Post-abolition in Brazil

Golden Law Diploma.

In the 1880s, with the influence of Joaquim Nabuco, two movements of great importance for the abolition of slavery, the Brazilian Society against Slavery and the Central Emancipating Association, began to gain strength.

It was after a visit to a chapel in Massangana, Pernambuco, that Nabuco recognized a moral problem regarding slavery, sparking a genuine interest in putting his life at the service of the "generous race".[4] At the age of 20, a deputy at the time, Joaquim began debates in Parliament on the project that aimed to free all slaves.[5]

Nabuco wrote several works about slavery, among them "Minha Formação"[6] and "O Abolicionismo",[7] claiming that "it is a crime, an attempt to civilization and to economic and political progress, it is responsible for the backwardness of the country, an obstacle to national construction. These are civic, public reasons".[4]

Nabuco's travels abroad facilitated his involvement with the abolitionist campaign. Inspired by the campaign against the slave trade and the "social movement",[8] two forms of pressure on the state, consequently on the authorities.

Another important figure for the success of this movement was José do Patrocínio, a radical abolitionist, unlike Nabuco, who was considered a moderate. Patrocínio defended that the campaign should take to the streets with the participation of the people, however, he affirmed that the people alone could not achieve the objectives, that it should be an "alliance of the sovereign with the people".

In opposition to Patrocínio's radicalism, Nabuco defended that this struggle was for a people without a voice, consequently it should be led by whites. These processes involved two aspects. The first, the progress of this movement could not go beyond the limits of monarchical legality, this should be a decision initially taken by the State and the slaveholding farmers, being solved within the institutional space, so that the situation would not have a dimension that the control could be lost. The second side is the one defended by Nabuco, that blacks could not be active subjects in the movement. There was a concern of the white elite involved in the conflict that emancipation could not affect the landowning economic order. In this case, the involvement of blacks in this process was fearful, because the elite feared that they could cause an uncontrolled society.

Despite the existence of some laws, such as the Free Womb Law in 1871, it was necessary to have a law that abolished slavery. Meanwhile, the abolitionist campaign initially promoted by Joaquim Nabuco in 1880, was of extreme importance for the Golden Law to be sanctioned by Princess Isabel in 1888, of No. 3,353, which had two articles "Art. 1°: It is declared extinct since the date of this law slavery in Brazil. And Art. 2°: The provisions to the contrary are revoked".[9]

Escapes and rebellions of captives in the imperial period were common, becoming one of the main concerns of the plantation owners of the time. In order to avoid such problems, the landlords tried to make sure that the slaves had a connection to the farm and to the owner. Some strategies, as an example of this, were the ties of gratitude. The plantation owner granted mass releases. This process occurred before abolition, and was intended to "arouse their gratitude... the slaves were to receive their freedom from his hands, not from the state, and perceive it as a lordly gift".[10]

These strategies used by the landlords, had nothing but the intent that after emancipation, the blacks would remain loyal to him and his land, in the "hope of retaining the freedmen".[4]

It was up to the captives the decision, post-abolition, of whether or not to remain on the land where they spent most of their lives. However, this displacement had to take into account how these newly freed men would survive in face of the freedom they had been given, in face of the slaves' desire to build a "family life, housing and domestic production",[4] thus controlling the pace of life they wanted. However, as the years went by, the mobility conquered by the slaves turned from an exercise of their freedom into a curse, taking into account the working conditions negotiated between the plantation owner and the free man who needed to survive.

To hinder the enslavement process, the registrations were important for the landlords, since a slave without them would be considered a freed man. The Republic burned these registrations, emphasizing the distinctions between the freeborn and the freedmen, who sought this distinction.

Migration in this period resulted in the marginalization of the black man, when the woman went from being a slave to being a maid in some residence. Freedom continued to be curtailed. The "study of this migration, in particular, as one of the elements of post-abolition history is that it originates from a context created both in the process of fixing the new forms of labor in the countryside, and from the absence of policies specifically aimed at ensuring some kind of access to land and credit for freedmen and their descendants".[4]

After the Abolition, one of the issues that started to appear in guardianship proceedings was the color of the skin of poor mothers whose children were being taken under their guardianship, in an evident demonstration of the synonym of poverty that the simple mention of the "black" or "mulatto" color of such mothers could indicate. The legislation used by Brazilian Law in granting guardianship to orphans considered unfit was based on both Roman Law and the Philippine Ordinances, in which the woman was not granted parental power (characterized by the right to have control over the upbringing of underage children or, in some way, seen as incapable, by the parents).

After 1890, another issue that started to be recurrent in the guardianship processes was that of duly officialized marriages being used as support to try to recover the children under guardianship, a task undertaken by many families that had their children given to guardianship. However, in addition to the struggle for possession of their children these women would still have to submit to the good will of their partners, not always willing to contract marriage in the official sense.[11]

Black people in Porto Alegre a few years after abolition, 1895.

The 14th São Paulo Black Consciousness March in 2017. The poster reads: "Slavery didn't end, we have nothing to celebrate".

The abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888 condemned the blacks to continue living as victims of the system, since they were free, but without education, documents, money, housing, employment, schooling or any other kind of social assistance provided by the State. Therefore, the Golden Law was unable to transform the deep economic and social inequalities. The master/slave relationship became white/black, both hierarchical.[12]

The abolition did not allow the blacks to have the same living conditions as the rest of the population, besides not bringing citizenship to the freed blacks. Sociologist and political scientist Antônio Carlos Mazzeo, from the São Paulo State University (Unesp), explains that there was little investment in the integration of the blacks into the national economy. "When the Golden Law was promulgated, the marginalization of the black man in Brazil happened. They were excluded from the economy", he adds. He says that this population is still marginalized. "Most black people live in favelas, without jobs, in prisons, and don't have access to education. Still in Brazil the black population is a systematic victim of racist ideology", he points out.

After the abolition, the black population went through great socio-economic difficulties, ignored by various sectors of society, which marginalized them and in a certain way pushed them out of the urban centers because of a hygienist policy, being the genesis of the slumming process.[13] However, it would not be wise to apply this pattern built by a traditional historiography with the purpose of establishing a universalization of the unemployed, illiterate, lazy, promiscuous black person, etc.

Even being in a situation of invisibility and exposed to recurring racism, freed blacks were also able to create new social and labor relations. With the end of slavery, it was possible to negotiate these new forms of work, for example on the old farms, becoming independent in subsistence farming or in new forms of urban work. Dário de Bittencourt and Carlos da Silva Santos are two examples of blacks who were born in the beginning of the 20th century, who had two different social conditions, but were academic intellectuals who were successful in the political world, going against the stereotype established after slavery.

This historiographical current has been criticized for romanticizing this marginalization of the freedman who was replaced by the European immigrant, a view that places a Paulista context as a single national history, not presenting an explanatory potential for an entire period.[14]

With the abolition, the enslaved person was no longer seen legally as an object, although he was seen as an individual with his own particularities, he conquered constitutional rights in this process of destruction of modern slavery in Brazil and in all America, linked to this extension of citizenship rights. With the end of this slavery structure, a new social order was produced, which established hierarchy, racial category and conditions to access the new political and civil rights.[15]

• Slavery in Brazil
• Slavery in Latin America
• Abolitionism in Brazil
• Racism in Brazil
• Golden Law
• Rio Branco Law
• Eusébio de Queirós Law
• Race and ethnicity in Brazil
• First Brazilian Republic

• Slavery, Abolition and Post-Abolition | Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation website