francis an opportunity to redeem the Church of Rome and its complicit silence.
The Commission for Truth About Black Slavery in Brazil was created in 2014. The Commission’s 57 members are tasked with researching and re-telling the history of Afro Brazilians, so that when public policies and affirmative action laws are put in place for Brazil’s Blacks, the general public will understand their need and rationale.
The OAB’s Commission for Truth About Black Slavery in Brazil is modeled after the country’s National Truth Commission, which took two years and seven months to look into government documents and detail human rights violations that took place before and after the dictatorship that ruled Brazil, from 1946 through 1988. In December 2014, Brazil’s National Truth Commission released a 2,000-page report that documented 191 extra judiciary killings and 210 disappearances; only a very few of the victims noted in the National Truth Commission’s report received financial reparations for crimes committed by the government.