West African country is offering citizenship to descendants of enslaved persons taken from the continent, sparking huge interest in Brazil<\/p>\n
By Tom Phillips and Tiago Rogero in Rio de Janeiro and Eromo Egbejule in Abidjan<\/p>\n
Jo\u00e3o Diamante was gripped by a sense of belonging as he stepped out of the airport terminal thousands of miles from his birthplace in Brazil.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing I felt was that I was at home,\u201d recalled the 33-year-old celebrity chef from Rio. \u201cNobody looked at me like they were afraid of me because of the colour of my skin \u2026 On the contrary, I saw people just like me. I saw similarities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d never been there before,\u201d Diamante said of his arrival in Benin\u2019s largest city, Cotonou, last year. \u201cBut I was certain this was a place I knew: its smell, its music, its dance, its sound, the noise of car horns, the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Brazilian chef was familiar with his surroundings in a way, despite it being his first trip to Africa. Diamante was born in Salvador \u2013 the Blackest major city in the country with the largest black population outside Africa \u2013 and grew up steeped in the Afro-Brazilian culture and cuisine produced by the uprooting of millions of enslaved Africans who were forced to travel to the South American country to work in goldmines or sugar and coffee plantations.<\/p>\n
About 40% of the estimated 12 million enslaved Africans shipped across the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries came to Brazil, which was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888.<\/p>\n
Diamante, whose full name is Jo\u00e3o Augusto Santos Batista, believes his ancestors were forcibly brought to Brazil from the west African region around what is today the Republic of Benin in the 19th century. Two centuries later, he is reconnecting with his family\u2019s African roots and even hopes to become a citizen of Benin thanks to a new law that offers Afro-descendants from around the world a pathway to citizenship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m already trying to work out the paperwork \u2026 I want a Brazilian passport and a Beninese passport,\u201d the chef said during an interview at his restaurant in a port-side area of Rio known as Pequena \u00c1frica (Little Africa) because of its well-established Afro-Brazilian community. \u201cIt\u2019s about belonging, about who I am, where I come from, my lineage and my family,\u201d he added. \u201cLots of people dream of having a US or a European passport. I dream of having a Beninese passport because Africa is where I\u2019m from.\u201d<\/p>\n
Benin\u2019s citizenship scheme \u2013 proposed by its president, Patrice Talon, and approved by lawmakers in October \u2013 calls itself an attempt to heal \u201cthe deep wounds\u201d inflicted on Africa and those taken from it during centuries of enslavement.<\/p>\n
According to the law, the initiative is open to \u201cany person in the world who \u2026 has sub-Saharan African ancestry [and was] deported outside the continent in the context of slavery\u201d. Such people, it says, have the right to consider Benin \u201ctheir homeland\u201d and request a passport.<\/p>\n