The Importance of Travelling in your Home Country

When we talk about traveling, the first cities that pop in our heads are Paris, New York, London, Los Angeles, Moscow and so many others around the globe. However, we never thought that traveling within the country where people were born is as much a part of cultural and historical travel as it is to know the countries where most of world history took place.

Depending on the country where you were born, there is a certain prejudice with local cultures and a belief that national products are not good enough, then people start to deify products, musics, art and many other types of culture from other countries. This is the case of Brazil. A large part of the population believes that the culture and history of countries like the United States of America or England have greater importance than the Brazilian one. This kind of thinking is totally inappropriate and a mistaken belief.

Brazil's history is quite rich and it is not necessary to go so far from the big cities to see it. A good example is Valongo Wharf in the center of Rio de Janeiro, very close to Porto Maravilha. In fact, it was because of the Porto Maravilha construction that the Valongo Wharf was discovered in 2011. In the years of Colonial Brazil, the Valongo Wharf was the place where slaves arrived directly from the African continent, mainly from Angola, and were sold. Until 1831 the pier was one of the main places of slave trade in the Southeast of Brazil. Then, in the middle of 1831, the slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean was banned by England, causing slave traders to create clandestine ports in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In 1843, Valongo was buried and became the “Cais da Imperatriz” where D. Pedro II’s future wife, Tereza Cristina, would disembark from Naples. Finally, Pereira Passos, mayor of the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1904, decided to make a great urban reform on the site and ended up burying the Valongo Wharf. Little did we know that in 2011, while the revitalization constructions in the area were taking place, historians would find these anchorages mentioned above and, along with them, a large number of objects and amulets brought by the slaves who passed through that place more than 300 years ago. Nowadays the site is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites and can be visited any time as it is an outdoor location.

Rio de Janeiro is not the only -place where one can see Brazilian History. Many tourists like to go to São Paulo to visit one of the largest cities in Latin America. What few people know is that in 1922 there was a Modern Art Week in the capital of São Paulo. An artistic movement that broke standards and established once and for all the rupture with older movements and it was the consolidation of modernism in Brazil. The Week of 22 was not just a movement of painters, it ended up spreading into writing, music, visual arts, sculptures and architecture in the city. Great names were driven by this art week, such as Mário de Andrade and his writing, Heitor Villa-Lobos and his compositions that are known across the world, Anita Malfatti with her paintings and drawings, and so many other artists that are still remembered today. Nowadays, a large part of the collection of the Week of Modern Art can be found in the museums of MASP and in the Pinacoteca de São Paulo.

But it is not just art that one lives and breathes, everyone knows that in 1964 there was a military coup in Brazil, causing President Jango to be deposed and General Castelo Branco to assume the presidency of the country. We know that any dictatorship is not healthy for any country and Brazil was no different. There were 21 years of strict laws, political persecutions, censorship and many things that are still not explained. Several people lost their lives trying to fight this radical system. Many artists were harassed for demonstrating in their art that they were against the government. What is most shocking is the fact that great Brazilian thinkers had to ask for exile in order not to be killed. Many of opponents that stayed in the country were tortured in basements of military headquarters and some died for not surrendering their fighting companions. In São Paulo, near the Luz station and the Pinacotheca of São Paulo, there is the Memorial of Resistance of São Paulo. A simple and small museum, but with so much history to tell. There we can see detention cells where the political prisoners stayed and a good part of the documents left over from the Military Dictatorship. In this place it is possible to see the pain that the 21 years of dictatorship caused in a country as new as Brazil.

Unquestionably, there are other places to see in the fifth largest country in terms of territory, such as the Pelourinho and the Jorge Amado’s house in Salvador, Bahia, the churches and gold mines of Minas Gerais and the prehistoric arts that we can find in the

northeastern hinterland. This is what makes a country fascinating, to have culture all over the territory so that we can visit, know and understand our history. History of the world connects every civilization as we could see the interference of England in 1831, but the importance of knowing our roots goes far beyond just understanding the history of the world, it makes you know who you are as a citizen.