Angola Janga by Marcelo d'Salete6/11/2023 In the late 1500s, slaves began escaping Brazil’s brutalizing plantation labor and fleeing to the hilly northeast for the lush forested camouflage that the state of Pernambuco could afford them.įor a big graphic novel called “Angola Janga: Kingdom of Runaway Slaves,” Brazilian artist and writer Marcelo D’Salete mined historical texts about black resistance on sugar plantations during centuries of enslavement. Many of them died within five years of having arrived in the camps. If the captives survived the voyage, which saw slaves launching themselves overboard rather than face what waited on Brazil’s shores, they navigated shifts of punishing physical work that clocked in at 12 to 16 hours daily. Treacherous overseas journeys from regions such as Congo saw hundreds of starved human beings, vulnerable to scurvy, smallpox, measles, and more, crammed into vessels for trips that lasted more than 30 days. As Brazil’s sugar economy expanded explosively in the 16th century, the nation’s Portuguese occupiers cultivated a system of plantations that became dependent upon the trafficking of African slaves.
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