From its discovery in 1500, Brazil has been a hub for human trafficking in South

America. From about 1600 to 1850, some 4.5 million enslaved Africans were
taken to Brazil; this is ten times as many as were trafficked to North America and
far more than the total number of Africans who were transported to all of the
Caribbean and North America combined.
1

In 1550, Brazil became a major importer of African slaves, making slaves an estimated
38.3 percent of the population of Rio de Janeiro, its capital city. 2 This pattern
continued as nearly four million slaves were imported into Brazil during its colonial
era. In a 2010 Brazil census, it was found that 97 million Brazilians, or 50.7% of the
population, now define themselves as black or mixed racemaking African-Brazilians
the official majority for the first time. 3

ABOLITION
The enormity of the slave trades foothold in Brazil was so far-reaching, that the
nation largely failed to develop an effective anti-slavery movement, even while many
other nations around the world were making revolutionary reforms. Throughout the
1700s and early 1800s, slavery was being weeded out in the British Empire, North
America, and France. Brazil, however, still had nearly one and a half million slaves with
the number of slave imports only accelerating at 5.7%. 4
It wasnt until the late 1800s that reformist activities began to foment at institutions of
higher learning. Young lawyers, students, and journalists started to urge their fellow

Brazilians to follow the example of the liberation of the slaves in North America. In 1873
Joaquim Nabuco began his fight against slavery in Brazil inspiring the formation of the
Brazilian Anti-Slavery Society. He declared that there is no freedom nor independence
in a land with one million, five hundred thousand slaves! 5 The struggle for total abolition
kept moving forward under his leadership, and finally on May 13, 1888, the imperial
family passed Lei Aurea, the Golden Law, making Brazil the last nation in the
Western Hemisphere to formally abolish slavery. 6

THE AFTERMATH
Even after the slave trade was abolished, years of exploitation continued to have
profound effects on Brazilian society, including deep social divides and the widespread
expansion of prostitution. Ever since the late 19th century, prostitution has been part of
the cultural landscape in the early period of Brazils modernization and urbanization, as
slave or ex slave women turned to offering sexual services for survival. 7 Such longstanding slavery in Brazil created a vast lower class and extreme inequalities. According
to the CIA World FactBook, 21.4% of Brazils 196.6 million inhabitants live below the
poverty line.8