"Queimada means 'burnt'. In fact, the Portuguese had to burn the island to put down the resistance of the Indians when they took it. And since the natives were all killed they had to bring in slaves from Africa to work the cane fields. That large flat white rock you see offshore is called Cemitério Branco dos Negroes because the bodies of slaves who died during the trip over were thrown there. They say they lost nearly half of the poor beggars. And that exceptional whiteness there seems in fact to derive from the dust of their bones which have penetrated into and merged with the rocks."
Marlon Brando has said that of all the movies he's starred in, Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn! (1969) is his favourite. The quote above is from the film's opening scene, when the captain of the ship on which Brando's character is travelling describes the Caribbean island and its colonial history.
Burn! is considered by Brando biographer Peter Manso to be one of the actor's unsuccessful 1960s films, but others disagree. Here is Amy Taubin's more recent Film Comment review.
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