{"id":710,"date":"2021-04-07T17:43:07","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T20:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.professores.uff.br\/juliocesarmedeiros\/?p=710"},"modified":"2021-04-21T10:14:50","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T13:14:50","slug":"the-new-black-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.professores.uff.br\/juliocesarmedeiros\/2021\/04\/07\/the-new-black-cemetery\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Black Cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Foto do po\u00e7o de sondagem da pesquisa arqueol\u00f3gica no Cemit\u00e9rio dos Pretos Novos <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Many years ago,\nin the African continent, millions of Africans were brought to other countries\nwithin the condition of slavery, from which came the origin of the African\nDiaspora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 10\nmillion of the African slaves were brought to the Americas. Of these 10\nmillion, 6 million were brought to Brazil to labor in sugarcane fields, in the\nmines and on coffee plantations. Of the Africans who were brought approximately\n60% were sent to the Southeast region. Many of these Africans were from the\nlinguistic and cultural group known as the Bantu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon disembarking from the slaveship in Valongo, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the enslaved were inspected at the Customs, counted and landed in the direction of the slave markets in Valongo. Those who arrived dead, or died in the sale stalls, were taken to the  Black New Cemetery (Cemit\u00e9rio dos Pretos Novos).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the Cemetery\nof the New Blacks, the bodies of the enslaved newcomers were never buried. They\nwere left to the ground until they were burned and dismantled so that more\nbodies could fit. This deal shows that for Brazilian society at the time,\nslaves were “nothing” but bodies to be discarded in order to rot and\nsmell, nonetheless for the African culture to which they belonged, being buried\nin the cemetery of the New Blacks meant a cut in their ancestral lineage that\nwould prevent them from being resurrected in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several travelers, among them Freireyss, scandalously described the Cemetery of the New Black and how those slaves were buried because there was no indication that the enslaved were decently buried.  It is estimated that from 1769 to 1830, the date of its extinction, about 60 thousand enslaved people were buried there, despite the space of a small block of 50 fathoms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Imagem de funeral africano no Brasil<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

During\n1824 to 1830, the Cemetery of the New Black buried around 6.000 bodies in such small area. In the Livro\nde \u00d3bitos da Freguesia de Santa Rita<\/em> there are death recording which may be\nfound a list of respective ships, ethnics and ports of origin, age, and the\nmarks of slave masters on their bodies. In 1830 the cemetery was closed because\nof the anti-slave trade law and its location was lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But,\nin January of 1996, a house located at 36 Pedro Ernesto Street, in Gamboa was surprised by a great discovery. During the works, the bones of the\nenslaved were found. the cemetery had been rediscovered. Since then, the family\nof Mr. Petrucio and Mercedes, owners of the property, along with several\nvolunteer researchers have been striving to keep the memory of Africans buried\nthere alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, the team of archaeologists discovered the first complete bone there, a young, African, enslaved woman who was named Bakhita in honor of the Catholic saint who fought slavery in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vis\u00e3o frontal da escava\u00e7\u00e3o que mostra Bakhita<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In conclusion, the cemetery of the new blacks was and still is the indisputable proof of slavery and the way in which human beings treated people they believed to be inferior due to their condition of enslavement uprooted from the African continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PEREIRA, Julio C\u00e9sar M da S. \u00c0 Flor da Terra: O Cemit\u00e9rio dos Pretos Novos Garamond, 2014. 2\u00aa Edi\u00e7\u00e3o. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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