The Crime of Reducing a Free Person to Slavery in Nineteenth Century Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Mamigonian, Beatriz Gallotti
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Grinberg, Keila
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Mundos do Trabalho
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/mundosdotrabalho/article/view/79922

This article discusses how the enslavement of free people was criminalized and tried in Brazil throughout the nineteenth century. Based on court cases from the southern province of Rio Grande do Sul pertaining to “reducing free persons to slavery,” we analyzed, in a preliminary way, the application of article 179 of the criminal code of 1830. We draw attention to the profiles of the victims, the context in which the cases occurred, and the decisions made. The cases have been divided into three groups, according to the circumstances of enslavement: the first concerns Africans brought to Brazil illegally, after the Atlantic slave trade was banned, as well as their descendants; the second comprises freedpersons whose manumissions were ignored for different reasons; and the third group is composed of free or freed blacks, who were kidnapped and sold as slaves.