Remains believed to have belonged to Africans or Afro-Brazilians repatriated after being flown back by diplomats
Two skulls, including that of a man believed to have taken part in Brazil’s greatest slave revolt but whose remains were taken to the United States and used in racist eugenics studies at Harvard University, were repatriated on Wednesday.
The remains had been outside Brazil since the 19th century. One was taken about 190 years ago from Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia; the other, about 160 years ago, from Rio de Janeiro – and were welcomed back in moving, subdued ceremonies in both cities.
The skulls are believed to have belonged to Africans or Afro-Brazilians in the country that received more enslaved Africans than any other during the transatlantic slave trade.
Each was brought back in a padded box inside a reinforced suitcase, carried on flights by Brazilian diplomats after a four-year campaign to recover the remains from Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in the US.
Brazilian researchers from local universities will now try to learn more about who the two individuals were.
The skulls will not be displayed in museums or have their images released, and the Brazilian government has pledged that they will be buried with funeral rites as soon as the identification process is complete.
