América Futura explores, through seven stories in three languages, the Afro-descendant communities of the continent to tell the story of about 25% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean: 150 million people who identify as Afro-descendant and who have shaped the countries of the region, but whose histories have traditionally been erased or reduced to stereotypes.
Much of the American continent’s Black history starts with the founding of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos, the first capital of Brazil.
Blood once flowed down the cobbled slopes of the Pelourinho neighborhood, where thousands of tourists now admire the beauty of what today is a designated World Heritage Site.
Its very name, which in English means “pillory,” is a legacy of that pain. Pelourinho was a place of punishment, where enslaved people who began arriving, kidnapped from Africa in the mid-15th century to work on sugar cane plantations, were subjected to torture.
Today, the heirs of that past are rewriting history via what is known as Afro-tourism.
Click here to read the complete, original article by Desirée Yépez on El País.
Source: El País
