Why is it so difficult to tear down statues of enslavers?

By Bianca Muniz, from Agência Pública - Anyone passing through the square located at the intersection of Catete and Conde de Baependi streets, in the Flamengo neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, will encounter a large statue in the center: a bronze sculpture of José de Alencar, seated in an imposing chair. At the base of the monument, there are scenes from some of the writer's most famous works, such as the guarani e Iracema However, there is no mention of José de Alencar's other side, that of an influential politician of the Empire, a member of the Conservative Party, and a defender of slavery in Brazil.

Letters written by Alencar, under the pseudonym Erasmo, addressed to Emperor Dom Pedro II, revealed the writer's opinions on the slave system, which, according to him, was necessary for the advancement of "humanity's march." Eight kilometers away, there is another monument to a slave owner. Francisco José da Rocha Leão, the first Baron of Itamarati, is honored with a bronze bust in Santos Dumont Square, in Gávea. Like Alencar, nothing is written about his pro-slavery stance.

Public tributes like these, to people who enslaved or defended the slave system, eugenicists, or genocidal figures, have been increasingly questioned by civil society. In Rio de Janeiro alone, among the approximately 1.350 existing monuments, there are 349 tributes to personalities, many of them slave owners. According to the Municipal Secretariat of Conservation, 210 are busts, 97 statues, 14 sculptures, and 28 effigies. Among them are statues such as the bust of Father Antônio Vieira, a Portuguese Jesuit who justified African slavery in his sermons through faith. Below the bust, a plaque reads "Defender of Indians, slaves, and Jews." Another known slave owner is the Duke of Caxias, patron of the Brazilian Army. There is a monument on Avenida Presidente Vargas, in front of the Duque de Caxias Palace, built to house his remains. The military officer owned a coffee farm that employed enslaved labor.

For historian and professor at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), Júlio César Medeiros da Silva Pereira, the permanence of these monuments is not only a symbolic issue, but also a pedagogical one. According to Medeiros, the monuments are erected as a way to perpetuate an official memory, which is usually that of the victors. Street names, squares, hospitals, and schools carry this narrative, reinforcing a vision of history that excludes and marginalizes other perspectives. “New generations will sell and learn history through these monuments,” he says. “We know that history wasn't like that; there was great violence behind what is told, with the decimation of indigenous peoples.”

Maria Clara Cunha, the museum curator at the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro, explains that a monument is an exaltation, therefore a reinforcement of a set of values ​​and ideals of a people or a population. "When it no longer represents the vast majority of a group, it no longer makes sense to keep it there in the same way."

But tearing down these monuments or preventing new tributes to slave owners from being erected is an issue that faces political resistance in Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, a law (8.205/2023), authored by then-councilman and current congressman Chico Alencar and councilwoman Monica Benicio, both from PSOL-RJ, aimed to prohibit tributes to human rights violators and stipulated that monuments and memorials be transferred to spaces such as museums – indoors or outdoors – accompanied by information contextualizing their actions, including personalities in Brazilian history and their names linked to slavery. However, the law was revoked shortly after its enactment, in early 2025, by Mayor Eduardo Paes (PSD).

The repeal of the law was advocated by far-right councilors such as Carlos Bolsonaro (PL), Dr. Rogério Amorim (PL), Pedro Duarte (Novo), and Dr. [Name missing]. The justification presented for the annulment was the preservation of cultural heritage as it was conceived, without "historical revisionism."

Caiado, who presides over the Rio de Janeiro City Council, is a cousin of the governor of Goiás, Ronaldo Caiado (União Brasil). According to research by Agência Pública, he is also a descendant of Lieutenant Colonel Antônio José Caiado, an "abolitionist and pro-slavery figure."

Councilman Pedro Duarte, in a column for the newspaper. O Dia He said the proposal could be dangerous for the country's history, as it "allows some to choose on behalf of all." "Is it right to judge the lives, writings, and decisions of those who came before us without allowing future generations to form their own judgments?" he questioned.

The authors of the project share the argument that historical erasure is a "distortion used to avoid debates about memory and historical artifacts in Brazil." "The law is not a witch hunt. We regularly investigate the artist who made the statues, their motivations, the era. We established that the definition of removing any slave owner, or genocidal figure, notorious bigot, eugenicist, racist, had to be proven by a historical and artistic heritage commission. It wasn't, therefore, the exclusive arbitration of the mayor or the secretary, for example," explains Alencar.

The report involved the city councilors who signed the repeal of the law. Only Rogério Amorim responded to the questions, through his press office. The councilor considers "this type of law absurd," says that the examination of historical figures is not rigorous enough and is enviable, and that "whoever thinks that erasing history is resisting racism definitely does not know history." "It is necessary to understand the context of the time. The left supported all attempts to vandalize the statue of Borba Gato or even the attacks on the memory of Fernão Dias Paes Leme, and yet they were two important historical figures for Brazil and for São Paulo," the text says. "She needs to learn to distinguish between controversial and deplorable figures. For example, Zumbi is a controversial figure, dedicated to fighting slavery and owning slaves. Former minister Silvio Almeida, on the other hand, is a deplorable figure; he spent his life persecuting people and calling them racists, only to then play the victim, as he did this weekend, despite all the accusations of moral and sexual harassment. But the left doesn't talk about him."

Museum curator Maria Clara Cunha believes there is confusion between the meanings of "reinterpreting a tribute" and "erasing a tribute." "People think that by removing a statue from one place and putting it in another, they will erase the memory. And that's not the point, which would be to say exactly who that person was and what they represented in that society, in that context," she analyzes.

Against the grain of history

The political movement that culminated in the repeal of the Rio de Janeiro law demonstrates a resistance to confronting structural racism in Brazil, according to councilwoman Monica Benício. She considered the decision a disrespect to the democratic process and criticized the lack of public dialogue on the subject, "done hastily at the very end of the legislative year."

"The initiative to repeal the law came from the same political forces that tried to deny the structural racism and violence against the poor in Brazil. They call the military dictatorship a 'revolution' and defend the attempt of January 8th, always seeking to disqualify any policy of restitution for fear of their privileges being affected. In general, the city councilors tend to be open to republican dialogue, but what they did in this case made it clear that this issue is not welcome in the house that should belong to the people," said Benício.

According to Chico Alencar, who is a historian by training, the law had an educational role. “Every city must also be understood pedagogically by those who live in it or frequent it. Hence [the origin of] our bill, which became law and has now been absurdly revoked. History is not a field of certainties, of exactitudes. It is a space of culture and memory to be revisited always and, therefore, revised,” he states.

The challenges to advancing laws that prohibit tributes to enslavers in Brazil go against the global movement to address the harm caused by slavery and to question the figures who are historically celebrated. In the United States and Europe, statues of Confederate leaders and colonizers have been the target of protests and removals, which gained momentum starting in 2020, such as the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in the state of Minnesota, which resulted in protests against racism in the US. In Brazil, the statue of the bandeirante Borba Gato, in São Paulo, was set on fire in July 2021 by protesters who criticized the celebration of a figure associated with the enslavement of indigenous people.

"There is a global debate about the need to reverse all these processes. And, meanwhile, the city of Rio insists on closing its eyes to the possibility of following the much-needed debate about its own history," Benício assesses.

National issue

Other laws and projects have already been presented to address the removal, reinterpretation, or relocation of monuments linked to slavery and eugenics figures in Brazil. At the federal level, Bill No. 5.923/2019, authored by Representative Talíria Petrone (PSOL-RJ), proposes the granting of concessions for monuments honoring historical figures linked to slavery. However, the law has not progressed and is still awaiting a report from the Culture Committee.

Similar proposals have been put forward at the municipal and state levels. One example is the city of Olinda (PE), where Law No. 6.193/2021 was enacted, the first municipal legislation in the country with this objective. Authored by then-councilman Vinicius Castello (PT), the law included at least 13 streets, monuments, and municipal structures subject to renaming for honoring slave owners and defenders of the dictatorship.

In Itapira (SP), Law No. 6.373/2024 was enacted as part of the city hall's adherence to the Collective Pact for Anti-Racist Cities, an initiative of the Public Prosecutor's Office of São Paulo to encourage municipal actions to combat racism. Meanwhile, in Guarujá (SP), on the coast of São Paulo state, Law No. 5.243/2024 also establishes a prohibition on tributes to slave owners, including the removal of monuments and the renaming of public roads.

At the state level, a similar proposal was presented in the Legislative Assembly of the State of Bahia (Alba) by Deputy Marcelino Gallo (PT), but it was shelved in 2023 without a report. In 2024, the same proponent will return with a new bill with the same objective, which is currently in the Constitution and Justice Committee. Through his press office, the deputy responded to Pública that, to date, no request for annulment has been submitted.

Prior to that, in São Paulo, former congresswoman Erika Malunguinho (PSOL) decreed the granting of honors to slave owners, reinforced by the specialized Housing and Urban Planning and Defense of Diversity and Racial Equality units of the Public Defender's Office of the State of São Paulo, and by civil society organizations and research groups. The bill, after receiving an unfavorable opinion from rapporteur Gilmaci Santos (Republicanos) and being distributed without a vote to other parliamentarians, was also shelved in 2023.

Civil society and universities are also carrying out projects to give new meaning to tributes. Examples of such initiatives can be seen online, such as Salvador Escravista (a mapping of controversial public tributes installed in the capital of Bahia, a city that was the second largest port of arrival for Africans during the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries) and the Gallery of Racists (a project published online in 2020, led by the Teresa de Benguela Collective of Black Historians, the Notícia Preta website, and a collective of Black advertising professionals, which became a book in 2023).

Earlier this year, the Federal Public Defender's Office, through its Working Group on Ethno-Racial Policies, was called upon to contribute to a class action lawsuit in São Luís, the capital of Maranhão, which culminated in a technical note recommending the removal of tributes to individuals associated with slavery, racism, and eugenics. The document arose from a demonstration honoring the psychiatrist Raimundo Nina Rodrigues (1862-1906), whose name graces a state-run public hospital located in the municipality.