Commemorating slavery
Brazil reckons with the life and legacy of an abolitionist
A black lawyer and intellectual, Luiz Gama helped free around 500 slaves
Luiz Gama had a keen understanding of injustice from a young age. His mother told him she had been captured in west Africa and taken to Brazil in chains. Freed by the time Gama was born in 1830, she continued to participate in slave revolts—by some accounts she organised them—and disappeared when the boy was seven. Gama’s father was a Portuguese nobleman with a gambling habit. When his son was ten, he illegally sold him into slavery in order to pay off his debts.
Thanks to a law student who frequented his master’s house, Gama learned to read and write; the student also instilled in him an interest in the law and encouraged him to prove that his enslavement was unjust under Article 179 of the criminal code, which prohibited “enslaving a free person”. As an adult, Gama wrote a volume of satirical poems and attended Largo de São Francisco Law School as a listener (professors and fellow students objected to his formal enrolment on account of his race). Via the courts, Gama went on to free around 500 slaves. He led the debate on abolitionism in print, too, in Diabo Coxo, a journal he founded in 1864, as well as major newspapers. He died in 1882, of complications related to diabetes, before seeing his ultimate aim realised. Princess Isabel signed a law abolishing slavery in 1888.
Gama is the Brazilian Frederick Douglass, says Lígia Fonseca Ferreira, a professor at Federal University of São Paulo who has spent the last 20 years studying his legacy. Despite this, he is not treated as a giant of Brazilian history. It was only in 2003 that a law made it mandatory for Afro-Brazilian history and culture to be included in the school curriculum; for a long time history was taught in a way that overlooked the efforts of black activists such as Gama, José do Patrocínio and André Rebouças, and suggested the abolition of slavery was precipitated by Princess Isabel and white parliamentarians. The Museu Afro Brasil opened in São Paulo in 2004, but it covers a wide range of material. Universities do not routinely teach Gama’s story.
That is now changing, as Brazil reckons with its past, in particular its role in the slave trade. Last year a book of previously unpublished texts by Gama was released and sold out; his complete works, compiled into ten volumes, are now being published. A biographical film (see top) was released in August in cinemas and on Globoplay, one of the biggest streaming services in Brazil; it has been selected for the American Black Film Festival, the largest event of its kind in the world. Entitled “Doutor Gama”, the film tells Gama’s life story and follows him as he defends an enslaved man who killed his master. (The case is a fictionalisation of real ones Gama worked on.) Jeferson De, the director, thought Gama’s story so impressive that “someone must have already told it in the movies”—but no one had.
Some storytellers trying to draw attention to Gama’s efforts have made missteps. Last month a publisher withdrew a children’s book about his life; written by two white authors, “Abecê da Liberdade” (“ABC of Freedom”), which was first published in 2015, depicted a young Gama playing on a slave ship. Detractors on social media accused the authors of conveying an unrealistic and insensitive idea of slavery. The publishers have said the edition will not be printed again.
Many Brazilians see resonances between Gama’s civil-rights activism and the discussions about racism going on today. In “Doutor Gama” the actor playing the protagonist breaks the fourth wall while describing 19th-century Brazilian society and says: “You are committing these crimes and sleeping like little angels.” After the credits, a statement appears on-screen—“Vidas Negras Importam” (“Black Lives Matter”). As in many Western countries, anti-racism demonstrations have taken place in Brazil in the past year, particularly after a black man was murdered in a supermarket in November. Jair Bolsonaro, the president, has described such protests as “attempts to import racial tensions that are foreign to our history”.
Indeed, Gama’s legacy is contested. Brazil’s political right emphasises that Gama’s trajectory, from enslaved to intellectual, is an example of the success of meritocracy. Sérgio Camargo, an ally of Mr Bolsonaro’s and the president of Fundação Palmares, a foundation for the preservation of black culture, tweeted in May 2020 that the left “play victim” and therefore Gama is “the antithesis” of their arguments. Such debates steamroll nuance and complexity. “It will be difficult for any ideological hue to fully capture Gama’s ideas,” says Bruno Rodrigues de Lima, the historian who is editing his complete works.
At least artistic retellings of Gama’s life seem to be renewing interest in his intellectual contributions. The University of São Paulo—the same institution that refused to allow him to study formally more than 150 years ago—belatedly granted him its most prestigious honorary degree in June. The law school has named a room in his honour. Many scholars are going back to his original writings. As of this month, at the request of the Supreme Court, Mr Lima will teach a course for its judges on Gama’s life and works. It seems time, as Gama once said, to “wake up the people”. ■