Paper short abstract:

The objective of this paper is to understand the relations stabilished between juízes de fora and the officials in the City Council Vila do Carmo . We will focus mainly on the path made by those officials, in wich these demonstrate their connections with the councilmen and local powerful people.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is still the beginning for what I intend to accomplish in my Doctor's degree thesis which is currently ongoing in Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. The general objective is to verify, through trajectories of people named by the king for the position of juiz de fora in Vila do Carmo (Mariana/Brasil), between 1730 and 1777, how they stabilished themselves locally in terms of social, political and economical interactions with the councilmen, analysing through such trajectories if there was any form of insertion in networks of local Power.

The first nomination of an juiz de fora for Minas Gerais happened in Vila do Carmo in 1730. Because he was a foreign official, he was inicially nominated with the purpose of breaking the bounds among locally influential people and, mainly, to consolidate the Royal interests in with the City Council. It's noticed, for all the documents previously consulted,that only two quarrels involved the councilmen in Vila do Carmo and the juiz de fora in Mariana between 1730 and 1777.

Such statement is interesting for the development of this paper, for his arrival would generate conflicts with either the local population or even other Royal officials. The statement shows that, even at first, the officials weren't an inconvenient to the member of the City Council. To sum it up, what is observed with the work with the documental sources is that the judges often did not accomplished what was designated in the Ordenações do Reino.