Salvador 101

Brazil from the air

Barra Praia

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all saints bay

New Years Eve

The story

It was the golden ages of the 1500s, a flourishing triangular trade, gold-hungry minds, the white man and his greed. Coffee and Cotton, Spices and Slaves.

Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, the first location the Portuguese landed at - all saints Bay. Beautiful, abundant, enchanting. "This is our land," they claimed. And then it begin, a trecherous, inhumane period of almost 300 years of slavery. The fields, the port, the houses... the African slaves had their identities crushed and their whole self destroyed, creating not another class in society, but merely a living entity with absolutely no minds of their own.

But although they came empty, naked, desolate, the slaves brought with them their culture, which helped mould and shape the beauty of Salvador today. Capoeira, Candomble, the acarache, just to name a few of the elements that reveals the survival of the slave; not a win over their master, but a peices of Africa which they managed to preserve and sustain despite the onslaught of the White Man.