Close your eyes, as generations closed theirs for centuries. Primeiro de Março street, formerly Direita street, was the location of the first African slave market in Rio de Janeiro.
There are few records about this market, as this is a history we have tried to erase for centuries. As soon as they landed at Peixe beach, the famished and battered slaves were displayed in houses along this street to be acquired by plantation owners and members of the court.
There was still no regulation of this human commerce, so each house on Direita street held their auction at a different time. The healthy slaves were quickly sold to rich members of the court; the sick waited a while longer. This resulted in a formal complaint from the councilmen to the King of Portugal in 1722, according to a study by historian Júlio César Medeiros da Silva Pereira, for the plantation owners and farmers were unable to buy the slaves they desired, and were left reliant upon “middlemen,” poor whites who treated the diseased slaves in order to re-sell them.
The Marquis of Lavradio described the Direita street market when he was Viceroy around 1769:
“There is[…] in this city, the terrible custom of, as soon as the blacks arrive at the port, having come from the African coast, they enter the city through one of the main public avenues, not only carrying numerous diseases, but also nude […] and doing all that nature calls of them in the middle of the street.”
He decided to remove the market from the center of the city, as well as the middlemen and merchants. In 1774, new legislation brought the market to Valongo, which is now Carmerino street, and organized the commerce – and, mostly, removed it from sight for the inhabitants and visitors of Rio.