Growing up in Portugal's capital Lisbon, Beatriz Gomes Dias says she couldn't identify with the people she saw on TV, in ads or in museums. Her parents were immigrants from Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in West Africa. There were other black Portuguese, but Gomes Dias says she felt invisible.
"I remember being a child, looking at the majority of Portuguese people and not being like them, and not having a place for me and people like me," she says.
So, the 47-year-old high school biology teacher and her anti-racism association Djass proposed to erect a memorial to colonial slaves in a grassy square along Lisbon's port, where ships once unloaded their human cargo.
Gomes Dias says Portuguese history often portrays slaves as no more than goods for sale. Her Afro-descendant group Djass wants to honor their ancestors who were enslaved and trafficked by the Portuguese.
The memorial would be the first of its kind in Portugal to acknowledge the country's role in the colonial slave trade, according to Gomes Dias, who envisions the monument in the form of a statue or sculpture.