Race and the Olympic Games - The New York Times

"The opening ceremony included an acknowledgment of slavery (as captured in the photo above). How would you interpret what was going on there?



A. I thought it was really significant that the slave trade was not just mentioned but portrayed in movement and dance in the way that it was. It’s not quite a taboo subject, but it’s something that is still not widely discussed or widely studied in Brazil, which received far more slaves than any other place in the Americas — more than 10 times the amount of slaves that went into North America.



Rio was the epicenter of this trade, and even within Brazil there is a misconception about how it functioned; many people here still think Salvador in the northeast received far more slaves when that just wasn’t the case.



Rio was the economic heart of Brazil at that time and then it was the seat of the empire. It was this linchpin of just a really brutal period in the country’s history. So I think it’s contributing to greater awareness and more discussion about the origins of the country.



Somewhat symbolically, the first gold medal winner for Brazil, Rafaela Silva, was also this incredibly gifted competitor in judo and she grew up very poor — she’s Afro-Brazilian, and she grew up very poor in Cidade de Deus, the City of God, the huge favela where Fernando Meirelles, the director of the opening ceremony, made his film of the same name. And her victory really resonated with a lot of people in Brazil, including in the favela where she was raised."



Race and the Olympic Games - The New York Times