Wed 26 Apr 2023:
On Tuesday, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa suggested that his nation need to take more action than just offer an apology for its part in the transatlantic slave trade.
“Apologizing is sometimes the easiest thing to do: you apologize, turn your back, and the job’s done,” he said in parliament on the anniversary of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, which overthrew the country’s dictatorship.
He added that Portugal should “assume responsibility” for its past in order to build a better future.
His comments came after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s speech to the legislature, which was interrupted and jeered by the far right Chega party.
Former Portuguese colony Brazil was built on the labor of African and indigenous slaves. Of the 12 million enslaved Africans brought to the New World, approximately 5.5 million were forcibly taken to Brazil, according to Princeton University’s Brazil Lab.
However, politicians in Portugal rarely bring up the country’s slavery history.
Rebelo de Sousa became the first Portuguese leader in 2017, to visit Senegal, once at the center of Portugal’s slave trade.
During his visit, he sparked outrage in the academic community by claiming that Portugal abolished slavery in 1761 because “Portugal recognized human dignity.”
Following his visit, professors signed a letter denouncing his words as “an idealized” version of what actually occurred, arguing that it was a false narrative intended to make the Portuguese more comfortable with their past.
While Portugal often claims to be one of the first countries to abolish slavery, the abolition only applied to the homeland, and the slave trade was instead redirected to Brazil.
Brazil was the Western Hemisphere’s last country to abolish slavery, which did not come to an end until 1888.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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