100 Cruzados Abolition of Slavery, man

Issued to mark the centenary of the Lei Áurea, signed by Princess Isabel on May 13, 1888 — the law that abolished slavery in Brazil, the last country in the Western Hemisphere to do so. Brazil had imported an estimated 4.9 million enslaved Africans over three and a half centuries, more than any other destination in the transatlantic trade. The centenary commemoration was politically charged; 1988 was also the year Brazil ratified its new democratic constitution after two decades of military rule.