Monument to Zumbi, by Lázaro Souza Duarte. Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Photograph by Ana Lucia Araujo, 2009.
Slavery has become a popular topic in newspaper articles, television documentaries, motion pictures, discussion forums, and academic conferences over the past decade. In the Americas, and even in Europe and Africa, slavery and especially the Atlantic slave trade have taken central stage in the public arena. Considering that slavery was legally abolished in the western hemisphere more than a century ago, how and why has the slave past of western societies become so central in present-day public debates? How have these debates and the initiatives memorialising slavery in the public space contributed to healing the wounds of the past?
Only with the end of the Second World War and the exposure of the horrors of the Holocaust did the wounds of the slave past started to become visible and receive official attention. Already by those times, discussions of slavery did not always refer to the past, but rather to the on-going conditions of exclusion faced by black populations in societies involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The collapse of colonial rule in Africa and the rise of the US civil rights movement further contributed to the fight against racism and racial inequalities led by the populations of African descent.
