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Customary Rightholders and Legal Claimants to Land in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1870-1890*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Nancy Priscilla Smith Naro
Nancy Priscilla Smith Naro*
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, Brazil
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Extract

The transition from slave to free labor in the Americas involved many and varied forms of internal labor and land adjustments which affected slaves, landless farmers, and large scale producers in rural areas. Unlike Haiti and the United States South, the Brazilian process of emancipation was gradual and did not involve violent structural ruptures with the past. The Land Law of 1850, the Law of the Free Womb of 1871 and the 1885 Sexagenarian Law marked fundamental phases in an ongoing process of state participation in the organization of the free labor market, which culminated in Abolition on 13 May 1888, and the onset of the Republic on 15 November of the following year. Current analyses of the late nineteenth century emphasize continuity and define the state as its own agent, embarking on a course of conservative modernization which unfolded during the process of transition from the liberalism of a nineteenth-century empire to the interventionist Republic which was ushered in, in 1889. The planter class, joined with emerging but weak Brazilian industrial and financial sectors and upheld by the military, contributed to an Estado Oligárquico, in Marcelo Carmagnani's terminology, linked by coffee production into the world economy as a flourishing dependent peripheral economy. But the process, which until recently was associated with the coffee export sector and its relation to urbanization and industrialization, has now taken on broader dimensions. A developed domestic economy, composed of a complex and sophisticated internal food supply network, operated alongside the export economy throughout the nineteenth century. Although unstudied from the political perspective of small-scale food producers who were displaced by the coffee economy, the broader issue of food provision could not be dissociated from conservative modernization, the basic issues of which would be carried forth during the course of the First Republic in the form of “Ruralismo.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , April 1992 , pp. 485 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1992

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Footnotes

*

Revisions of earlier versions of this paper resulted from the useful comments of colleagues in the graduate program in História Social da Agricultura, Departamento de História, Universidade Federal Fluminense, and from the helpful observations of Professors Larissa V. Brown, Mary Karasch, Steven Topik, João Réis, Célia Azevedo, Nancy Fitch, José Murilo de Carvalho, Gail Triner and Thomas Skidmore. In addition to expressing my appreciation to them, special thanks is due to Professor Maria Yedda L. Linhares, for her valuable suggestions and enthusiastic support of research in this area, not to mention her generous offer of housing in Vassouras. Senhor Eliseo of the Arquivo Nacional of Rio de Janeiro, Professor Sônia Mota of the recently created Ordem dos Advogados documentation center in the Forum of Vassouras, and Dona Mercedes Simão, owner of the Cartório do Primeiro Ofício de Notas do Rio Bonito graciously provided research space and assistance in locating documents for this project. Research grants from the Conselho Nacional de Pesquisas enabled me and undergraduate research assistants, Ana Cristina de Souza Bouças, Flávia Giglio Barbosa, Margarete Pereira da Silva and Myriam Bessa to examine materials in Rio de Janeiro, Niterói, Rio Bonito, and Vassouras.

References

1 See Gebara, Ademir, “The Transition from Slavery to the Free Labour Market in Brazil, 1871–1888: Slave Legislation and the Organization of the Labour Market” (Ph.D. diss., London School of Economics, 1984).Google Scholar Reis, Eustáquio and Reis, Elisa, “As Elites Agrárias e a Abolição da Escravidão no Brasil,” Dados, 31:3 (1988), 309–341.Google Scholar

2 Pereira Reis, Elisa M., “Poder Privado e Construção de Estado sob a Primeira República” (Unpublished paper, CPDOC, 1989).Google Scholar Reis, and Reis, , “Elites Agrárias e a Abolição.” Topik, Steven, The Political Economy of the Brazilian State 1889–1930 (Austin: University of Texas, 1987).Google Scholar Pereira Reis, Elisa M., “The Agrarian Roots of Authoritarian Modernization in Brazil, 1880–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981).Google Scholar de Carvalho, José Murilo, O Impèrio das Sombras (Rio de Janeiro: Vértice/IUPERJ, 1988).Google Scholar

3 Carmagnani, Marcelo, Estado y Sociedad en Ameríca Latina 1850–1930 (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1984).Google Scholar

4 “Ruralismo” was a broad based movement in civil society which gained force during the First Republic and focussed on the countryside as the basis for conservative modernization. As it unfolded, it pressured the state to adopt such incentives as diversified production, agricultural mechanization, and guarantees of small property to keep rural labor rural. Mendonçã, Sônia Regina, “Ruralismo, Agricultura, Poder e Estado na Primeira República” (Ph.D. diss., Universidade de São Paulo, 1990).Google Scholar

5 Júnior, Caio Prado, História Econômica do Brasil (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988), chaps. 16–17.Google Scholar

6 Recent studies of Minas Gerais and Pernambuco confirm similar tendencies. Duarte Lanna, Ana Lúcia, “O café e o trabalho ‘livre’ em Minas Gerais - 1870/1920,” Revista Brasileira de História, 6:12 (março/agosto, 1986), 73–88.Google Scholar Palacios, Guillermo, “Campesinato e Escravidão: Urna Proposta de Periodização para a História dos Cultivadores Pobres Livres no Nordeste Oriental do Brasil, c. 1700–1875,” Dados, 30:3 (1987), 345–353.Google Scholar

7 For Rio de Janeiro, see Sienes, Robert W., “Grandeza ou Decadência? O Mercado de Escravos e a Economia Cafeeira da Província do Rio de Janeiro, 1850–1888” (UNICAMP, 1984).Google Scholar For São Paulo, see Hall, Michael, “The Origins of Mass Immigration in Brazil, 1871–1914” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1969.)Google Scholar Stolcke, Verena, Coffee Planters, Workers and Wives: Class Conflict and Gender Relations on São Paulo Plantations, 1850–1980 (London: Macmillan Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Minas Gerais, see Lanna, Duarte, “O café,” Revista Brasileira de História, 6:12 (março/agosto 1986), 73–88.Google Scholar Lanna, Duarte, A Transformação do Trabalho (Campinas/Brasília, Unicamp/CNPq, 1988).Google Scholar Blasen-heim, Peter L., “A Regional History of the zona da mata in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1870–1906” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1982).Google Scholar For Pernambuco, see de Mattos Monteiro, Hamilton, Crise Agrária e Luta de Classes. O Nordeste Brasileiro entre 1850 e 1889 (Brasília: Horizonte Editora Limitada, 1981);Google Scholar G. Palacios, op. cit.. An evaluation of the Domar hypothesis with reference to the land/labor ratio in Brazil during slavery and the transition to free labor is found in Corrêa Lago, Luiz Aranha, “O surgimento da escravidão e a transição para o trabalho livre no Brasil: um modelo teórico simples e urna visão de longo prazo,” Revista Brasileira de Economia, 42:4 (out./dez., 1988), 317–369.Google Scholar See also, Reis and Reis, op. cit.

8 These categories are not reproduced in official censuses. The 1872 census, for example, lists lavrador (farmer), criados e jornaleiros (servants and day workers), criadores (cattle raisers), serviço doméstico (domestic service), and sem profissão (no specific occupation) but the census does not breakdown freemen by race. Court cases make sporadic reference to race, age, and marital status, but eviction records do not list the race of most of the litigants. Correlations of renters with free whites or squatters and sharecroppers with a mixed racial or social group, such as ex-slaves or free men and women of color, is possible through the use of birth and death records. However, the matching of these with the available local documentation on land and judicial disputes in the two municípios investigated in this study, has not produced conclusive results.

9 The Restinga is the micro-region which extends from São Gonçalo outside of Niterói east to Macaé. Studies of transition from slave to free labor in this micro-region are recent, and in the cases of São Gonçalo, Araruama, Capivary, and Rio Bonito suggest that coffee, sugar, manioc, and other farm produce from these towns were channeled into the internal market which supplied foodstuffs to Niterói and to the Imperial Court in Rio de Janeiro. A listing of these studies can be found in Naro, Nancy Priscilla S., “Rio Studies Rio: Ongoing studies of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,” the Americas, 43:4 (April 1987), 429–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Coffee produced in the Restinga region was of inferior quality to that produced in the uplands and not recommended for export. See Laerne, Van Delden, Le Brésil et Java, Rapport sur la culture do Café en Amérique, Asie et Afrique (Paris: Martinus Nishoff/Chellnei, 1885), chap. 10.Google Scholar

10 In an analysis of marriage records between 1873 and 1880, Vilma Almada found sizeable numbers of migrants from the province of Rio de Janeiro in the coffee-producing município of Cachoeiro de Itapemirim in the south of Espírito Santo. Of the 94 who listed their province of origin, 47.5 percent were born in Vassouras.

11 Stein, Stanley, Vassouras. A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1890. The Roles of Planter and Slave in a Changing Plantation Society (New York: Atheneum, 1970).Google Scholar

12 Stein, op. cit., chap. 1.

13 An early discussion of the 1850 Land Law is in Dean, Warren, “Latifundia and Land Policy in Nineteenth Century Brazil,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 51 (1971), 606–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Gorender, Jacob, O escravismo colonial (4th ed.; Sáo Paulo: Atica, 1985), pp. 396–402.Google Scholar Emília Viotti da Costa emphasizes that, whereas the intent of the law may have been to motivate occupation and cultivation of land, the condition of purchase limited access to moneyed interests. See The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1985), chap. 4. Current interpretations of the impact of the 1850 Land Law in the province of Rio de Janeiro support Viotti da Costa’s view. See Gomes de Castro, Hebe Maria, Ao Sul da História (Sáo Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986).Google Scholar According to another recent study, the 1850 Land Law reflected the interests of the coffee planters of the Central South of Brazil. The discussions reflected concern over the profound repercussions such a law would have on the agrarian structure of the entire country. In 1854 the law was published and the Repartição de Terras Públicas was established. The law empowered parish priests to register lands after local civil servants located and measured the claims. Police officers and judges were responsible for informing the government of the existence and location of public lands. See de Carvalho, José Murilo, Teatro das Sombras: A Política imperial (Rio de Janeiro: IUPERJ/Vértice, 1988).Google Scholar

14 Land invasions continue to this day on the last frontiers of Mato Grosso, Goiás, and the vast Amazonas region.

15 Van Delden Laerne, op. cit., p. 273. Stein, op. cit., p. 13. Stein does not cite the official report but the term for public lands was probably terras devolutas, meaning that public, or government, lands were all occupied in Vassouras by 1843.

16 Stein, , Vassouras, p. 13.Google Scholar A Brazilian Histórian of Vassouras also notes that in the 1840s anil dye production and pig raising were abandoned in favor of coffee planting. Raposo, Inácio, História de Vassouras (2nd ed.; Niterói: SEEC, 1978), p. 39.Google Scholar

17 There is one volume of Parochial Land Registers for each of the parishes of Nossa Conceição da Conceição, Paty de Alferes, Sacra Familia de Tinguá, and Mendes. Arquivo Público do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. (Hereafter APERJ.) R.J. Niterói, Registro Paroquial de Térras, Vassouras. In all four parishes of Vassouras claimants often listed their property as having been part of a sesmaria. In vol. 3, Sacra Familia de Tinguá, it is possible to reconstruct sesmarias from the extant registers through family last name and through the recorded dimensions and limits of the family property.

18 See de Siqueira, Alexandre Joaquim, Memória Histórica do Município de Vassouras (Rio de Janeiro, 1852).Google Scholar

19 Deeds of purchase attest to the expansion of the occupied areas of the município and death records from a later period attribute settlement to farmers who were moving into Rio Bonito from neighboring munípios. Local planters supplied the lumber and underwrote the costs of bridges and other local transportation improvements. A local ordinance offering compensation of one milréal for each dead snake suggests that deforestation was going on at a rapid rate and, robbed of their natural habitat, snakes were invading settled areas. APERJ, Decreto Provincial, 1129, 8 de Fevereiro 1859. Coleção de Léis, Decretos e Regulamentos da Província do Rio de Janeiro em 1859 (Rio de Janeiro: Typografia do Correio Mercantil, 1859).

20 Data is missing for a significant percentage of landholdings. When compared with neighboring municípios, and measured by lot as opposed to landholder, small landholdings in Rio Bonito occupied 65 percent as compared with 43 percent for São Gonçalo, 46 percent for Capivary, and 52.3 percent for Araruama.

21 APERJ, Registro Paroquial de Terras, Rio Bonito, vol. 1, (1854–56), Registro of Felício Jose de Mattos.

22 APERJ, Registro Paroquial de Terras, Rio Bonito, vol. 1 (1854–56), Registro of Alexandre Jose Pereira.

23 “Report on Agriculture in Brazil during 1887 and 1888,” Britain, Great, Diplomatic and Consular Reports-Annual Series, No. 498, p. 3.Google Scholar Cited in A. Gebara, op. cit., p. 53.

24 Arquivo Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (Hereafter ANRJ.), Rio Bonito, Autor: Francisco da Silva Figueredo, 1849/52. The appeals cases to the Tribunal de Relação have not heretofore been used in historical research and were chosen as representative of issues which could not be resolved at the municipal level. A sampling of the cases in which slaves, land, and debt are at issue are dealt with in Smith Naro, Nancy Priscilla, “Límites de comportamento aceitável e mecanismos de dominação social no meio rural brasileiro, 1850–1890,” Cadernos Afro-Asiáticos, 15 (junho 1988), 34–42.Google Scholar

25 ANRJ, Tribunal da Relação da Corte, Vassouras, Autor: Conselheiro José Clemente Pereira, Libelo, 1839. Fifteen of the fifty-six cases concerned land disputes.

26 RBCPON, Inventàrio, António Maria do Espírito Santo, 1850.

27 Tallies of fixed property, slaves, improvements, and moveable property in postmortem inventories in nineteenth-century Fluminense municípios of Paraíba do Sul, Capivary, Campos, Rio Bonito, and Vassouras reveal that, until the decade of the 1870s, slaves were worth proportionately more than other forms of property. See Stein, op. cit., fig. 5, p. 226. Fragoso, Gomes de Castro, Naro, and Castro Faria have confirmed the proportionately greater value of slaves on all production units at this time.

28 Stein, op. cit., pp. 224–225.

29 Couty, Louis, Le Brésil en 1884, pp. 95–96, 196–198.Google Scholar Cited in Stein, op. cit., p. 244. Debt obligations between coffee planters of the Paraíba Valley and their creditors are dealt with in detail by Sweigart, Joseph Earl, “Financing and Marketing Brazilian Export Agriculture: The Coffee Factors of Rio de Janeiro, 1850–1888” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1980).Google Scholar

30 Postmortem inventories from Rio Bonito and Vassouras indicate that the amount of indebtedness increased during the 1850–90 period. Further confirmation of this is given in Motta, Màrcia M., “Pelas Bandas d’Além: fronteira fechada e arrendatários escravistas em uma região policultura, 1808–88” (Master’s thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 1989), chap. 4.Google Scholar

31 Stein, op. cit., p. 60.

32 RBCPON, Ação de Despejo, 1876. Francisco Duarte de Almeida e Silva e mulher. Exchange and sale of “situações” among farmers without the prior consent of landowners was common in the neighboring município of Capivary. See Gomes de Castro, Ao Sul da História, chaps. 3–4.

33 Vassouras, OAB/CPOV, Livro de Escrituras, 1888. Contract between Commendador Bernardino Alves da Cruz and renter Antônio Ferreira Gomes, Fazenda Ribeirão de Aliança, p. 114. Rental agreements between Quintiniano Gomes Coelho, owner of a small farm, and renter Américo Gomes Coelho, p. 124. Rental agreements between owner Lieutenant Colonel Alfredo Carlos de Avellar, and renters Captain Ignácio de Avellar Werneck and Teophilo de Avellar Werneck, p. 128. Rental agreement between Paulino Vieira Pacheco and Manoel da Silva Sobrinho, p. 26v. Rental agreement between Luiz José da Silveira and Arthur Alves Werneck and José Alves Rocha Werneck. See also rental agreements between Carlos Caetano Alves and Manoel Martins da Silva and Alfredo Júlio Teixeira de Moura, p. 86; Eugenio de Avellar Correa and Luiz José da Silveira, p. 121. Livro de Escrituras, 1889. Contract of João Roza Medeiros, Paulino Vieira Pacheco, Luiz José da Silveira, Manuel Martins da Silva.

34 RBCPOV, 1870, Inventário, Albino Cardoso Franco.

35 Entry for Bonito, Rio, “Se o incentivo do bello tocasse um dia o coração deste bom povo de lavradores, so dados ao trabalho do solo …” in Laemmert, Eduardo von, Almanak Administrativo, Mercantil e Industrial da Corte e Província do Rio de Janeiro, 1875 (Rio de Janeiro, 1880), p. 201.Google Scholar

36 CPORB, 1854, Inventàrio, Coronel Joaquim A. César de Andrade; 1854, José de Cruz Lima (contained in 1880, Ação de Manutenção e Posse, José Victorino de Almeida e Souza); 1855, José Luiz Dias Delgado; 1860, João Villela Pereira; 1865, Manuel Moreira de Carvalho and Alferes Bernardo José de Morae; 1870, Albino Cardoso Franco; 1878, João Francisco; 1889, João José Marinho; 1897, Capitão Marcílio de Mendonça Santos.

37 CPONRB, Inventário João José Marinho, 1889.

38 For a discussion of planter class attitudes towards “national” labor, see de Azevedo, Célia Marinho, Onda Negra Medo Branco. O Negro no imaginário das Elites. Século XIX (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1987), intro. and chap. 2.Google Scholar

39 See Vassouras, OAB/CPON, Despejos, 1835–98. Many cases were appealed and most of these were not settled in court, suggesting that concessions were being made on the part of both contenders.

40 Vassouras, OAB/CPON, Livro de Manutenção e Posse, José Antônio da Rosa e mulher, suplicantes, 1895.

41 RBCPON, 1873, Ação de força velha, João Antonio Duarte Silva e por si e … ; 1876, Ação de despejo, Francisco Duarte de Almeida e Silva e mulher; 1881, Ação de Manutenção, Justiniano José da Fonseca; 1882, Ação de despejo, Alvaro José de Lacerda; 1889, Ação de despejo, Tenente Joaquim Marciano Alves de Castro; 1895, Ação de despejo, Miguel Alves Pereira. In this last case the value of the rent was paid by weekly labor. The renter refused to continue to work and was evicted after receiving compensation for extra hours of work and the value of his improvements; 1896, Ação para pagamento de benfeitorías, Adão Benjamin Paixão; 1896, Ação de indenização de benfeitorías, Rafael Martins Gomes; 1896, Indenização de benfeitorías, Càndido Luiz Mendes; 1898, Ação de despejo, Geraldino Vieira de Moráis.

42 A. Gebara, op. cit., p. 63.

43 RBCPOV, Ação de despejo, 1879, Luís José da Costa e Dona Ana Bernardina da Costa.

44 CPONRB, 1897; 1898, Ação de despejo, José Pereira dos Santos Silva.

45 Raposo, , História de Vassouras, p. 243.Google Scholar

46 I cannot explain why this increase occurred.

47 Vassouras, Biblioteca da Câmara Municipal, O Agricultor, quoted in Navidades, 9 February 1888. Stein, op. cit., p. 252. Dean, Warren, Rio Claro. Um Sistema Brasileiro de Grande Lavoura, 1820–1920 (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1977).Google Scholar Sweigart, Financing and Marketing. A study of birth, baptism and death registers in Paraíba do Sul reveals the sharp reduction in the non-white population in the aftermath of emancipation. Lugão Rios, Ana Maria, “Familia e Transição: Familias Negras em Paraiba do Sul, 1872–1920” (Master’s thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 1990).Google Scholar Brazilian writer, Paulo Coelho Neto, presented a romanticized version of the decadence of the land and the misery of the principal mainstay of coffee production, the slave. According to the observations of his fictitious ex-coffee fazenda slave, Sabino in the romance, Banzo (Porto: Livraria Chardon, 1927), p. 26: “the blacks were dying of starvation on the roads, they had nowhere to live, nobody wanted them, and they were persecuted. Even the land was ungrateful to them, but it was dying, ending. This was its revenge.”

At the same time, Sabino rejected the immigrant (colono), who arrived penniless in Brazil, but soon congregated to gamble, drink, and to sell his share of the coffee harvest to the Portuguese tavern owner, (pp. 19–35)

48 Padilha, Sílvia Fernandes, Da Monocultura a diversificação econômica: Um estudo de caso de Vassouras, 1880–1930 (Master’s thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 1977).Google Scholar Vassouras continued to produce coffee, and only in the 1920s did cattle raising make large contributions to the local economy.

49 An indication of the inaccuracies incurred in the comparison of the 1872 and 1890 censusses is reflected in the high annual rates of growth for Sumidoro, 9.2 percent; Pádua, 5.7 percent; and Itaperuna, 5.2 percent. Other problems emerge in the comparison of the 1890 and 1920 censuses. In this period, Sumidouro’s município boundaries underwent alteration and the population decreased. In Pádua, the annual rate of growth was 3.1 percent and 2.9 percent in Itaperuna.

50 A railroad link between Vassouras and Petrópolis was projected in 1890. Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (Hereafter BNRJ.) Coleção de Léis, Decretos, Altos Decisóes do Governo da província do Rio de Janeiro, Decreto no. 85, 17 de maio de 1890.

51 These included arrowroot, rice, unrefined sugar, potatoes, dried peas, broad beans, pigeon peas, dried vegetables, manioc flour, and eggs. Additional reductions were forthcoming on squash, manioc root, peanuts, castor bean husks, onions, and cornmeal. BNRJ, Coleção de Léis, Decretos, Altos e Decretos do governo da província do Rio de Janeiro, Deliberação Provincial de 23 de junho de 1882. In 1887 the railroad was sold to the Leopoldina Railway.

52 These death records and inventories do not specify the labor conditions. CPONRB, Forum, Registro Civil, Livras de óbitos, 1888–1910. See OAB/CPON, Inventário, Rafael Rispoli e Maria Rosa da Conceição, 1900. A cursory reading of labor contracts in the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland revealed that there was an attempt in some parts of the United States South to convince ex-slaves to make contract arrangements with their former owners. In one case from Louisiana in 1867, freedmen refused to contract for one year since they preferred working where and when they pleased. According to a member of the Freedmen’s Bureau, mobility had a higher priority than the “lodging and the stability to produce children,” which a one year contract would offer. (Freedmen and Southern Society Project, University of Maryland, File A–8611.)

53 RBCPON, Livro de Notas, n. 24–47. Escritura de Compra e Venda, 1870–1920. See de Castro, Gomes, Ao Sul da História, pp. 166–188.Google Scholar