Recently, Brazilian actress Tais Araújo posted a photograph of herself on Instagram, with a copy of Projeto Querino, by journalist Tiago Rogero. Earlier, on 31 October, Tiago published an article in The Guardian about his book, explaining how it developed from the Projeto Querino podcast, which, in turn, was inspired by the New York Times‘s 1619 Project. That article contained a link to this website, boosting its visitors considerably. According to Tiago:

“Projeto Querino is based on a journalistic project that involved a team of more than 40 people, over two years and seven months of work.
Inspired by the New York Times’ 1619 Project, it launched in 2022 as a podcast produced by Rádio Novelo and a series of magazine articles. Before joining the Guardian in April, I spent another year conducting further research and writing the book.
A central idea was to understand and illustrate how Black people participated in crucial moments of Brazilian history – such as independence in 1822 or the extensively delayed abolition of slavery in 1888 – something that some school curriculums and parts of the media refuse to acknowledge.
Its name is a tribute to Manuel Raimundo Querino (1851-1923), a groundbreaking Brazilian intellectual born free in Bahia state. He is considered the first person to portray Africans and Afro-descendants positively in the country’s historiography.”

‘We built Brazil’: how descendants of enslaved Africans have helped shape the country, by Tiago Rogero

Tiago Rogero and the historian Ynaê Lopes dos Santos interviewed Sabrina Gledhill about Manuel Querino for the podcast in 2021, and Projeto Querino was launched in 2022. Sabrina`s interview can be found in episode 4 (the link is to the PDF in English).

The next major project was Isis Gledhill’s bio-documentary on Querino, which was launched on YouTube in November 2023 and has already racked up over 8,500 views and been selected for screening at two Brazilian film festivals. Tiago and Ynaê gave interviews for the documentary, as did Sabrina and several other scholars who study Querino.

Someone asked if the Projeto Querino book was competing with Funmilayo’s anthology Manuel Querino (1851-1923): An Afro-Brazilian Pioneer in the Age of Scientific Racism. The answer is not at all. We are very pleased that the word is getting out there about Manuel Querino and his legacy. Tiago has used the platform of The Guardian to spread the word about his own book, while generously sharing a link that enables his readers to find out more about Querino through our publications. One of these days, our work will be done, but as long as the process of erasure continues, “a luta continua” (the fight goes on).