About the project
The Museu do Falso is a Museum of the Territory, composed exclusively of a collection from contemporary creators and agents, each working in their direct area of expertise and competence, subordinating their creations/contributions to the premise and concept of “Simulacrum”: What if a certain event had occurred in a different way than it actually did?
In this way, it is possible to build “artefacts and documents” that can simultaneously represent a revisiting of History; and, on the other hand, the addition of a direct creative component. The results of this process will exist in a duality between the “False”, evidenced as a construct and materialized in the piece specifically designed and executed; and the “True”, the pre-existing cultural element or asset (of heritage reading), on and from which it is created.
Elias Coelho Cintra was a Portuguese merchant and one of the most significant slave traders operating in Pernambuco in the early 19th century. Through the transatlantic slave trade, E.C.C. accumulated substantial wealth, as well as considerable political and social influence.
According to records available on slavevoyages.org, Elias Coelho Cintra owned at least ten slave ships and was responsible for the forced displacement of more than six thousand Africans to Pernambuco between 1814 and 1830. In 1824, he purchased a large estate in Recife, naming it Sítio dos Coelhos—a name that survives today simply as Coelhos. Despite his prominence and active participation in the social and political life of the region, it is striking how Elias C. Cintra has remained largely unknown—or quietly forgotten—within mainstream historical narratives.
The Diário de Pernambuco, first published in November 1825, is the oldest continuously circulating newspaper printed in Portuguese. Aimed primarily at the commercial elite, it offers valuable insights into the social, political, and economic life of the period.
Descriptive Memory & The Explicit Falsehood
The slave-ownership document attributed to Elias Coelho Cintra in this project is fictional. Because so little detailed information survives about his business operations, I chose to highlight this absence. Using as reference authentic documents related to slave transactions from less prominent owners—preserved in the Isaías Alves Collection at the Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (FFCH), Universidade Federal da Bahia—I reconstructed what such a record might have looked like.
However, the enslaved individuals listed in the document are real, as is the reproduced article from the Diário de Pernambuco. The newspaper provides glimpses into the activities of E.C.C., including advertisements he placed seeking information about enslaved people who had escaped or been stolen, as well as notices of ship arrivals carrying enslaved Africans from the West Coast of Africa, particularly Angola. The Diário also reports that Elias Coelho Cintra was known to brand his enslaved people with a heated iron marked with the letter E, the initial of his first name.
The selection of these objects and the narrative surrounding them serves as a critical commentary on the absence of accessible, Portuguese-language documentation and the lack of public spaces in Portugal that confront its history of slavery with honesty and clarity. This work challenges the prevailing humanist narrative—still widely circulated—that obscures the brutality of the political and economic system built on racist ideologies during the Portuguese Empire.