Brazilian slave port ruins unearthed in Rio's Olympic facelift

Tom Phillips - 

It was one of the busiest slave ports in the Americas, a filthy, bustling harbour where hundreds of thousands of Africans were sold into a life of exploitation and abuse.

Famished, exhausted and with their heads half-shaved, the slaves were herded off ships, groomed in "fattening houses" and dispatched to sugar and coffee plantations across Brazil.

Now, nearly two centuries after Rio's notorious Valongo wharf began operating, local archaeologists believe they may have located the slave port's ruins during a multibillion-dollar, pre-Olympic renovation of the city's harbour. "As soon as the discovery was made I went there," said Washington Fajardo, Rio's secretary for cultural heritage. "It is a moving experience, seeing an existing city and then another city two metres below. You feel a bit like Indiana Jones."

The possible discovery of the Cais do Valongo, or Valongo wharf, was made during the regeneration of Rio's port area.

With the 2016 Olympics in mind, authorities are steaming ahead with a project known as Porto Maravilha or Marvellous Port, intended to transform Rio's dilapidated port into a vibrant tourist and business hub.

Tania Andrade Lima, an archaeologist from Rio's National Museum who has been leading the hunt for the Valongo, said 10 local archaeologists had been digging since February and now believed they had started unearthing "structures" connected to the notorious slave market.

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