The father of Helena Monteiro da Costa was transported to Brazil as a slave in the 1800s from Angola. The 99-year-old intends to participate in a first-of-its-kind trip next year that will travel back to her father’s native country in reverse.
Costa spoke at her house in Santos, a city on the Brazilian coast where her father wound up following the grueling journey over the Atlantic. She stated, “My father was enslaved and he obeyed … everything they (enslavers) told him to do he did.”
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Over 5 million Africans were brought to Brazil as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries, more than any other nation. The majority were taken from Angola, in West Africa, by Portuguese ships under cruel circumstances.
The Great Passage, or “A Grande Travessia,” organizers are looking to hire a cruise ship to leave Santos and make stops in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador before heading to Luanda, the capital of Angola.
63-year-old professor Dagoberto Jose Fonseca of Sao Paulo’s State University UNESP is the driving force behind the trip, which is scheduled for December 1–21, 2025.
“We want to resume the maritime routes of the past to build another future,” Fonseca stated.
Fonseca has been negotiating with cruise lines as well as Angolan and Brazilian officials who back the plan. To rent the cruise ship, financial assistance will be needed.
The effort is in line with the government’s “Rotas Negras,” or Black Routes, initiative, which encourages travel that honors Afro-Brazilian history and culture, according to Anielle Franco, Brazil’s minister of racial equality.
The organization plans to invite some 2,000 travelers, including leaders of Afro-Brazilian churches, students, scholars, businesspeople, and descendants of enslaved people.
Workshops, roundtables, networking events, and memorials for the more than 2.5 million people who perished in the arduous “Middle Passage” are among the scheduled activities on board.
One of the Black academics scheduled to take the voyage, Mary Francisca do Careno, stated that she thinks the trip would address some of her doubts over her lineage. “My expectation is to learn about my past,” Careno noted.
The trip will assist Angola in facing its history, according to Afonso Vita, an expert on slavery heritage tourism in Angola, who also accused former colonizer Portugal of attempting to sidestep the subject.
Vita remarked, “The country that colonized us, Portugal, never had any interest in seeing this history, which tarnishes its image, discussed publicly.”
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the president of Portugal, claimed earlier this year that his nation was accountable for atrocities during the colonial era and transatlantic slavery and that reparations were necessary. The Portuguese government, however, has refused to start any kind of reparations procedure.
The Portuguese government was asked to become part of the cruise project by both Vita and Fonseca.
A request for comment from Portugal’s economic ministry, which oversees tourism, was not immediately answered.
The cruise’s organizers regard it as a component of a larger effort to seek compensation for European colonialism and transatlantic slavery.
Support for reparations has been growing globally, despite the long-running and still very contentious argument over whether or not reparations should be made to right historical wrongs and their effects.
Brazil’s Franco stated, “A project such as this … invites us to reflect on reparations, as well as on the recognition and strengthening of the identity of Black people.”
