{DAVID YETMAN} In the late 17th century, the King of Portugal ordered a 200 mile long road constructed to ship gold from Brazil's interior to the coast, at the cost of thousands of lives and the labor of tens of thousands of slaves.

The road begins in the small port city of Paraty, just southwest of Rio de Janeiro It ends at Ouro Preto, in the state of Minas Gerais {ANNOUNCER} Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey [MUSIC] The Guilford Fund.

Arch and Laura Brown.

And Hugh and Joyce Bell.

[THEME SONG PLAYING] {DAVID} When the Portuguese arrived at the coast of Brazil in the late 15th century, they were overwhelmed by the beauty of the countryside that they saw.

But they discovered, to their dismay, that there were no great riches to be found along that coast, and it would be 200 years before anyone found anything of great value.

When the prospectors discovered gold at the end of the 17th century, it was a couple of hundred miles inland from Paraty - And the king wanted that gold because the king always took a fifth of it - had to develop a route from Paraty to where the gold was.

And the only way to build that route was into the mountains with slave labor.

So thousands of slaves were imported to build the Estrada Real, the “Royal Highway” So it became the major transportation route for funneling the wealth of the inland of Brazil down to the ocean, where it could be carried off to feed the court of the King in Lisbon, Portugal.

{BOSSA NOVA MUSIC PLAYING} {MONKEY VOCALIZING} {BIRDS VOCALIZING} {DAVID} If you would come here 150 years ago, you would have seen very little of that forest because it had all been cleared away for coffee trees.

But Emperor Don Pedro the Second realized that with those coffee trees instead of the ancient forest, the water was drying up, and he ordered that the forest be replanted with the same species of trees that were there before.

And that forest has grown back.

And today is the magnificent backdrop of the city of ten million people, Rio de Janeiro.

{SAMBA MUSIC PLAYING} {DAVID} Ilha Grande, “The Great Island”, the largest island off the coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.

It's about 90 square miles, It's a very good sized island.

No automobiles are allowed, it's very limited.

The - the largest town is of about 5000 people.

The whole island only has about 9000.

So it - the population is concentrated, much of it is a natural area, protected.

The island was very important to the security of Brazil from the Portuguese standpoint.

Fierce battles fought against the Portuguese by the native people who lived here, the indigenous people who resisted the Portuguese and one of the great wars, the second biggest war against a foreign enemy in all of the Americas, lasted 13 years in the 17th century, the native people trying to keep the Portuguese from taking over.

And ultimately, of course, they failed.

Today, some of their remnants live here, but mostly it's people who now cater to tourists or some fishermen.

But mostly it's a tourist attraction with very good reason.

The overwhelming green of the Atlantic Forest and the isolation make it for a very intriguing place.

And there are hundreds of miles of trails.

{DRAMATIC MUSIC} {BIRD SOUNDS} {DAVID} The Portuguese found French, particularly French, and Dutch and British pirates or invaders coming into their territory, and they established defensive structures.

And hence we have a fort built upon the hill, with cannons capable of destroying enemy ships and everywhere along the coast of Brazil The Portuguese decided to construct defensive works, and the Portuguese began to defend their interest in Brazil, which they pretty much successfully, were able to defend off and on for up to the present day.

And now we have an independent Brazil that is its own country, but with Portuguese roots.

{DRAMATIC MUSIC FADES} {DAVID} The town and port of Paraty are located several hours drive to the west of Rio de Janeiro.

Rio de Janeiro has the best port and is the most beautiful site.

But Paraty became a very important port because it gave the best possible route for access to the newly discovered gold mines.

Several hundred miles to the north.

The king, the Emperor of Portugal, decided this was a place where he wanted to begin his royal highway.

His Estrada Real and that highway transported millions and millions of dollars worth of gold from the mountains in the state of Minas Gerais down to Paraty, and Paraty prospered.

It became a important part of the Portuguese Empire {WAGON CREAKING} {DAVID} A descendant of the emperors and their ancestors lives here in Paraty and is willing to talk to us.

And here we have arrived to the Princes house {BOSSA NOVA MUSIC} {DAVID} It is very nice to be in the presence of a Habsburg and a Bragança.

{DOM JOÃO} This colors of the houses, yellow and green is the colors of Brazilian flag and the colors of -two colors of my family, the green of Bragança and the yellow of Habsburg from Austria, Empress Leopoldina {BOSSA NOVA MUSIC CONTINUES} {DAVID} This is a wonderful map of South America, and it's something you're very proud of.

{JOÃO} This is 18th century map Latin America was all divided.

And the Portuguese America, it's the only one.

{DAVID} There's one Brazil, one Portuguese speaking country.

{JOÃO}And more than 13 countries {DAVID} There's a there's a message in that stability, monarchy, And your ancestors.

{JOÃO} Yes, oh, certainly.

Yeah.

Here's Peter the second, the son of Peter the first who his father gave independence to Brazil.

And he was, as I said, for 49 years, emperor of Brazil.

And he became officially emperor of Brazil with five years old, but of course, has a, a group of of teachers and men of state doing the, the administration of the country.

But they, they changed the law of, of of the Constitution to giving him majority with 15 years old is the table Heres the table where my grandmother, great grandmother signed the law giving freedom to the slaves.

{DAVID} Well, what a story.

And who do we have here then?

{JOÃO} Princess Isabel as a young girl.

She was like 15 years old, with her sister Leopoldina, who married my great grandfather, Gastão de Orleães, from France, from the royal family of France.

{JOÃO} Peter The Second.

{DAVID} And this is the hero, this is your hero {JOÃO} Yes, I would say that.

Very simple, very well-educated.

He said the Constitution was, for him, like a second religion.

He had a very difficult life because he lost his mother.

She died very early with 28 years old, and, and his father left to Portugal.

So he left his son here with five years old as a symbol of unity of the country.

Was very ahead of his time.

Very.

And the forest of Tijuca in the middle of Rio de Janeiro.

It was all deforested for planting coffee when the cycle of coffee was on the top.

- beginning of shortage of water because they cut it all the forest So those little streams nearby went, went, almost dry.

So he did the incredible work of replanting all this area, but replanting with the same species in the same amount of species of the native forest.

{MUSIC PLAYING] {DAVID} How do we get from Dom Pedro the Second to Paraty?

{JOÃO} That's a good question.

Actually he came here on a boat once, it's a - theres register his visit to Paraty It was a small town.

It was very important Paraty during the colonial town, it was a - the end of the road from the interior of Brazil, where all the gold used to come.

Very well preserved and, because of the distance.

Paraty was preserved.

The nature, the forest around here and the old town If Paraty was near Rio or São Paulo, certainly we would have skyscrapers here.

{DAVID} Only a few miles from the Princes house.

In colonial Paraty is a Quilombo, a historic refuge for escaped slaves.

Now known for its African and indigenous restaurant, Quilombos were frequently headed by women.

[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {TRANSLATION} {DANIELE ELIAS} Quilombo do Campinho is a symbol of resistance, courage and strength Here we work with agroecology and community based tourism.

{DAVID} The mythology is that Europeans decided to abolish slavery and free the slaves.

The reality is the slaves pretty much freed themselves and Quilombos today are reminiscent of that [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {TRANSLATION} {DANIELE} Were the first Quilombola community And in Brazil, we have over six thousand Quilombos Im the fifth generation of three brave women who came enslaved from Africa.

They got here and took care of the house and the farm.

The farm was a monoculture of sugarcane and coffee, which depleted the soil.

[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] At the same time, there was said the abolition of slavery.

So the white people abandoned this territory and these women took over it.

Quilombo do Campinho is a symbol of resistance, courage and strength.

Whoever wants to can visit us and learn about our story.

[WATER SPLASHING] the real one, not the one that's told in the books [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {DAVID} The slave owners historically did everything they could to eradicate the remnants of African culture.

But despite those brutal efforts, the culture maintained in a hidden way, and today it's still exemplified in a lot of the food.

[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {TRANSLATION} {WAITRESS} Here we serve feijoada, a dish created by enslaved people using black beans and leftover cuts of pork [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] I know we also serve fish cooked Quilombola style and Jussara juice, made from a fruit similar to açaí blended with bananas and lime.

[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] [PERCUSSION MUSIC] [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] [PERCUSSION STOPS] {DAVID} Born in Paraty, the Royal Road weaves through tropical forest into the highlands, crossing the state of Rio de Janeiro, passing through the state of Sao Paulo and entering the state of Minas Gerais After 150 miles, we reached the colonial town of Tiradentes {DAVID} The church of the Matriz of San Antonio is world renowned not simply because of its fine decoration.

It is renowned for the tons of gold that are said to be embellishing the interior of the church.

But why so much gold?

Well, the miners and the owners of the mines, who became extraordinarily wealthy, resented the amount of gold that the king took.

So they figured if they put it in the church, the king couldn't take the fifth of it.

So they spent millions of their own holdings to embellish the inside with that gold, which has as much gold or more than perhaps any other church in the Americas.

[BOSSA NOVA MUSIC] {DAVID} This is the church of the Black Rosary.

It was intended for slaves and their descendants.

It was built before the very wealthy and affluent church of San Antonio, but it is austere inside.

It shows that it did not have the money bestowed upon it, that the larger church did.

[BOSSA NOVA MUSIC] From Tiradentes, it's a two hour drive to the even more splendid colonial monument of Ouro Preto It is a Unesco heritage site, most renowned for sculptures by a most unusual artist.

His work is displayed on both the interior and the exterior of exquisite colonial structures.

We are introduced to the city by an expert tour guide and the director of the most important museum of the city.

[BOSSA NOVA MUSIC] {DAVID} Where did this rock come from?

It's, of course, very hard rock {SUELI RUTKOWSKI} Local, geologically local stone Minas Gerais is a very rich geological part on Earth {DAVID} Well, it means general mines, Minas Gerais {SUELI} Means - Minas Gerais, minerals, minerals or, gerais, other activities [BOSSA NOVA MUSIC] {DAVID} We're going through a market that sells, uh- articles made of stone and ceramics.

{SUELI} Then you see we have here soapstone was always used for the handmade works, for the kitchen, too and especially for the sculptures in the churches [GENTLE MUSIC] {DAVID} Where are you taking me now?

{SUELI} To the church.

Saint Francis Church We had here in the beginning, Portuguese companies with technical people that learned with the masters from Portugal And then, of course, they worked for them in this church.

[BOSSA NOVA MUSIC CONTINUES] {SUELI} The front on soapstone inside, the pulpits on soapstone The main altar.

Antonio Lisboa projected it in a way with good, harmonic dialogue {DAVID} But now was - he was a Mineiro?

{SUELI} Hes a Mineiro.

He was born in Ouro Pre- In the Vila Rica at that time.

Yeah.

His father, his family ancestors came from Lisboa [MUSIC ENDS] [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {TRANSLATION} {ALEX CALHEIROS} This room is dedicated to master Aleijadinho, who was one of the biggest Brazilian artists.

Because he had not studied at a fine arts school, he was long regarded as an artist of the people.

Only in the beginning of the 20th century with the Brazilian modernists that Aleijadinho was elevated to the status of a great artist.

[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] We are reshaping the museum's narrative to critically engage with a history that has traditionally been told only from the perspective of the elites.

We made a small intervention here to reframe certain objects.

[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] For example we have here some torture devices that were used against the slaves.

But these objects don't belong to black culture.

They are part of white culture So we repositioned them here to emphasize that the foundation of colonial society was slavery [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] [PENSIVE MUSIC] [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {TRANSLATION} {ALEX} The Museu da Inconfidencia is a memorial of the movement of conspirators, a subversive movement against the Portuguese crown.

Tiradentes was a very popular figure who gradually rallied others to join the movement.

[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] He was eventually arrested, dentenced to death, and hung in a public square.

He was quartered, and his body parts were displayed along the route where he had spread his ideas.

The Royal Road.

The final part, his head was placed here in the main square of Ouro Preto.

[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {DAVID} It's just recently been discovered that, Thomas Jefferson sent a copy of the US Constitution.

to Tiradentes the book has turned up, and it contains comments written commenting on the conditions of Brazil, how this applies.

And so that very important document from the US had a great deal of importance here and now.

And now scholars are just beginning to unravel that wonderful new story.

{SUELI} I take you now to the main square to the Praça Tiradentes {DAVID} The story I've heard is that he was decapitated and his head was - was {SUELI} Was exposed here [PENSIVE MUSIC] {DAVID} Among the multitude of churches in Ouro Preto there's only one, this one, That is built by, funded by black Brazilians.

[MUSIC ENDS] [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {TRANSLATION} {RODRIGRO FELIPE} The main altar is gold plated and the pillars were built with over a thousand pounds of gold [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] This is a church of the slaves built for them, and by them.

Even though this is a Catholic church honoring the Catholic religion, the practitioners here practice their African beliefs under the guise of Catholicism because they were only allowed to follow Catholic practices [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE] {DAVID} It's a wonderful display of how Africans expressed their origins and accommodated the power of the church over them into one whole, in this church.

[PERCURSSION MUSIC] To complete the Ouro Preto story, our guide shows us a most unusual mine owned, developed and operated by a former slave.

Certainly the Portuguese knew nothing about how to mine the gold in Brazil, but the belief here is that Africans had that knowledge, and the labor that they brought along with that knowledge made the exploitation of these billions of dollars worth of gold possible.

{SUELI} So you have to imagine on that ranch Empty at that time He was the mining - You see, this is Galanga Muzinga Galanga Muzinga came from Congo He was a king in, in Congo.

So they came here obligatory, converted as a Catholic.

And his identity, his name is no more allowed.

Now Galanga Muzinga is the Francisco, Chico {DAVID} So he was the “Chico Rei” {SUELI} Chico Rei They started to to excavate here to come into - But following the white quartz vein signalizes here is the yellow gold.

{DAVID} You have to follow the vein up to where it goes [PERCURSSION STOPS] [BOSSA NOVA MUSIC BEGINS] {DAVID} The immense opulence in the palatial homes of Ouro Preto are a symbol of the great wealth accumulated by the Portuguese mine owners, landowners and slave owners in Brazil.

It took over a century after the first rumblings of independence for African Brazilians and slaves to be emancipated.

The Royal Highway today remains as a symbol of the adventuresome spirit of the Portuguese, as well as the overwhelming dominance they had over local people and the slaves that they later brought to do all the work to help them accumulate wealth.

[BOSSA NOVA MUSIC] {DAVID} Today, companies offer guided tours over the Royal Highway from Paraty to Ouro Preto It was also a way for Brazilians to become aware of the past that intertwined slavery, opulence, Portuguese colonialism and today's Brazil.

[BOSSA NOVA MUSIC ENDS] {DAVID} Join us next time In the Americas, with me, David Yetman {DAVID} Slavery in Brazil was the same as slavery everywhere, built on brutality and dehumanizing.

It continued for nearly three centuries.

Part of Brazil's emerging heritage is recognizing the horrors of the institution, but even more, the resistance, creativity and heroic endurance that we see today in Brazil's African heritage.

{DAVID} In 1843, the young Emperor Pedro the Second realized there was a lot of yellow fever and congestion in Rio de Janeiro, which was the capital of Brazil at the time.

He ordered the construction of a city which seemed to be free of yellow fever.

He moved all of his staff every summer here for more than 40 years, to spend the summertime at his palace in the city of Petropolis, and today it's a national monument.

{ANNOUNCER} Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey.

[MUSIC] The Guilford Fund.

Arch and Laura Brown.

And Hugh and Joyce Bell.