Lost history Family stories fight erasure of black Brazil

Eliana Alves Cruz and Branca Vianna grew up at a similar time in neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro. But the two Brazilian women had very diff erent experiences of their family history.

Cruz, 57, was always surrounded by elderly relatives, yet struggled to get them to recount stories about the people who preceded them. By contrast, Vianna has links to her grandmother’s great-grandfather, who died in 1868. There was even a painting of him hanging in the family home where Vianna, now 61, spent her holidays as a child.

Cruz is black and, she has since discovered, descended from a west African woman who was traffi cked to Brazil in the early 19th century. Vianna is white and her great-greatgreat-grandfather was an enslaver who made a fortune in coff ee.

Their stories refl ect a common pattern among Brazilian families: while European ancestry tends to be remembered and celebrated, institutionalised silence around how the African diaspora shaped the country robs its descendants of their history. Many black Brazilians feel keenly the absence of this history, yet eff orts to recover it can be the work of a lifetime.

Said Cruz: “Everyone, one day, wonders about where they come from. And in Brazil, for the black population especially, it’s something of a thorny issue .”