In a capital’s Afro-Brazilian architecture, traces of a complex story

June in Porto-Novo is usually a month of cloudy skies and heavy tropical downpours, often preceded by gale-force winds, deafening thunderclaps, and lightning. In some neighborhoods of this West African city near the Gulf of Guinea, fallen trees bring traffic to a standstill, and houses that can’t weather the storm are washed away. 

But most stand tall after each torrential rain, year after year – and a few, for more than a century. Some of these are colonial, brick, and ornate, the Afro-Brazilian architecture of the Agudas: a local community descended from Portuguese slave traders, and enslaved Brazilian people who were freed and returned to West Africa.

Each building – many of their facades