In the city of Ouidah in southern modern-day Benin, a small West African country, there is a surname that is easily recognized by everyone. The De Souzas continue to be an important family both socially and economically in this small town, which became one of the most important slave ports on the so-called “Slave Coast” since more than a million of the estimated 12.5 million Africans were subjugated. The famous Brazilian trafficker Francisco Félix de Souza, aka Chacha, left a strong mark in Ouidah in the 19th century, where he is also remembered for the favors and ventures he undertook on the ground, in a story that supports the existence of multiple memories assigned to slavery.
In a way, De Souza occupied – among others – the space left vacant by the European forts that were abandoned when the slave trade was abolished in the early 19th century. However, this abolition did not mean the end of human trafficking, which not only continued but reached the same proportions as during the 18th-century boom. In this second contract (as the period he was illegal is called) characters like De Souza played a leading role, which undoubtedly had an impact on his personal enrichment.
Francisco Félix de Souza became a sort of viceroy or governor of Ouidah, with full powers that enabled him to amass considerable wealth, attracting the attention of European merchants who arrived in this port. By this time about half of the city’s neighborhoods, particularly in the southern zone, had been created by De Souza and the entire network of local merchants and traders supplied and depended on his businesses.
This is how the Agouda community, a term used to describe Afro-Brazilian people, came into being in the city. The traffickers were joined by freed slaves who had migrated or been deported from Brazil after the trade was abolished in the main empires.
Regardless of whether De Souza’s position was overstated, the city is an example of how the discourses of the descendants of slaves and the descendants of traffickers like De Souza converge. For years his descendants attempted to redeem his image by emphasizing his more human side, such as the gestures he had with native slaves such as not separating the families of prisoners or saving them from being sacrificed in the kingdom of Dahomey to become.
This valorization of a slave trader might seem implausible from a western point of view, but it can be traced a little better in Africa, since in many cases the history of human trafficking is not seen as an African problem and also the identities of victims and perpetrators are both propagated in these Accounts where multiple actors are involved in trading.
A very vivid case of how blurred identities are today is that of a direct descendant of Francisco Félix de Souza, Martine de Souza, a local historian whose great-great-grandmother was captured by the Kingdom of Dahomey in her native village and sold into slavery. Perpetrators on the one hand and victims on the other. This is how lines intertwine. This is how these cities were forever marked. They live with it, deal with it.
Martine de Souza’s generation is the one that began telling the full story of Chacha to acknowledge her involvement in the slave trade. They want to apologize, they want to be reconciled with the Africans in the diaspora. They offer them a place to return to, where they can rediscover their roots, where they can live in harmony. “Those of us here today want to be reconciled as human beings with people of African descent in America. We also want to be reconciled with our ancestors. Because we feel a lot of pain, but so did our ancestors. So what can we do? Come together, pray and forgive us.”
Healing through dialogue and self-criticism
Together with her daughter, Martine creates a memorial tourism project in the city, which they call “The Victory March”, where they travel the so-called “slave route” from Ouidah, but in reverse, from the coast to the city, to celebrate the return of Africans to their country to symbolize. And outside the De Souza family home, located next to the supposed slave market, they beg forgiveness and offer libations to honor the ancestors who died during mankind’s infamous years.
The voodoo religion, which is mostly practiced in southern Benin, plays a central role in these ceremonies. For the followers of this creed, the ancestors are among us, their spirits coexist with ours, so we must be in harmony with them. If they don’t have peace, neither will we.
“History follows us, we cannot escape it. We cannot deny who we are. The only way to set ourselves free and be happy is to speak out and be brave to meet the descendants of those who left the continent in tears. We must face them with courage, embrace them, ask their forgiveness, only then can we move forward. I know that among us are the spirits of those who didn’t make it, and these spirits are in these countries, they are still suffering, they cannot forget,” concludes Martine.
The history of the slave trade lies in the present of Ouidah and Benin. Alongside these attempts by the De Souza family to rehabilitate the role of their famous ancestor, Patrice Talon’s government is also promoting museums commemorating the transatlantic human trafficking that Benin has been developing for decades, such as the Ouidah’92 project., promoted by Unesco. It is a clear lineage, beginning at the end of the last century, of seeking healing through dialogue and local self-criticism, in the understanding that the slave trade was a multi-stakeholder trade.
In Benin at least, one of these actors is trying to turn this page, the most tragic and painful of all.
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