Yesterday we took off for Ouro Preto, the ancient capital of Minas Gerais. Honestly, it looks pretty old, and picturesque. They had to move the capital to Belo Horizonte because there Ouro Preto was nestled in a pretty uninhabitable series of hills, which sit atop what in the seventeenth century was really considered the motherlode. Ouro Preto means black gold, a reference to the quality of the gold dust they dug out of those hills, and a not so subtle double entendre referring to the black slaves who worked those mines.

We went to a mine, and, prepared for the Disney treatment, were shocked and appalled to be forced through damp, cold, crawl spaces, up steep inclines, and in our terror and exhaustion were basically placed at the mercy of our tour guide, who was fortunately very kind and told us great stories about the mines and the lives of blacks in Ouro Preto since those days.

On his tip, we went traipsing through a less visited part of town in searhc of the church the slaves built with gold they snuck out of the mines through a secret entrance (the Portuguese apparently never went into the mines themselves). It looks like any other baroque church, of which the town has plenty, except that, here and there are subtle presences of blackness, like a black pope painted into the frescoes above the altar. We couldn´t find much written about it in English or Portugeuse. Art history thesis project, anyone?