The mural project honouring the Black cultural heritage of Rio de Janeiro – photo essay

Despite its majority Afro-descendant population, fewer than 10% of public monuments across Rio commemorate Black people. Photographer María Magdalena Arréllaga chronicles the project seeking to redress the balance

Once home to the world’s largest port of arrival for enslaved Africans, Rio de Janeiro has, like the rest of Brazil, a majority Afro-descendant population.

Many of the country’s most prominent Black figures – scientists, lawyers, athletes, politicians, writers, musicians, activists and intellectuals – were either born or lived in the country’s second-largest city, which served as the capital for nearly 200 years.

A mural of the Brazilian singer-songwriter and composer Luiz Melodia, painted on a wall in Estácio, the Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood where he lived