Black imaginations in Black geography
Instituto GUETTO and Harvard University Graduate School of Design in a new Rio de Janeiro partnership
Soon, suggested the posts from Instituto GUETTO (acronym for Urban Management for Entrepreneurship, Work and Organized Technology) and Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) with their invitation to imagine: an African library, a botanical pharmacy, an architecture school, a Black Museum of Tomorrow!
The invitation was to meet January 13 at the Casa do Nando to be part of a Roda de Criação: Imaginando o Nosso Futuro Preto na Pequena África (Creativity Circle to Imagine Our Black Future in Little Africa).
The idea came from Instituto GUETTO and the Harvard University GSD Pequena África Initiative, HUPAI, created by Brazilian student Beatriz Sousa Borges and Sara Zewde, together with a small team. A Harvard GSD graduate, now a professor there, Zewde is principal architect at her Harlem NY design studio specializing in public spaces.
Last century, Heitor dos Prazeres dubbed part of Rio’s port area “miniature Africa”. The renowned painter and musician was registering what was truly a seedbed for Afro-Brazilian life and history. While residents and clued-in visitors created and enjoyed local culture, few outsiders knew of the Pedra do Sal samba gatherings, the byways and views from Providência and Conceição hills, Gomes’ creamy angu bowls topped with innards, the emperor Dom Pedro II’s Docks (built by Black engineer and abolitionist André Rebouças) the New Blacks Cemetery archeological site, or the places where enslaved Africans were fattened up and sold.
The Valongo Wharf, where almost a million enslaved Africans first stepped onto Brazilian territory, lay under streets and sidewalks. An imposing column marked the area merely as where a white princess once stepped off a ship.
This began to change in the 2010s. With the Olympic Games set in Rio for 2016, Rio de Janeiro’s City Hall decided to upgrade the region, calling it “Porto Maravilha” or Marvelous Port.
The wharf was unearthed and thousands of artifacts came to light as excavations commenced in 2011, to this day kept in shipping containers. As workers laid track for a new tram system, the bones of enslaved Africans appeared in front of the Santa Rita baroque church. The Museums of Tomorrow and of Rio de Janeiro Art (MAR), plus the Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture and History (MUHCAB)opened their doors.
Today, visitors are hard put to choose among the culinary delights and the music of Pedra do Sal, Praça da Harmonia and Largo da Prainha de São Francisco. Guides specialize in tours of the area we now call Pequena África, or Little Africa. Tourists visit Providência, Brazil’s first favela, birthplace of writer Machado de Assis; they soak up the Portuguese feel of Conceição Hill. The Instituto de Pesquisa e Memoria Pretos Novos (Institute for Research and Memory of the New Blacks) offers a gamut of activities, resources and classes. What was decadent and forgotten has become an attraction. With gentrification: higher rents, retrofit apartments and new buildings.
So the time has come for Black people in Rio de Janeiro to imagine Little Africa for themselves. The event was open to the public, with invitations posted on social media. But there was not much evidence of local residents at Casa do Nando on January 13. “For the next round, we’ll extend more personal invitations within Little Africa to attract residents, which is very important for us,” says Vitor Del Rey, president of Instituto GUETTO.
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In this video, applause for something never seen in Rio de Janeiro
Five tables with color markers, maps, post-its and black paper awaited participants at the Casa do Nando. An architect or a landscape designer helped each group. “This is how I do it in the United States, too,” said Sara Zewde, who led the event in tandem with Vitor Del Rey that rainy afternoon. Imagination sessions vary widely, Zewde noted.
Each group worked on one or two locations in the region; participants drew from life and work experiences, their concerns and interests. Mental health, environment, education and the lack of shade came up in conversation. After an hour of exchanges and note-taking, the groups presented their proposals, which were then hung on a big wall.
The ideas — a Black university in the Emperor’s Docks, community gardening, a hospital, baobab trees, a Black shop, an African literature library, a sacred portal and many others — will be presented to City Hall, with additional conversations expected to begin in April. Community participation is essential as counterpoint to gentrification, says Vitor Del Rey. Street interactions among residents and visitors create vitality, he added, citing the US urbanist Jane Jacobs.
Soon indeed, Oxalá, Little Africa will thrum with even more life!
