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Story Publication logo November 19, 2024

Enslavers Project: 33 Brazil Authorities Have Ancestors Linked to Slavery

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The connection of the slave trade, Brazilian elites, and political power

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Image by Catarina Bessel/Agência Pública.

A groundbreaking investigation by Agência Pública reveals records of current politicians' relatives connected to enslaved people.

Para ler este relatório em português, clique aqui.


Former Brazilian presidents, senators, and state governors: A shared history linked to enslaved people. Key positions in Brazilian politics have been, and continue to be, held by individuals descended from men and women connected to the enslavement of people in the country.

This is the main conclusion of the Escravizadores Project (Slavers Project), a groundbreaking investigation by Agência Pública, with the support of the Pulitzer Center. The project mapped the ancestors of over 100 Brazilian authorities across the Executive and Legislative branches to determine whether they were associated with the use of enslaved labor.

The investigation found that, out of 116 individuals analyzed, at least 33 have ancestors connected to the enslavement of people.

To see who these 33 people are, click here.


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Among the eight presidents of Brazil since the end of the 1964 dictatorship, half are included in this list: José Sarney, Fernando Collor, Itamar Franco, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Among the 81 senators, 16—approximately one-fifth—fall into this category, including leftist Cid Ferreira Gomes, from Ceará; Ciro Nogueira, a senator from Piaui who was President Jair Bolsonaro's chief of staff; Jader Barbalho, a powerful senator from Pará who has been twice minister; Marcos Pontes, who was a minister of Science and Technology during the Bolsonaro era; and former Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina.

Of the 27 state governors, nearly half—13—were also included in the research. They include the governors of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Alagoas, and Goias. However, many of the politicians did not even know their ancestors or have a close relationship with their lineage.  

Enslaved Individuals in Plantations, Homes, and Commerce

The connections between the ancestors of Brazilian authorities and slavery take many forms. For example, the great-great-grandfather of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Colonel José Manoel da Silva e Oliveira, was born around 1771 in Minas Gerais. A prominent figure in the gold exploration of the former captaincies of Minas and Goiás, he reportedly utilized enslaved individuals in one of these expeditions. Tragically, some of these individuals died along the way due to disease.

The investigation uncovered numerous cases of ancestors of current politicians who allegedly used enslaved labor on farms, particularly for planting and harvesting sugarcane, producing cotton, and cultivating tobacco in the Recôncavo Baiano.

There were also cases of enslaved individuals living in the homes of their enslavers, where they cared for the elderly, as mentioned in wills, or traveled with their enslavers as attendants. The research found records of the buying, selling, and even leasing of enslaved individuals.

“It wasn’t just large landowners who had enslaved people, but also merchants and individuals with small properties who often used them for planting crops meant only for personal consumption or, at most, for local sale—not necessarily for export. These people would have one or two enslaved individuals working for them,” explains historian and social educator Joana Rezende.

“Many people had enslaved individuals whom they, for instance, rented out to others or to other properties [...] There were various ways, so to speak, of using an enslaved person—not just for planting or working in the fields,” she adds.

How the Investigation Was Conducted

To reach these conclusions, Agência Pública developed an investigative methodology in collaboration with genealogy researchers from the Núcleo de Estudos Paranaenses at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), coordinated by sociologist and professor Ricardo Oliveira. According to the researcher, these power and kinship structures represent a genealogical phenomenon, where "inheritances, income, wealth, and education are passed down, and these factors are crucial to understanding the status quo."

He points out that wealthy families in the 21st century are, for the most part, composed of the same family groups that were wealthy in the 20th century—a structure formed through marriages and alliances during the imperial and colonial periods. "This creates a core of social continuity for the dominant class," he concludes.

When investigating the era of slavery and the traditional ruling class, the researcher notes that the presence of individuals with ancestors who allegedly were enslavers in positions of power today is linked to an agrarian structure, rooted in large enslaver estates established through the distribution of the first sesmarias (land grants). To investigate these relationships, genealogy relies on Republican-era documents like civil, marriage, birth, and death records. Prior to that, in the 19th century, the Catholic Church controlled demographic records, such as baptisms and marriages, among others.

From this foundation, we analyzed approximately 500 documents, including parish and notary records, old newspapers in archives and public collections, as well as academic research from various Brazilian universities. In total, over 200 family connections were documented.

All 33 politicians whose ancestors were found to have ties to slavery were contacted by Agência Pública and given time to review the genealogical research, accompanying documents, and respond to the report.

You can read the full methodology here.

It is important to note that other politicians not included in the group of 33 may also have had relatives connected to slavery. The lack of documentation and the difficulty in accessing historical records prevent a comprehensive identification of all slavery-related ties in the genealogies of public officials.

This investigation was inspired by similar initiatives conducted in the United States by Reuters, which revealed that more than 110 members of the American political elite are descendants of enslavers, and in the United Kingdom by The Guardian, whose board funded research into the connections between the newspaper’s founder and financiers with the transatlantic slave trade.

Brazil's Debt to Slavery

Slavery was a cornerstone of Brazil's colonization, underpinning the country's early economic activities and generating immense wealth for the Portuguese and, later, for the Brazilian-born enslavers. As Danilo Marques, a historian with a doctorate and a professor at the Federal University of Alagoas (Ufal), points out, records of the enslaved person trade exist from the very first century of Brazil's colonization, alongside stories of resistance by those enslaved.

“We have the first slave ships dating back to the 1550s, coinciding with the establishment of sugar mills in the northeast, which became the final destination for these enslaved African men and women. Consequently, the first mentions of quilombos [communities of escaped enslaved people] appear around 1570 in Bahia, and there is a recorded slave revolt in Porto Calvo [Alagoas] around 1590, which likely marked the beginning of the Palmares quilombo,” Marques explains.

Dr. Alain El Youssef, a historian and professor at the University of São Paulo, emphasizes that slavery was not a practice invented during the imperial colonization of the Americas. However, it was in the Americas where slavery took on the contours of a commercial enterprise, becoming both the economic backbone of colonial production and a direct source of profit for those involved in the slave trade.

“There was, for example, slavery in Africa, as there was in many other continents and societies. The difference is that this slavery was not commercial, as we are used to seeing in Brazil’s colonization process and later in the 19th century, even after Brazil became an independent country. In African societies, people were not enslaved for sale. Instead, slavery was often a remnant or result of conflicts between two or more communities,” he explains.

Dr. Valéria Gomes Costa, a historian and professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco, argues that slavery—and the way it was abolished without compensations or rights for the enslaved—has left a lasting debt to the descendants of those deprived of freedom. “The Republican state has an immense, unpayable debt to the Black population. It promised but did not deliver citizenship, decent housing, education, or health care,” she states.

Reparation initiatives holding the Brazilian state and associated institutions accountable are already emerging. One recent example involves Banco do Brasil, whose historical role in financing the slave trade was uncovered by a group of researchers last year. This revelation led to the opening of a civil inquiry against the institution.

Historian Joana Rezende advocates for reparations to include the preservation, research, and dissemination of records documenting slavery in Brazil. These efforts, she argues, must also prompt reflection on how enslaved individuals were represented in historical documents.

"Much of the documentation we have from this period consists of institutional records—registries, legal proceedings, legislative files, and even newspapers. We’re talking about a time when enslaved individuals rarely had access to producing such documents or being represented as active subjects. Often, the perspective we have on the lives and experiences of the enslaved is filtered through a scribe, a politician, or some other representative who did not necessarily regard those individuals as people—because they were not seen as such," she observes.

The historian argues that this work of recovery and critical reflection on the era of slavery should be a public policy initiative of the Brazilian state. "It is the government’s responsibility—not only through national archives and the preservation of records but also through the promotion of research with dedicated funding lines aimed at recovering this memory," she states.

Contributors: Rafael Custódio, Matheus Santino

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