Rio de Janeiro’s Port Zone was once the largest slave port in the Americas. As developers work to “revitalize” the area, Black activists are fighting to retain the remnants of the district’s historical significance.
In Santo Cristo, a neighborhood in the marvelous city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the construction of a new building, Porto Maravalley, promises to usher in a new age of technology startups in the city. Currently, the construction of the technology and education hub—which directly references Silicon Valley—is happening in an abandoned warehouse in Rio’s Port Zone that spans more than 3.59 square miles.
But if you walk 30 minutes, to the very end of Mauá Square, the Museum of Tomorrow, a science museum that was built in an attempt to revitalize the Port Zone, sits like a spaceship, and to its left, the Rio Museum of Art (MAR) towers over the sidewalk that leads visitors deeper into…