Auntie Ciata’s House is an office in the Organização dos Remanescentes da Tia Ciata (ORTC). The space had been used as a public restroom, but Rio’s municipal government gave it to the organization in 2016. Gracy Mary Moreira, president of ORTC, is the great granddaughter of Auntie Ciata, and she created the organization with the aim of keeping the memory of this great samba icon alive. The cultural space offers a permanent exhibition about Auntie Ciata and is open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 2 P.M. – 5:00 P.M. and on Fridays from 2 P.M. – 6:30 P.M.
Auntie Ciata was born in 1854 in Recôncavo Baiano. She was a cook, a Candomblé priestess, and one of the Bahian tias, or aunties, who defended samba’s very existence. At a time when black Brazilians and their culture were greatly persecuted, she and other Bahian tias provided space in their backyards and terreiros, or Afro-Brazilian temples, for samba shows. According to the ORTC, Auntie Ciata lived in different homes in Little Africa and downtown. Her last house, on what once was Visconde de Itaúna Street, is iconic in the rise of Rio de Janeiro samba.
The Ala das Baianas are practically a required feature of the samba parades for samba schools in Rio and Brazil more broadly. They represent and honor these brilliant women, these guardians of samba. Auntie Ciata died in 1924 in Rio de Janeiro.