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Race and Social Control in Independent Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Thomas Flory
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Extract

Historians of the age of revolution have often pointed out the contradictions inherent in the preservation of slavery within political structures self-defined as liberal. In Latin America many a nineteenth-century apologist stymied the question by citing the countervailing inviolability of property rights as justification for the continued bondage of slaves to their masters; but what, then, explains the discriminatory treatment of free blacks and mulattoes under nominally liberal regimes? Within free society no such ideological impasse can be identified, yet an analogous, if informal, subordination of the rights of the free colored is amply documented. And the analogy may be extended to include the free poor, regardless of color. At this point matters of race and class overlap, raising important questions about social relations and policies that cannot be answered by reference to formal ideology alone.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , November 1977 , pp. 199 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 See, for example,Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1975);Google ScholarMorgan, Edmund S., American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

2 Recent interest in race relations has generated a number of studies dealing with free blacks in the New World: Cohen, David W. and Greene, Jack P. (eds.), Neither Slave nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World (Baltimore, 1972);Google ScholarConrad, Robert, ‘Neither Slave nor Free: The Emancipados of Brazil, 1818’ Hispanic American Historical Review, 53:1 (02. 1973), 50–70;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDegler, Carl, Neither Black nor White. Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (New York, 1971).Google Scholar For comparative purposes, see Berlin, Ira, Slaves without Masters. The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York, 1974);Google ScholarHandler, Jerome S., The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados (Baltimore, 1974).Google Scholar

3 Race is only one of the topics that have been neglected for the early imperial years. The more spectacular events leading to abolition (1888) have tended to draw the attention of students toward the end of the empire and give the erroneous impression that race was little thought of in the earlier period. Artur Ramos's early study of black history in Brazil ignores the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries almost entirely in order to jump directly from the seventeenth century runaway slave community of Palmares to abolition: O Negro na Civilizaçāo Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1971), vol. 1. Thomas Skidmore's valuable work on racial attitudes in Brazil likewise concentrates on the late imperial and national periods: Black into White. Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

4 Klein, Herbert, ‘Nineteenth Century Brazil,’ Neither Slave nor Free (eds., Cohen, and Greene, ), pp. 313–15.Google Scholar

5 The most complete discussion of Brazilian manumission practices is Schwartz, Stuart B., ‘The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil: Bahia, 1684–1745,’ Hispanic American Historical Review, 5:4 (11., 1974), 603–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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11 Ibid., 1825, pp. 1–3. For other examples of official discrimination, see the legislation, inspired by slave rebelliousness in Bahia, which required free blacks to carry passports when. ever they travelled in the province, and that which allowed the provincial president to deport any suspicious liberros without judicial process, or even in spite of acquittal by the regular courts. Brazil, Coleçāo das leis do império brasileiro, 1829, part II, Decree of 20 Mar. 1829; Brazil, Coleçāo das dccisōcs, 1835, p. 1.

12 See for example, Brazil, Coleçāo das decisōes, 1827, Portaria of 29 Dec. 1827; Brazil, Coleçāo das leis, 1832, part II, Decree of 17 July 1832;Google ScholarFlory, Thomas, “Judge and Jury in Imperial Brazil: The Social and Political Dimensions of Judicial Reform, 1822–1848” (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 1975), pp. 58–9, 97–8.Google Scholar Similar examples of racial application of vagrancy statutes may be found in Mörner, Magnus, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston, 1967), p. 131;Google ScholarLombardi, John V., The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela, 1820–1854 (Westport, Conn., 1971), pp. 103–4, 52–3;Google ScholarLowenthal, David, West Indian Societies (New York, 1972), pp. 60, 64 ff.Google Scholar

13 Although these laws were non-specific as to color, the thesis that they were racist in intent is supported by the racial composition of those “recruited” under them for service in the armed forces. One Bahian magistrate rounded up some twenty-four recruits as vadios and desordeiros during his tenure, and at least nineteen of them were black or of mixed blood. Antônio Rodrigues Navarro de Siqueira to President of Province (Bahia), Dec. 1846, Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia, Judiciária/Juizes — Cachoeira, maço 2276. There is general agreement that the armed forces were predominantly black.Google Scholar See Schultz, John, ‘O exército e o império, in de Holanda, Sérgio Buarque, ed., História geral da civilizaçāo brasileira, Tomo II, IV (Sao Paulo, 1971), 242, 254;Google ScholarBrazil, Câmara dos Deputados, Anais (hereafter cited as B-CDA), 1847, I, 35.Google Scholar

14 Brazil, Consiituiçāo politica do império do Brasil, 1824, art. 6, s. 1; art. 94, s. II;Google ScholarMalheiro, Agostinho Marques Perdigāo, A escravidāo no Brasil. Ensaio histórico-juridico-social (Rio, 1866), 1, 180–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 The status of libertos only became an issue in the case of the National Guard (1831), in which freedmen were included by virtue of their citizenship. The law created some confusion precisely because it departed from the Constitution's traditional discriminatory practice against libertos, and Ministers of Justice were often called upon to issue clarifications to qualifying boards which interpreted the law as including only electors, thus excluding freedmen. Jeanne Berrance de Castro, ‘O negro na guarda nacional brasileira,’ Anais do Muscu Paulista, XXIII (1969), 56471; Brazil, Coleçāo dos dccisōes, 1838, Aviso of 12 Feb. 1838. The rights of libertos in the National Guard were defended in Parliament by Antônio Pereira Rebouças. See his Rccordaçōes do vida parlamentar (Rio de Janeiro, 1870), I, 108; II, 258.Google Scholar

16 ‘Justa retribuiçāo dada ao Compadre de Lisboa em desagravo dos Brasileiros ofendidos por várias asserçōes que escreveu na sua Carla em resposta ao Compadre de Belém pelo fliho do Compadre do Rio de Janeiro,’ in Faoro, Rayrnundo, ed., O Debate politico no processo da indepéndencia (Rio de Janeiro, 1973), pp. 4–5, 20–22.Google Scholar

17 On the period, see Armitage, John, História do Brasil (3rd Brazilian edition, Rio dr Janeiro, 1943), pp. 284–316.Google Scholar

18 ‘Morrāo os marotos todos. Viva o nosso a mabilissimo Principe o Ir D. Pedro 2, nosso Patricio. Viva a nossa liberde corn o Nosso Principe cabra como nos. Morra tudo qto hé maroto, e qm Faz o favor de Marotos’. The original of this broadside is enclosed in: Câmara Municipal of Santo Amaro to Provincial President (Bahia), 22 Oct. 1830, Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia, Presidê;ncia da Província, Câmara de Santo Amaro, 1823–36, vol. 1425. Cabra (lit.: goat) was a favorite Category of the day. It carried Connotations of mixed blood and rural background.Google Scholar

19 Nova Luz Brasileira, 5 Feb. 1830.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 9 Mar. 1830.

21 Aurora Fluminense, 28 Feb. 1831; 25 Apr. 1831.Google Scholar

22 ibid., 11 Nov. 1835; 11 Jan. 1832; 21 Jan. 1833; 22 Nov. 1833.

23 O Filho da Terra, 28 Oct. 1832, and as cited in Aurora Fluminense, 11 Nov. 1831; de Castro, Berrance, ‘O negro’, pp. 254–62;Google ScholarVianna, Hélio, Contribuçāo à história da imprensa brasileira (1812–1869) (Rio de Janeiro, 1945), p. 223.Google Scholar

24 O Mulatto, ou O Homem de Cor, 23 Oct. 1833.Google Scholar

25 O Brasileiro Pardo, 21 Oct. 1833.Google Scholar

26 Aurora Fluminense, 11 Nov. 1835; 11 Jan. 1832; 21 Jan. 1833; 25 Oct. 1833; 22 Nov. 1833.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 11 Jan. 1832; 1 April 1835.

28 Apariçāo cxtraordinária, e inesperada do velho venerando ao Rocciro. Dialogo havido entre eles sobre a atual situaçāa poiltica do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro and Recife, 1831), pp. 12–26.Google Scholar

29 O Astro de Minas, 24 Apr. 1832.Google Scholar

30 Vianna, Contribuiçāo, p. 229.Google Scholar

31 Aurora Fluminense, 1 Apr. 1835.Google Scholar

32 O Tamoio Constitucional, quoted in Vianna, Contribuiçāo, p. 272.Google Scholar

33 Armitage, História, pp. 298–320; Monteiro, Tobias do Rego, História do irnpério: O primeiro reinado (Rio de Janeiro, 1946), 2, 298–2;Google Scholarde Sousa, Octávio Tarquínio, A vida de D. Pedro I (2nd ed., Rio de Janeiro, 1954), 3, 891–6.Google Scholar

34 O Brasil, 11 Sept. 1841.Google Scholar

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36 Degler, Neither Black nor White, pp. 224–32.Google Scholar

37 Rebouças's Bahian colleagues were especially abusive. In one parliamentary debate Joāo Maurício Wanderley dismissed Rebouças with a racial metaphor: ‘impure and muddy swamp water, no matter how much it is filtered and purified, always shows its origin.’ B-CDA, 1846, II, 571. On the floor of the Bahian legislative assembly Francisco Gonçalves Martins called him a ‘moleque de rua’. Correio Mercantil (Bahia), 21 Apr. 1838.Google Scholar

38 B-CDA, 1843, II, 821.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 822–6.

40 Such distribution of ‘Africanos livres’, which amounted to an illicit form of slavery, was common in Brazil between 1831 and 1850. Conrad, ‘Neither Slave nor Free’, passim; for the case of Rocha, see Cardim, Elmano, Justiniano José da Rocha (Sāo Paulo, 1964), pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

41 Interestingly enough, Rebouças's concern was not primarily with the general labor shortage that would follow the end of the slave trade, but, more parochially, with the destructive effects that the cessation of the traffic would have on the market for Bahian tobacco and cane liquor in Africa. His plans, proposed on two occasions during the 1840s, were never approved. Rebouças, Antônio P., Recordaçōes, 1, 380–1 (Speech of 11 01. 1843); 11, 236–43 (Speech of 10 June 1846). On racial solidarity, see also, Degler, Neither Black nor White, p. 84.Google Scholar

42 Brazil, Colcçāo das leis. Law of 10 June 1835. The law instituted the death penalty, without appeal, for any slave who assaulted his master, overseer, foreman, or any member of their families.Google Scholar

43 ‘O Sr. Antonio Carlos e os Mulattoes’, in O Brazil, 11 Sept. 1841.Google Scholar

44 da Rocha, Justiniano José to Silva, Firmino Rodrigues, 9 Nov. 1842; 25 Dec. 1842,Google Scholar cited in Mascarenhas, Nelson Lage, Um jornalista do império (Firmino Rodrigucs Silva) (Sāo Paulo, 1961), pp. 78–82.Google Scholar

45 Aurora Fluminense, 1 Apr. 1835.Google Scholar

46 Dealy, Glen, ‘Prolegomena on the Spanish American Political Tradition’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 02. 1968, pp. 37–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Ibid., p. 48.

48 See the description of this component of early Brazilian liberalism in Bastos, Aureliano Cândido Tavares, A provincia. Estudo sobre a descentralizaçāo no Brasil (2nd ed., Sāo Paulo, 1937), pp. 562–3.Google Scholar

49 Aurora Fluminense, 23 Apr. 1829; Jan. 1831; 17 Jan. 1831; 11 Feb. 1831; 8 June 1832. Another contemporary liberal journalist went so far as to posit a ‘classless ’ Brazil: A Malagucta, 13 Feb. 1829. For an extended discussion of liberal social thought, see Flory, ‘Judge and Jury’, pp. 48–61.Google Scholar

50 Aurora Fluminense, 11 Nov. 1831; 11 Jan. 1832; 21 Jan. 1833; 25 Oct. 1833; 1 Apr. 1835; 6 Apr. 1835; 6 Nov. 1835.Google Scholar

51 A striking early example of the disillusionment in liberal circles is Diogo Antônio Feijó's pessimistic article printed in Aurora Fluminense, 26 Jan. 1835 (reprint from O Justiceiro of Sāo Paulo).Google Scholar

52 See one minister's vivid appreciation of the dangers of racial allusion in the Chamber of Deputies, B-CDA, 1843, 11, 843.Google Scholar

53 A late colonial perspective on mixed perceptions of ‘racial’ and ‘class’ control is Schwartz, Stuart B., ‘Elite Politics and the Growth of a Peasantry’, in From Colony to Nation (ed. Russell-Wood, A. J. R., Baltimore, 1975), pp. 133–54.Google Scholar

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55 de Castro, Berrance, ‘O negro’, pp. 167–75; ‘A guarda nacional ’ pp. 281–3.Google Scholar

56 Speech of Manuel Alves Branco, B-CDA, 1835, 11, 267–70. A similar argument for including mulattoes in order to increase their social ties was made by Rebouças, Antônio Pereira, B-CDA, 1843, II, 820.Google Scholar

57 de Castro, Berrance, ‘A guarda nacional’, pp. 281–3. Examples of the master-slave inversion can be found in O Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), 11 May 1841; Correio Mercantil (Bahia), 19 Oct. 1839; O Carapuceiro (Recife), 24 Aug. 1833; B–CDA, 1843, III, 400.Google Scholar

58 Francisco Belisário Soares de Sousa, O sistema eleitoral do Brasil, como funciona, como tem funcionado, como deve ser ref ormado (Rio de Janeiro, 1872).Google Scholar

59 Minister of Justice (Alves Branco) to Provincial President (Bahia), 27 Feb. 1835, Arquivo Pubico do Estado da Bahia, Presidência da Provincia/Ministro da Justiça, vol. 890, f. 74. Compare to Brazil, Minister of Justice (Alves Branco), Relatório, 1835, pp. 16–21.Google Scholar

60 Bastide, Roger, ‘The Development of Race Relations in Brazil’, in Hunter, Guy (ed.), Industrializalion and Race Relations: A Symposium (London, 1965), p. 13.Google Scholar