The excavation of Rio de Janeiro's Valongo Wharf created a stir of controversy as Brazil's past black slavery came to light.

Rio's Valongo Wharf, once known as one of the world's largest slave ports, was excavated in 2011. The area, a wide archeological pit encompassing a litter of paving stones, marked the spot where enslaved African women and men numbering more than a half million went ashore after long and perilous travels across the Atlantic.

In a report by Fox News Latino, what's causing the debate about the unearthing of Rio de Janeiro's Valongo Wharf was about the way black heritage landmarks were taken care of in Brazil. The digging in the slave port was part of a $2 billion strategy called "Porto Maravilha" or "Marvelous Port" which was designed at attracting big business to the neighborhood.

For the developers who were excavating in Valongo Wharf, they insisted that they have exhausted more than enough effort just by the mere fact that they have unearthed the site; however, black activists in Brazil said more should be done to confer what's due to the historic slave port.

Rio's Ipeafro Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute head Elisa Larkin Nascimento said, "The fact is that in Brazil sites dealing with African heritage are just less important. It's a very neat statement of Brazilian racism. They are not interested in the history of Africans in Brazil."

Despite historians and others learning about Rio's Valongo Wharf's location, it was not until the multi-billion "Porto Maravilha" project that started five years ago that an extraordinarily well-preserved area of the slave port was divulged.

Head of Rio's municipal cultural heritage agency, Washington Fajardo stated the choice to bury Valongo Wharf was "deliberate." He continued, "I believe it was a strategy to erase the memory of the practice of slavery."

Valongo Wharf was built in 1811 to take over a principal slave port and was literally buried underneath paving stones that were renovated in 1843 to receive the Italian Princess Teresa Cristina Maria de Bourbon, the bride of Brazil's Emperor Dom Pedro II. For her honor, it was given the name Empress Wharf, as per BBC News.

According to TimesDaily.Com, Brazilians were long hesitant to face the shadow of slavery that happened in the country. With Brazil's dark-skinned majority at the lowest of the social and economic pyramid, the legacy of slavery still casts a gloom over Rio de Janeiro.

Nevertheless, a number of Brazilians see their country as institutionalized racism and prejudice free. It was only in recent years that talks about slavery have been brought up into public discourse.

Meanwhile, American landscape architect Sara Zewde has collaborated with Fajardo to preserve the site which has a "lot of physical markers of slavery."

Some of Zewde's plan included embellished with fluid shapes that echo the "rodas," or circles, where samba music and the traditionally black Brazilian martial art of capoeira were engaged by the people, a promenade around the old wharf and African plants, such as the baobab tree.

Rio's Valongo Wharf's importance transcends Brazil. For Zewde, "It's not just about the black movement, it's not just about Rio or Brazil. It's about world history."