Class, color and ethnicity in the laws of unfree labor in the Amazon: from the Directory to the end of the Workers’ Corps (1755-1859)

• Autor(a) principal: Paz, Adalberto
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Mundos do Trabalho
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/mundosdotrabalho/article/view/1984-9222.2020.e72949

Since the end of the 18th century, different Portuguese and Brazilian administrations have been concerning creating mechanisms of compulsion to work aimed at populations not legally enslaved in the Amazon. After the abolition of the captivity of indigenous peoples, in 1755, successive laws sought to establish rigid official bases (not infrequently exasperated by the daily practices of coercion) so that the free and freed poor, especially Indians, blacks and mestizos, were obliged to carry out work activities both in services and public works, as for private individuals. These workers were employed in fundamental economic functions such as transportation, extractivism, farming, trade, among others, in a scenario in which the presence of black slaves was significantly less than in other Brazilian regions. Based on this, we intend to analyze how public authorities and private agents articulated legal forms aiming at impelling the free and free poor to work, and how these instruments sought to regulate and naturalize ethnic and social differences aiming at maximum retention and control of all non-slave labor available in the Amazon in the 19th century. Equally, the ways in which these populations experienced, reacted and opposed such legal advances against their freedom will be emphasized, mobilizing through escapes, organizing politically in areas of border disputes and making use of natural resources not only for their survival, but also to reaffirm their sociocultural and economic autonomy.