O cotidiano da resistência escrava: São Luís do Maranhão (década de 1830)

Abstract

This paper presents the daily life of urban slaves in the capital of the province of Maranhão, in the 1830s The main documentary sources are the municipal ordinances, newspapers circulating in this period, the map of rented houses for slaves and freedmen (1835) and police records, the so-called "day parts" of the Guards Permanent Municipal and Maranhão Police Force, institutions that were responsible for the control of the poor of the city of St. Louis. These records give us the possibility to analyze how engendered surveillance and control of the captives in the urban space, in addition to observing various aspects of urban slavery. At the time, the city was the effects of the fluctuation of the cultivation and marketing of cotton in the province. The aim is therefore to present the spaces of sociability of enslaved subjects, their tactics and resistance strategies in search of better survival modes as well as the means to circumvent the surveillance of their masters and repressive apparatus, observing to what extent Captive took advantage of interference of government in the master-slave relationship, in the middle city to increase its trading field, making use of bargaining tactics and expanding your social network; in addition to approach the problems related to leakage and the social networks that wove with the various social actors.