Paper short abstract:

This communication proposes, therefore to discuss the political action of black women occupying positions in the Catholic associations.

Paper long abstract:

The catholic societies historiography is quite extensive, especially that related to Africans and Creoles experiences on reconnection to their community ties, lost during the African diaspora. The black fraternities were observed as spaces of ethnic disputes, with males holding political power. As a rule, however, manager boards were composed of male and female members. Queens of Congo, judges, chamberlains, and caretakers were crowned alongside men. Research on slavery, nevertheless, pointed out that such female positions were merely honorific. In the nineteenth century, nonetheless, black women, particularly those from the Coast of West Africa, came to have some prominence in the space of those institutions, since they were the greater church contributors donating jewels, buying catacombs in the churches and even being those who bequeathed goods in testament for the confraternities. Of course this enabled them, during life time, to assure some influence. That said, keeping in mind they were not only more numerous but also socially influent, to what extent spots on a female manager board were simply honorific positions? This is a questioning that guides the comparison amidst black women as managers in black fraternities in the 19th century Recife. This communication proposes, therefore, to discuss the political action of black women occupying positions in the Catholic associations. In this first phase, the Electoral Books of Blacks´ Rosary Fraternity of St. Anthony of Recife are being analyzed, assembling the ethnic profile of those women between the decades of 1830 and 1870.

Paper short abstract:

Catharina Juliana was an enslaved woman who lived in Angola during the 18th century and was deeply immersed in an Atlantic World. Her experiences enlighten us about its movements. This paper will explore her life, the resistance strategies possible in her position and the complex choices she made.

Paper long abstract:

Catharina Juliana was an enslaved woman who lived in Angola during the first decades of the XVIII century. Born in Luanda, she later moved to Ambaca, an important town in the transatlantic commercial routes. She was accompanying her master and lover João Pereira da Cunha. He was the "Capitão-mor" of Ambaca, and thus controlled the commercial traffic from the Angolan hinterland to the cost and vice versa. In 1749 both of them were accused of heresy and sorcery by the portuguese Inquisition. In 1750 they were arrested in Lisbon.

It is possible to trace a lot of Catharina's life based on the archive traces left by the inquisition records, where she is described as a black woman, a slave, a heretic, a sorcerer. All categories that should be historicized. To accuse Catharina of heresy is to confirm the permanence of the central African religious rites and spirituality. To treat her as a sorcerer -usually a womans’ crime - is to constrict a African woman to a European femininity, and to treat her as an enslaved woman, when it's made clear she was freed, is an act of violence. All of this possible because of her race, gender and vulnerability. Nonetheless Catharina still exercised her agency and constructed her survival and resistance strategies utilizing her knowledge of both Portuguese and central African traditions, making her an skilled player in an Atlantic context. In this paper intend to retell and analyse her experiences in an Atlantic context. To put microhistory in movement.

Paper short abstract:

This communication aims to present some experiences of enslaved mothers in an Eastern Northeast province of Brazil (Paraíba, the 19th century) and their strategies for maintaining their family relationships.

Paper long abstract:

In this panel, I propose to analyze some of the enslaved women´s strategies to maintain their parental relations, especially with their daughters/sons in the 19th century Paraíba province, a period marked by the zenith and crisis of slavery in Brazil. It has as theoretical contribution the Social History of Culture, which, since the 1980s, has enabled innovations in the production of historical research, having as perspective the "history seen from below", thus making visible the experiences of ordinary people, their historical agencies, although they were treated before as a second viewpoint by traditional historiography. However, they fought the structural limits, the social hierarchies and the complexities that these social subjects faced in a slave society and they could not always conquer their freedom, but negotiation and conflict were present in social relations to have a relative autonomy in the slave system. Therefore, from the analysis of contents of several historical sources (ecclesiastical documents, wills, inventories and newspapers), it was possible to make up a narrative that demonstrates the protagonism of Brazilian enslaved mothers, emphasizing their family bonds and their actions of resistance to the slave system. This new historical knowledge in the teacher´s and student´s training courses, aiming at innovation in education. Finally, it is important to highlight that the topic of enslaved women/mothers is part of a larger and institutional investigation, entitled the African Diaspora and the Black Sociabilities in the Nineteenth Century, developed at the Federal University of Paraíba.

Paper short abstract:

This texts examines some expressions of Black, Afro-Atlantic female bodies, stemming from the narratives by enslaved women or by daughters of slaves, who used them as means of self-representation: Mary Prince, Harriet A. Jocobs, Esperança Garcia and particularly Sojourner Truth and Maria Firminia dos Reis.

Paper long abstract:

The preset text aims at examining the expressions of women who were excluded from history and from the literary field, particularly those produced between the XVIII and the XIX century, through theoretical tools that combine Literary Studies, Atlantic History Studies and Cultural Studies. The main focus of this research is the discourse by women coming from the African diaspora and by their descendants, starting with a closer look to the expression of Black female bodies such as Mary Prince, Harriet A. Jocobs, Esperança Garcia and particularly Sojourner Truth and Maria Firminia dos Reis – enslaved women or daughters of slaves who learned to read and write, and found, through this, a means of self-representation. To this effect, I seek to reflect on subaltern subjects stemming from their narratives, having as referential the two levels of expression mentioned by Gayatri Spivak: the expression through symbolic/artistic products, and the political expression. Through a laborious process of self-representation, these Black women re-invent themselves and stir the discussion on themes such as new subjectivities, movements of plural bodies, power and violence within the strategies of representation and self-representation. Hence, the intention is to trigger a debate about the practices and expressions that are handled from a certain space, that of the Black enslaved woman, offering an overview on the negotiations carried out around their rights, through narratives that circulate in different languages and in different areas of the Black Atlantic, also highlighting the features that they share according to a rule that transcends borders, societies and the specificities of cultures.

Paper short abstract:

The objective of this study is to analyze the persistence of African practices and customs in the Benedictine properties of Pernambuco (Brazil) in the 19th century.

Paper long abstract:

This study aims to analyze the persistence of African practices and customs in Benedictine properties of Pernambuco (Brazil) in the 19th century. Information found in the Benedictine documentation contributes on the reflection of the slavery resistance against a religious order that sought to control the bodies, behavior and beliefs of their enslaved ones. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the Benedictine Congregation of Brazil gradually increased its patrimony, becoming one of the most powerful religious orders of Portuguese America. Among their possessions, countless slaves were incorporated through donations or purchase. At the same time, the Benedictines created strategies to encourage the vegetative growth of their enslaved ones. Therefore, in the 19th century, their rural properties had a largely Crioula slave population. Even with few African living in their properties and coercive measures implemented by the monks, several clues prove that African culture resisted, as evidenced by batuques (generic name for some rhythms and dances accompanied by percussion) and the orgies reported by Benedictines. Other "excesses" have also been recorded, such as polygamy and curandeirismo (healing practice performed by a witchdoctor). These customs may have been perpetuated throughout the 19th century due to the inclusion of Africans who were bought in times of low prices, not acquired by the monks, but by slaves who became slave owners.

Paper short abstract:

This work aims at offering reflections and analysis conducted on enslaved bodies – with regard to the diseases that affected them – during the Empire of Brazil of the nineteenth century, a time of contention between the different groups mastering the arts of healing during the XIX century.

Paper long abstract:

This work aims at offering reflections and analysis conducted on enslaved bodies – about to the diseases that affected them – during the Empire of Brazil of the nineteenth century, a time of controversies between the different groups mastering the arts of healing during the XIX century.

In order to do this, various knowledge has been mobilized about the healing of diseased bodies since the arrival of the Jesuits, in 1549, in that time’s Portuguese America. The diasporic dimension enabled and increased the experiences, the exchanges and the notions within the practices of healing and care of ill bodies. The scenarios that came up through the XIX century, not only at court, but mostly in the nearby rural areas, provide the means for a significant study of the medical view of such matters. It is worth mentioning the relevance, within such scenarios, of traditional healers, sorcerers, obstetricians, and bleeders who contended Black, mulatto, white, poor, enslaved, freed and free spaces. Yet, how do we ought to think the African enslaved body in this context? Medical narratives – from Brazil and abroad – favor the access to such knowledge (from Africa as well as from Europe), the peculiarities, the worldviews and the views of Africa that they conveys. The Manual do Fazendeiro ou Tratado Doméstico sobre as enfermidades dos Negros (1839) allows us to access the theories about enslaved bodies of Jean-Baptiste Alban Imbert, a French doctor member of the imperial court. Reading between the lines of this Manual one can find knowledge of anatomy, with detailed descriptions of African bodies, of their origin, culture, their major diseases, medicines, treatments and cures: dilated explanations regarding the micro and macro universes of the society of that time.

Paper short abstract:

The present work is a study of the narratives of slaves of Brazil, written by slaves themselves in the African diaspora, we analyse the autobiographic texts and testimonies as the "Letter" of Esperança Garcia, 1770; the poetry of Luiz Gama; An Interesting Narrative of Mahommah G. Baquaqua.

Paper long abstract:

The present work is a study of the narratives of slaves of Brazil, written by slaves themselves in the African diaspora, from the comparative analysis of autobiographical texts and testimonies as the "Letter" of Esperança Garcia (1770). This document is hugely important for it represents slave resistance besides being a valuable piece of writing, a letter written by a slave's own hand, who historical value is priceless it is a rare slavery narrative in colonial Brazil, chiefly for the fact it is a document written by a slave woman who dares to write directly/straight to Governor of the Captaincy of Piauí himself to present her claims against the manager of royal estates. The poet Luiz Gama lost contact with his mother and, when he was ten, he was sold as a slave by his father, white noble Portuguese. Once freed from illegal captivity, years later Luiz Gama holds the position of "the precursor of abolitionism in Brazil". As well as one of the forerunners of African-Brazilian literature by publishing the book of poems Getulino's first burlesque ballads (1859-1961 The book An Interesting Narrative of Mahommah G. Baquaqua (1854), by Mahommah G. Baquaqua, an African who, once freed from slavery on a runaway trip to New York, in 1847. Years later, he tells his experiences as a slave in Brazil from 1845 to 1847.

Paper short abstract:

In this communication I analyze some aspects of the policy of favoring the manumission of slaves in Brazil through the Emancipation Fund.

Paper long abstract:

In this communication I analyze some aspects of the policy of favoring the manumission of slaves in Brazil through the Emancipation Fund. For this research data were used mainly the Province of Bahia. The researched documentation allowed to know the intense mobilization of the slaves in search of the manumission through one of the means made available by the Brazilian legislation of the last decades of the slave system. In printed and handwritten sources (correspondences between public authorities, petitions, news in the newspapers, etc.) I found several evidences to discuss the commitment of the proprietary class and the enslaved when resorting to this resource; and, on the conflicts and debates generated between the members of the "classification board", the "liberandos" and their owners.

Paper short abstract:

The present work focuses on the judicial contentions involving the slave João and the master Antonio Beraldo d’Azevedo, in the city of Ribeirão Preto (Western region of São Paulo), in 1881, with the purpose of addressing the impact of the Law’s procedural forms on the struggle for freedom during the final years of slavery in Brazil.

Paper long abstract:

The former Arraial de São Sebastião do Rio Preto, belonging to the parish of São Simão, the present-day city of Ribeirão Preto in the “west side of São Paulo,” became of crucial importance for Brazilian economy when through coffee, which was produced here, the country covered 51% of the whole world’s demand. Martinho Prado Júnior was one of the big coffee growers of that region, which absorbed a considerable amount of workforce consisting of migrants, immigrants and enslaved people. These latter ones came from different parts of Brazil, but mostly the Northern regions. As of 1883 the city expanded thanks to the implementation of the Companhia Mogiana’s railway network, which became responsible for the transportation of significant amounts of coffee bags destined for the port of Santos, also known as the “coffee port.” Two years before the implementation of this railway, an intrigue involving the slave João, his wife and children, and the master Antonio Beraldo d’Azevedo, took place there. What could this intrigue still tell us about the impact of the Law’s procedural forms on the struggle for freedom during the final years of slavery in Brazil? The present paper focuses precisely on this matter.