Listen closely and you might hear a drumbeat echoing across a plaza that no longer exists.
You’re standing on Gertúlio Vargas Avenue, the street that maimed and then killed Praça Onze. The plaza wasn’t at this exact spot; it was around 1.5 km towards the Sambódromo, near what today is called the Terreirão de Samba. President Gertúlio Vargas created the avenue on September 7, 1944 – and named it after himself!
Samba was born in the Praça Onze de Junho. From the end of slavery in 1888 through the 1930s, Afro-Brazilians and Italian, Portuguese, Romani, and Jewish immigrants lived in the tenements that dotted the streets in the neighborhood. There were also businesses, areas dedicated to the African religion candomblé, and famous Afro-Brazilian temples. The streets overflowed with life!
On weekends, Praça Onze became a party: men and women played drums and, during Carnival, revelers thronged to the area to dance past the most famous house in the region, Auntie Ciata’s House, in honor of the Bahian priestess. It was in Praça Onze that those partygoers organized samba schools and where Carnival parades first took place. That is, until they killed Praça Onze.
Rio used to be the capital of Brazil, and in the 1930s the municipal government decided to construct a major avenue cutting straight through the square. The sambistas in Rio protested. The actor Grande Otelo approached composer Herivelto Martins, asking him to write a beautiful samba as a way to say goodbye to this piece of Rio de Janeiro’s soul:
They’re putting an end to Praça Onze
No more Samba Schools, no more
Cry out, tamborim drum
Cry out, from the hills
Favela, Salgueiro
Mangueira, Estação Primeira
Keep close your tambourines, keep them close
Because Samba Schools don’t die
Goodbye, my Praça Onze, goodbye
We know already you’ll be gone
With you, you take what we remember
But in our hearts you stay forever
And someday, we’ll have a plaza once more
And there, we’ll sing about what came before
The demolitions began in 1941, displacing hundreds of families and destroying over 500 buildings, including historic churches.
Today there is no more Praça Onze, and few people remember it ever existed. In that sense, it is just one more ghost wandering the port of Rio de Janeiro.