“A pérola no cativeiro”: laços familiares e afetivos de escravizados em São Luís (1871-1888)

Abstract

The present analysis is about the formation of family arrangements of slaves, as well as about the relationships woven between these subjects in the provincial capital, São Luís, in the period comprising the years 1871-1888. The issue that guides our study is: What are the meanings of kinship relationships and affective relationships for the slave who lived in an urban center? Here we propose to perceive the construction of these relationships as one of the resources through which slaves used to carry out their life strategies, in order to support life in captivity. This work was elaborated from the research of parish records of marriages and baptisms of the Parish of Nossa Senhora da Vitória – Cathedral Church – and of “exemplary cases”, such as petitions and records of freedom of the Court of Justice of Maranhão. The importance of this study is based on the rupture of the perspective of analyzes based only on a version of the enslavement process, based solely on domination and lordly interests, understanding that the fabric of relations between masters and slaves was also carried out in daily practices, customs, struggles and relationships of reciprocal solidarity, resistance, negotiations and accommodations, and within them, family arrangements.