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.