The Aurea Law was signed on May 13, 1888, and abolished slavery in Brazil. The last country in the Americas to do so.

May 13th is not formally commemorated; But people do come together, in shape of a is symbolic movement but also as a protest against the idea that signing the law resulted in the end of racism, or even solved the problems of the black population in Brazil.

Here in São Paulo, the Ilú Obá de Min is a group that was created by black women, and that annually commemorates the date with a cleansing of the street named after the date (Rua 13 de Maio) in the Bela Vista neighborhood. They wear white clothes and play music, make speeches, dance and clean the Bixiga staircase and subsequent street with perfumed water as a symbolic form of washing away the lies and skewed truths of history.

« 136 Years of False Abolition. We return to this territory to greet and reverence our ancestry, asking agô: the blessing to those who reign in our Oris, the blessing to the ancestors who made the painful crossing of the Atlantic, the blessing to our elders and the oldest who were here and to the lives of others here have been and yet to come. » - Excerpt from the Wash Manifesto May 13, 2024