Breaking Down Walls: On Past and Present-day Slavery

By Ashley Gutierrez

As co-Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Human Rights with Sarika, it is hard to find words to describe the excitement of seeing this blog come alive. A very special thanks to Oscar Pocasangre for his hard work in creating this; our wonderful, wonderful contributors; and everyone else who has helped that I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting - I look forward to working with all of you next school year.

I am writing from West Africa in Accra, Ghana where I am spending ten weeks of my summer. It is a country alive with such rich, rich culture and traditions, a nation inhibited by unusually friendly, respectful and perpetually smiling people. It is amazing to see, especially given the country's rough history.



Last weekend, I visited Elmina Castle, which the Portuguese built in Cape Coast, Ghana in 1482. It's a magnificent structure - straight out of the movies, with a drawbridge and cannons and tunnels. Its splendor is a direct paradox to the revolting undertakings of the past behind its walls. Elmina is the biggest slave castle in the world having administered the largest slave trade in history - in fact, the ancestors of most European Africans and African Americans today were probably shipped from that castle. I saw the dungeons where hundreds of Africans were locked for months, as they waited for the ships that would take them to Europe and its colonies. It was heartbreaking. Hundreds of slaves were crammed in these dungeons - in a space that was meant to barely fit half the number of occupants. They were fed once a day, locked in absolute darkness, and were not provided toilets or any sort of sewage system. The women were raped by soldiers, priests, and the guests of European governors. Any complaints meant being shackled and starved. People died of disease and despair daily, and their bodies were discarded indifferently. Those who survived the grueling months were those that were shipped away for trade - they were, after all, the strongest ones having survived such an ordeal. Survivors were led to a door that led straight to a ship, as the castle was situated right by the ocean: infamously called the "Door of No Return." No one has ever escaped in the history of the slave trade in that castle. Not one.

Today, less than 150 years later, Ghana is the model of democracy in West Africa and the first African American President of the United States of America is scheduled to tour the same castle in two weeks. Indeed, society has improved by leaps and bounds since the days of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Or has it?

In this very country, one does not need to look far to realize that the internal trafficking of children is one of its biggest challenges. Many Ghanaian children are trafficked from their home villages everyday to work in the fishing industry for cheap labor. This is only one of countless human injustices in this country, in this continent, in this world.

In the same way the incredible architecture of Elmina Castle masks its unspeakable inner workings from years past, are we also blinded by outwardly progressive fronts from real issues of modern day slavery? The difference between physical walls of structures like Elmina and metaphorical walls that stand erect worldwide, is that the latter are harder to break down - because most people do not know they exist.