EPILOGUE -
TEXTS AND SOURCES
In 1891 the Brazilian Minister of Finance decreed the
abolition of history: he ordered the destruction of every document which dealt
in any way with slavery or the slave trade; a nation-wide burning of the books.
But the clamor of voices from the past drowns out the
fiats of forgotten bureaucrats and demands to be heard.
At the end of the twentieth century, the population of
Brazil stood at some 165 million. The more than one hundred million Brazilians
who are of African descent remain overwhelmingly poor. Political power still
rests firmly in the hands of the descendants of the senhores de engenho.
Ama is a story of the Slave Trade, a story of
Africans who were carried across the Atlantic against their will.
The end of this story has yet to be written.
Epilogue, Ama, A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade