Francisco José do Nascimento was a man of the sea.
A 19th century fisherman of indigenous and African descent, Nascimento was appalled by the slave trade in his home state of Ceará, Brazil. In his job as a jangadeiro, work that is intricately associated with poverty, Nascimento was required to carry enslaved Africans and other goods onto the ships that would eventually sell them elsewhere in the country. The disgust inspired him to organize a strike in the port of Fortaleza, one of the largest cities in Brazil, amongst his fellow fishermen and port workers in August 1881. The strike effectively ended the slave trade in Brazil, and symbolized a shift in the abolitionist movement where more common folk were beginning to push back against the institution.
Less than three years later, in March 1884, enslavement was abolished in Ceará—four years before the rest of the country. Nascimento was lauded as a national hero and his name was placed into Brazil’s Book of Steel, officially honoring him as such. He became one of the few Black faces of the country’s abolitionist movement to be remembered.
Nascimento became known as Dragão do Mar, which translates to the Sea Dragon, a nickname that evokes an air of mythology around him. But the location of his grave was lost until mid-July 2020 when Licínio Nunes de Miranda, a historian and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida, found it in the São João Batista cemetery in Fortaleza.
In an interview with Slate, Miranda discusses the importance of Nascimento’s legacy, the parallels between Brazil and the U.S., and why he searched through 15,000 tombs during the Brazillian summer.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You’ve said that the significance of the strike is that this was a revolt led by common people, so what was the general nature of the abolitionist movement in Brazil?
In Brazil, slavery came to an end because of popular mobilization—unlike the U.S. where there was a civil war. People were going through the streets, protesting. Newspapers attacked slavery. Politicians in the parliament attacked slavery. There were slave uprisings, and slaves fleeing the plantations. It even reached a moment where common people protesting against slavery, helped purchase the freedom of slaves. Then, in 1888, the government enacted a law that abolished slavery, but the state in which the Sea Dragon lived was able to abolish slavery in 1884. So what you’re talking about here is popular pressure that led to the government to act against slavery.
When people think about abolition in Brazil, you’re going to have these photos, you’re going to have these biographies of white people, white men, men of upper class. They were the ones that people remember. They were the ones that were praised by newspapers at the time, and the Sea Dragon, although he was celebrated, as you can see, the place in which he died and he was buried was forgotten. Not only did he at the time, but he still embodies the struggle of people of African descent against slavery.
It seems as though the abolitionist movement in Brazil made Nascimento one of the movement’s faces in order to broaden the appeal of ending enslavement. But José Napoleão, a freed Black man, led a strike at the Port of Fortaleza that January and he was not elevated to the same status. What does this say about who becomes the face of a movement and how does that translate across the diaspora?
Napoleão was the Sea Dragon’s predecessor in the leadership of the port strikes. He was a stalwart abolitionist and used his meager salary to help free other slaves. When the opportunity came, he volunteered to lead the first three port strikes. It was he who chose the Sea Dragon as his successor to lead the fourth and final strike in August 1881.
The Sea Dragon, at least, earned some praise at that time, although he was later forgotten. Napoleão, on the other hand, was sidelined and ignored. Those who wrote the history of abolition in Brazil were white and members of the upper class, who positioned themselves as the true heroes of the cause. Decades later, some of the surviving abolitionists showed regret for having pushed aside the Sea Dragon and Napoleão, but it was too little and far too late, since both men were long gone.
This purposeful attempt to ignore the achievements of people of color in the abolition of slavery is one the saddest aspects of Brazil’s history, and we know the same happened elsewhere. But the rediscovery of the Sea Dragon’s tomb is a good occasion to remember and to celebrate the key role that people of African descent had on earning their freedom. This is important to mention: their freedom was not given, they fought for it, and fought hard.
How was Nascimento’s grave lost? And what motivated you to want to find it?
He died in 1914, and for some reason, the exact location of his grave was forgotten even though he’s officially regarded in Brazil as a national hero. So even though you have streets, you have cultural centers, and you have neighborhoods bearing his name, the location of his remains were unknown.
I was attracted to that problem as I was doing research for my Ph.D. dissertation, which deals with abolition of slavery in Brazil. How can people not know where this man, who was so important in the struggle against slavery in Brazil, is buried? I talked to people, and no one knew. The government didn’t know. Activists, mainly from Afro-Brazilian organizations, didn’t know. Intellectual scholars, historians—no one knew.
I found out which cemetery, and then I went. It took a long time, because there are about 15,000 tombs in that specific cemetery. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to find it because I didn’t know if he was buried as a pauper, for example, in a temporary grave or anything like that.
But one day, in mid-July 2020, I was walking around the tombs and I saw it. A tomb in ruins. It was in terrible shape. I saw a plate with his name, the date of birth, the date of death, all of which were correct. Then I saw the name of his wife, so I knew it was him. I was very excited because I knew I had found a hero.
How long would you say that it took you to find it, because that’s a lot of tombstones to go through!
It took three years. I would go during summer, because although I am Brazilian, I live in the U.S. But I was happy because what happened in the United States last year had repercussions in Brazil; about how people of color are treated in the country. Because, even though slavery is over in Brazil, you cannot say that racism is over. This is important to mention.
All the issues that exist in the U.S. now, you could say that it also exists in Brazil. Being able to find this man’s tomb meant much more than just finding a tomb of someone who did a lot back in the past. He was a man whose entire existence, whose struggle for freedom, for racial equality, and for tolerance represents a lot—even to current generations.
What happens now that you’ve found his tomb? What does that signify going forward?
I hope that current generations—not only Brazilians, but Americans, and any person who somehow identifies with the struggle against racism, against racists, and against oppression—can identify himself or herself with the values that this man represented. And not only him, but many other people who fought with him against slavery. There were many people of color who sided with him. When people talk about the Sea Dragon, they all often forget about his wife and his mother-in-law, even though they were, in my opinion, just as important as he was. They would actually help slaves escape. His mother-in-law was accused of housing fugitive slaves. This is big because it shows that it was a struggle that went far beyond gender conceptions.
How should we connect his legacy to last summer’s uprisings?
Freedom, racial solidarity, equality, inclusion; those are the values that are universal. The struggle that happened last year, the protests, represent an unfinished fight. The awful consequences of slavery are not over yet, even though I do honestly believe that the United States is walking in the right direction. I think there is much more solidarity, much more compassion, much more tolerance there than before.
Obviously, there’s much much more work to be done. That’s a fact, but I do think that it’s just very profound to connect the legacy of abolition throughout the diaspora to the current pushback against systemic racism happening throughout the diaspora. Do you have thoughts on that?
People of color in the United States and in Brazil have a common origin, which is Africa. So you’re talking about brothers and sisters. National borders in the struggle against slavery, against racists, they don’t matter. You’re talking about universal values. So I think what happened in Brazil and what happened in the United States and what’s happening in both countries now, do matter. We can learn so much about each other. We can actually act together against the perverse legacy of slavery.
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