Lives Lost: ‘Warrior’ fought for slave descendants in Brazil

ARMAÇÃO DE BÚZIOS, Brazil (AP) — Carivaldina Oliveira da Costa was the steward of history in her Brazilian community on the northern coast of Rio de Janeiro state, and for two decades fought for their land rights as descendants of escaped slaves.

Known as Dona Uia, she was the matriarch who signed off on all decisions of her community, Rasa, one of Brazil’s many so-called quilombos. Uia worked tirelessly for the roughly 700 families to be recognized rather than marginalized, according her daughter Nally Oliveira.

“I would like to be half the person she was: a good-hearted warrior woman who battled, and always taught us what was right and wrong,” said Nally, 41, Uia’s only daughter.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series of stories remembering people who have died from the coronavirus around the world.

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Uia was born in Armacao dos Buzios in 1941, when it was just a district of a seaside city discovered by Amerigo Vespucci. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that a visit by French actress Brigitte Bardot bestowed Buzios with celebrity cachet and kicked off its transformation into the elite escape comprised of 23 glistening beaches.

Uia’s mother had told her stories – stories she’d heard from her own mother – of a bygone era. It was a time when Portuguese ships unloaded enslaved Africans at an outcropping called Father Vitorio Point. They were marched to a hilltop church to be christened, casting off names they received on the opposite side of an ocean, then put to work on sugarcane farms. Still today there are vestiges of slaves’ quarters.

None of this appears in the history section of Buzios’ official website.

“Buzios only tells about Brigitte Bardot, not its real history,” Nally said. “Before Brigitte Bardot came to...