Lisbon street plaques tell story of Portugal's forgotten slave trade
Portugal has taken a rare step towards acknowledging its sombre role in the transatlantic slave trade by installing 20 street plaques – and a stone bust – in historical locations across the capital, Lisbon.
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Created by Batoto Yetu Portugal, an organisation that promotes African culture and heritage, the plaques recount the forgotten story of “African Lisbon” from the 15th to the 19th centuries.
During that time some six million Africans were kidnapped and transported in Portuguese ships across the Atlantic and sold into slavery, mostly to Brazil.
Portugal’s colonial history – which saw the subjugation of countries including Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, Cape Verde and East Timor – is regarded by many as a source of pride.
Its role as a slave-trading hub has long been overshadowed by the nation’s rich cultural and maritime achievements – with little taught on the subject in Portuguese schools.
The plaques, which were made with the backing of Lisbon’s city hall, are helping to set the record straight.
Four-year delay
Four years after their construction, they were finally unveiled on Saturday during an event in the central Largo de São Domingos – St Dominic's Square – an historically important focal point for the Afro-Portuguese community.
Here, a 180cm bust was erected in memory of prominent black rights defender Pai Paulino, who lived in the neighbourhood.
A freed slave who was blind in one eye, Paulino arrived in Lisbon from Brazil in 1832 and spent the next decades promoting social justice and working to improve living conditions for African communities.
“He was a social activist who helped many black people at the time,” Mozambican sculptor Frank Ntaluma, who created the piece, told RFI.
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“Today the area is still full of Africans. It's incredible. So we decided to honour him as well as many others through these plaques that have been put up all over Lisbon.”
Theirs are stories of an erased population that need to finally be told, Ntaluma said. “All of the people commemorated in these plaques lived in Lisbon and died in Lisbon. Most were in mass graves.”
Paulino’s tomb can be found in the city’s Alto de São João cemetery – the only place where black people were allowed to be buried at the time.
Authorities in Lisbon are also working on the city’s first memorial to victims of slavery. The project was approved in 2017, but construction has since been delayed.
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