Avenues and the Afterlives of Slavery

Chapter 1, “Avenues and the Afterlives of Slavery,” introduces critical context for the transformation of São Paulo’s ethnoracialized landscape in the mid-twentieth century. That context includes São Paulo’s position as the provincial capital of formal slavery in southeastern Brazil, which this chapter details through the history of the Nossa Senhora do Ó parish: a hub of enslavement, settlements of enslaved people, and the region where Brasilândia would be produced in the twentieth century. The chapter elucidates the ties that connected formal enslavement in the nineteenth century to urban redevelopment projects initiated in the early twentieth, especially Prestes Maia’s Avenues Plan. That plan remade São Paulo neighborhoods significant to many African descendants through asphalted avenues.