Summary: Abolishing Slavery In Brazil
Student: Eranda Dassanayake
Student #: 10022962
Instructor: David Parker
Course: HIST315
Date: Thursday April 18, 2013
Brazil was the last country in the western world to abolish slavery. The mass importation of Africans created an economic dependence on the employment of slavery. The slave-owner relationship consisted of relentless abuse and discrimination that Afro-Brazilians still carry today. As this abuse and exploitation of Afro-Brazilians escalated, and the rest of the western world, namely the United States, began abolishing slavery, it became important that Brazil employ abolitionist policy. The government, oligarchy, and overall leadership …show more content…
in Brazil failed to totally abolish and erase the social stigma that proceeded slavery in the decades following abolition. This study examines and debunks the myth that freed slaves in Brazil were truly the recipients of a free and meaningful pursuit of life and liberty. Afro-Brazilians post-abolition were not truly free; they existed through employee relationships not entirely different from day-to-day slavery. Emancipation, to a large extent, was a facade. Slavery has existed in Brazil since the sixteenth century. The nation anchored its economic policies, social structure and ethnic landscape on the enslavement of indigenous people, and eventually the mass importation of Africans. Over the next three centuries several efforts would be made to forward the abolition of slavery in Brazil but never did so entirely. The imperial government of Brazil accepted free and colored citizens when the constitution of 1824 was implemented and declared that free colored citizens were equal to all others.1 Furthermore, in 1831 a law banning the slave trade in Brazil was passed.2 In 1871, the regent Imperial Princess Isabelle executed a law known as the “law of the free womb” during her father’s absence from Brazil. The law of the free womb granted freedom to all children born in Brazil to a female slave. 3 It would be hard-pressed and unfair to suggest that the entire nation and all of the governments that came and went during this nightmarish era in Brazil were infatuated with slavery. The three laws and constitutional amendments already mentioned are evidence that there were valid and encouraging abolitionist movements to end the slave trade and its abusive nature. Unfortunately, these encouraging laws and amendments fell short of completing the objective of creating a fair and equal life for Afro-Brazilians. It is also important to examine whether or not the objective of these abolitionist movement, especially those that trickle down from the Brazilian government, truly had the intention of protecting slaves from employee relationships not entirely different from day-to-day slavery. It was already illegal to import slaves into the country since 1831; therefore, the assumption was that slavery would gradually fade in Brazil because there were no more young slaves to supply and replenish the slave stock. Slavery was supposed to end with this assumption’ however, slavery never truly ended in Brazil, it only became refurbished. The slave-and owner relationship was able to survive because of a handful of stipulations, combined with purposeful ambiguousness, that abolitionist policy retained. The three aforementioned major laws and amendments were not as liberal as they were disguised to be, especially when examining the law of the free womb. In particular, the law stipulated that the owner and mother had equal and joint custody of the child up until the age of eight. Once the child reached the age of eight the owner, not the child’s mother, could continue to employ the child’s service until the child grew to twenty-one years of age or trade the child to the government for 600,000 reis.4 Neither the mother nor the child had any power in this decision making process. The law of the free womb did not allow for any freedom, while also debunking the assumption that slavery would gradually be phased out of Brazil. The government successfully found a way to bring hope to Afro-Brazilians that a better future was ahead of them. However, by doing so the government systematically locked Afro-Brazilians in employee relationships with owners or the government until the age of twenty-one. One interpretation of this evidence suggests that the abolition of slavery was postponed by the unexpected route that abolitionist legislation took. However, this evidence points to another theory that legislation was purposely crowded by roadblocks to abolition that would not curtail to the status quo regarding economics, politics, and the ethnic landscape of Brazil. Nevertheless, Afro-Brazilians never found constitutional amendments or laws and legislation to be a successful means of escape from captivity. Manumission was one of the legal avenues that afro-Brazilian slaves could take in order to reach some form of significant freedom. Manumission was a legal procedure that took several forms. This involved the slave owner voluntarily renouncing his manus on the captive, who then became a free man “as if from birth”.5 Manumission came in three separate and distinct forms. However rare, there were instances of immediate freedom granted through manumission. There were Afro-Brazilians who were able to purchase their freedom from owners. Finally, there were those slaves who were given freedom through conditional manumission. Manumission, in all of its forms, was accompanied by several pitfalls that tainted freedom or made the journey to freedom an excruciating reality. In the particular case of purchasing freedom, an American historian James Kiernan determined that it would take a male slave seven long years to earn the average sum required for manumission.6 It took women and children, who earned a far lesser wage, even long to purchase freedom. Furthermore, conditional manumission was no kind of freedom at all. Slaves were even more dependent on their owners, knowing that the slightest quarrel or provocation of the owner could result in the termination of plans and agreements laid out for future freedom.7 Owners generally acted in their own best interest, having fully calculated the costs and benefits of manumission, and all of its forms. The freedom that resulted from abolition did not result in any significant improvements to a slave’s quality of life or ability to pursue a meaningful livelihood. Refinements to the constitution, manumission and the proper paper work, and even a baptism were some of the “ingredients of freedom” for Afro-Brazilian slaves. None of these were effective because there was no social infrastructure to integrate freed slaves into Brazil’s society, regardless of the fact that a majority of these means to freedom were far out of reach and in some cases an impossibility. Even those slaves that found freedom through the granting of immediate manumission from their owners did not find freedom from anything other than the labor they had been preforming. Every freed slave faced the harsh reality that all that was waiting for them were questions surrounding poverty, quality of life, and where their next meal would be coming from. It was not to the aid of freed slaves that during the years prior to total abolition Brazilians were very conscious of physical features and the color spectrum. Definitions of race, mulatto and the mestizo, were considered significant in establishing a dividing line.8 Freed slaves were almost never able to reach a social standing safe enough to celebrate their color, religion, heritage, and their freedom. There was no such thing as complete freedom. On May 13, 1888 Princess Isabel the Lei Aurea, or the “Golden Law”, that would definitively abolish slavery all across Brazil.9 This finally came over sixteen years after Princess Isabel’s initial attempt to foster freedom for Afro-Brazilians through the ratification of the law of the free womb.
Considering that Brazil’s society was majorly anchored on the employment of slavery makes the fullest abolition of slavery very difficult. However, this was not the case everywhere in the country, especially in the years leading up to abolition. By this point the institution of slavery was greatly in decline due to the flood of European immigrants into the nation, and in particular Sao Paulo.10 The huge influx of European immigrants began at the beginning of this decade, and forced a dramatic change in the depths of Brazilian society. The ethnic landscape had noticeably changed, and the state was no longer solely dependent on the employment of slave labor. The abolition of slavery was eight years in the making and finally culminated in the Golden Law. This lack of dependence is clearly the most direct and driving cause toward abolition, which raises several questions about previous …show more content…
attempts. There were obviously many in favor of slavery, none more so than Francisco de Soles, a former minister and head of the Bank of Brazil.11 Society was too entrenched in the employment of slavery to abolish it a decade earlier. There were several economic and social pitfalls that were inevitable to occur, racism, violence, poverty, economic viability, if slavery was abolished in, for example, 1971 instead of 1988. Instead, the leaders of the nation implemented the law of the free womb. One conclusion suggests that this was entirely an empty gesture. The thought and hope of a freedom for Afro-Brazilians had to exist because the abolition of slavery was rapidly flooding the United States and the rest of the western world. However, abolition would never come to Afro-Brazilians until it was socially and economically viable for Brazil and its oligarchy. This also calls into question the other forms of freedom that the nation’s leaders implemented or accepted leading up to abolition. All the stipulations surrounding the purchasing of a slaves’ freedom, manumission, long legal proceedings over wills and ownership, among a number of others are serious cause for suspicion. It is more than likely that Brazil’s leadership and oligarchy never intended to abolish slavery through its early motions and policy. Rather, they were patient and slowly phased out slavery as it became less and less important to the economic and social structure of society. Once Brazil could stand on its own, due to eight years of steady European immigration, abolition became a viable option. For Afro-Brazilians living in a racial democracy meant living in a society that pursued a political existence that was untainted by racism and racial discrimination. The racial democracy constructed in Brazil transformed the nation from a slave state and into one of racial imperialism. The government and oligarchy’s power and influence took the route of diplomacy, while still exerting the same abusive pressures and forces on Afro-Brazilians. Living in a racial democracy placed limitations on the freedom of former slaves. They could not escape plantations and factories and reach some form of a middleclass standing. The middleclass was overwhelmingly Caucasian, particularly in Sao Paulo. These conditions made it impossible to strive for the goal of an economic base for a “would-be black elite”.12 Between the years 1900 and 1920, Afro-Brazilians accounted for only 3.2% of all professionals in the state of Sao Paulo, while representing 12.2% of the working population.13 Almost the entire population of freed slaves could not escape agricultural work, where there were no meaningful changes. Afro-Brazilians could not escape the slave-owner relationship either. Freed slaves working on plantations entered into labor contracts that were not entirely different from slave-owner relationships, just refurbished and renamed as employee-employer relationships. These contracts would suppose that slaves would never be idle. Prior to abolition slaves and masters had work arrangements drafted by lawyers, which were mostly codified to prohibit idleness and lethargy at one’s place of employment.14 These arrangements disappeared post-abolition but returned disguised in employer-employee contracts. The inherent imperialism that followed the settling of a racial democracy in Brazil made it near impossible for Afro-Brazilians to gain any level of elevation or standing in society post-abolition. Nothing had changed for freed slaves between the introduction and employment of abolition in policy in the early 1970s and full abolition in 1888. The initial assumption that abolitionist policy would gradually phase out slavery in Brazil prevented the government and oligarchy from instituting any form of policy that would successfully integrate Afro-Brazilians into society once total abolition was implemented. Racial democracy on propagated the social stigma that suggested that Afro-Brazilians were inferior to the rest of society. Their inability to elevate their social standing by infiltrating the white-collar and professional and skilled labor sectors furthered that social stigma. The intense racism and awareness of the color spectrum in Brazil did not aid their cause. The consequence was a spike in domestic violence, abuse, and unlawful arrests.15 The lack of accommodation made for Afro-Brazilians, that would have prevented large-scale poverty, and the sustainability of the slave-owner relationship, set the integration of freed slaves back several decades. This also culminated in the social stigma that still follow Afro-Brazilians to this day. Brazil, being as vast as it is, offers several examples of former slavers being exploited and abused, while offering several exceptions in other areas. The social stigma that followed blacks, mulattos, mestizos, and others varied depending on location. However, this social stigma was still very apparent on the level of the “casa & rua” or house and street. Households worked energetically to separate and establish boundaries between the house and the street; the house referring to the household and street referring to the undesirable aspects of society, namely Afro-Brazilians. These boundaries through social interaction were not very effective at separating the middle and upper classes from the lower class. Middle and upper classes were forced to deal with the dilemma of hiring servants who belonged to disorderly streets into the intimate confines of their home because they were a necessary to cultivating the household.16 The lack of infrastructure directed at integrating Afro-Brazilians into society resulted in the aforementioned spike in domestic violence, abuse, and unlawful arrests. All of this culminated in the social stigma that created the boundaries between the social classes of Brazil. However, these boundaries were vulnerable due to the importance of servants to the household. The result of this was a discriminatory paradox, wherein slaves were vital but vulnerable to relentless discrimination and domestic abuse. In 1978, there were an estimated 750,000 Japanese-Brazilians and Japanese immigrants to Brazil.17 For Japanese-Brazilians and immigrants the social landscape and situation was not all that different from that of former slaves. Immigrants in Brazil, including children, began their new life as farmers and their wages were very low. The stigma surrounding the Japanese-Brazilians and Japanese immigrants was far different that that of freed slaves and Afro-Brazilians even though they, for a relatively long period of time, both find themselves working as cheap labor on plantations prior to total abolition. The social stigma that followed Afro-Brazilians into the post abolition years is what separated them from the Japanese and other immigrant groups to Brazil. The attitude surrounding immigrants, and the Japanese in particular, was that aspirations were not in the direction of mere wage earning through employment, rather their goal was capital accumulation and thus they were oriented toward independent farming, cash cropping, thrift and achievement. Unlike Afro-Brazilians, the Japanese did not stay farmers for long and quickly acquired farms of their own.18 Brazilian society continually beat down on the Afro-Brazilian population unequalled to the treatment of any other minority in the country. The most likely explanation for this circumstance is the social stigma that follows Afro-Brazilians through every endeavor. The bottom-line is that society was racist and discriminatory towards freed slaves, which was unparalleled by any other minority group in Brazil. This is a result of the early containment of Afro-Brazilian potential, through policy and law, and continued post total abolition. Afro-Brazilians will never be able to dismiss the slave mentality that frames their peoples’ struggle and will forever limit their development and potential to pursue meaningful ways of life in Brazil. There will always be a sense of dissatisfaction by afro-Brazilians. The fight by Afro-Brazilian organization post WWII continued and was carried forward by rappers who configure the past as a source of strength, and not powerlessness.19
Works Cited
Andrews, George R.
Blacks and Whites in Sao Paulo, Brazil 1888-1988. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Davis, Darien J. Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean. Toronto: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2007.
Davis, Darien J. Slavery and Beyond: The African Impact on Latin America and the Caribbean. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc, 1995.
De Queiros Mattoso, Katia M. To Be a Slave in Brazil 1550-1888. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1979.
Goldstein, Donna. ""Interracial" Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin
Concepts?" American Anthropologist 101, no. 3 (1999).
Graham, Sandra L. House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio De Janeiro. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in Brazil. N.p.: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Makabe, Tomoko. "The Theory of the Split Labor Market: A Comparison of the Japanese Experience in Brazil and Canada."Social Forces 59, no. 3 (March 1981): 786-809.
Nishida, Mieko. "Manumission and Ethnicity in Urban Slavery: Salvador, Brazil, 1808-1888." The Hispanic American Historical Review 73.3 (1993): 365.
Print.
Student #: 10022962
Instructor: David Parker
Course: HIST315
Date: Thursday April 18, 2013
Brazil was the last country in the western world to abolish slavery. The mass importation of Africans created an economic dependence on the employment of slavery. The slave-owner relationship consisted of relentless abuse and discrimination that Afro-Brazilians still carry today. As this abuse and exploitation of Afro-Brazilians escalated, and the rest of the western world, namely the United States, began abolishing slavery, it became important that Brazil employ abolitionist policy. The government, oligarchy, and overall leadership …show more content…
in Brazil failed to totally abolish and erase the social stigma that proceeded slavery in the decades following abolition. This study examines and debunks the myth that freed slaves in Brazil were truly the recipients of a free and meaningful pursuit of life and liberty. Afro-Brazilians post-abolition were not truly free; they existed through employee relationships not entirely different from day-to-day slavery. Emancipation, to a large extent, was a facade. Slavery has existed in Brazil since the sixteenth century. The nation anchored its economic policies, social structure and ethnic landscape on the enslavement of indigenous people, and eventually the mass importation of Africans. Over the next three centuries several efforts would be made to forward the abolition of slavery in Brazil but never did so entirely. The imperial government of Brazil accepted free and colored citizens when the constitution of 1824 was implemented and declared that free colored citizens were equal to all others.1 Furthermore, in 1831 a law banning the slave trade in Brazil was passed.2 In 1871, the regent Imperial Princess Isabelle executed a law known as the “law of the free womb” during her father’s absence from Brazil. The law of the free womb granted freedom to all children born in Brazil to a female slave. 3 It would be hard-pressed and unfair to suggest that the entire nation and all of the governments that came and went during this nightmarish era in Brazil were infatuated with slavery. The three laws and constitutional amendments already mentioned are evidence that there were valid and encouraging abolitionist movements to end the slave trade and its abusive nature. Unfortunately, these encouraging laws and amendments fell short of completing the objective of creating a fair and equal life for Afro-Brazilians. It is also important to examine whether or not the objective of these abolitionist movement, especially those that trickle down from the Brazilian government, truly had the intention of protecting slaves from employee relationships not entirely different from day-to-day slavery. It was already illegal to import slaves into the country since 1831; therefore, the assumption was that slavery would gradually fade in Brazil because there were no more young slaves to supply and replenish the slave stock. Slavery was supposed to end with this assumption’ however, slavery never truly ended in Brazil, it only became refurbished. The slave-and owner relationship was able to survive because of a handful of stipulations, combined with purposeful ambiguousness, that abolitionist policy retained. The three aforementioned major laws and amendments were not as liberal as they were disguised to be, especially when examining the law of the free womb. In particular, the law stipulated that the owner and mother had equal and joint custody of the child up until the age of eight. Once the child reached the age of eight the owner, not the child’s mother, could continue to employ the child’s service until the child grew to twenty-one years of age or trade the child to the government for 600,000 reis.4 Neither the mother nor the child had any power in this decision making process. The law of the free womb did not allow for any freedom, while also debunking the assumption that slavery would gradually be phased out of Brazil. The government successfully found a way to bring hope to Afro-Brazilians that a better future was ahead of them. However, by doing so the government systematically locked Afro-Brazilians in employee relationships with owners or the government until the age of twenty-one. One interpretation of this evidence suggests that the abolition of slavery was postponed by the unexpected route that abolitionist legislation took. However, this evidence points to another theory that legislation was purposely crowded by roadblocks to abolition that would not curtail to the status quo regarding economics, politics, and the ethnic landscape of Brazil. Nevertheless, Afro-Brazilians never found constitutional amendments or laws and legislation to be a successful means of escape from captivity. Manumission was one of the legal avenues that afro-Brazilian slaves could take in order to reach some form of significant freedom. Manumission was a legal procedure that took several forms. This involved the slave owner voluntarily renouncing his manus on the captive, who then became a free man “as if from birth”.5 Manumission came in three separate and distinct forms. However rare, there were instances of immediate freedom granted through manumission. There were Afro-Brazilians who were able to purchase their freedom from owners. Finally, there were those slaves who were given freedom through conditional manumission. Manumission, in all of its forms, was accompanied by several pitfalls that tainted freedom or made the journey to freedom an excruciating reality. In the particular case of purchasing freedom, an American historian James Kiernan determined that it would take a male slave seven long years to earn the average sum required for manumission.6 It took women and children, who earned a far lesser wage, even long to purchase freedom. Furthermore, conditional manumission was no kind of freedom at all. Slaves were even more dependent on their owners, knowing that the slightest quarrel or provocation of the owner could result in the termination of plans and agreements laid out for future freedom.7 Owners generally acted in their own best interest, having fully calculated the costs and benefits of manumission, and all of its forms. The freedom that resulted from abolition did not result in any significant improvements to a slave’s quality of life or ability to pursue a meaningful livelihood. Refinements to the constitution, manumission and the proper paper work, and even a baptism were some of the “ingredients of freedom” for Afro-Brazilian slaves. None of these were effective because there was no social infrastructure to integrate freed slaves into Brazil’s society, regardless of the fact that a majority of these means to freedom were far out of reach and in some cases an impossibility. Even those slaves that found freedom through the granting of immediate manumission from their owners did not find freedom from anything other than the labor they had been preforming. Every freed slave faced the harsh reality that all that was waiting for them were questions surrounding poverty, quality of life, and where their next meal would be coming from. It was not to the aid of freed slaves that during the years prior to total abolition Brazilians were very conscious of physical features and the color spectrum. Definitions of race, mulatto and the mestizo, were considered significant in establishing a dividing line.8 Freed slaves were almost never able to reach a social standing safe enough to celebrate their color, religion, heritage, and their freedom. There was no such thing as complete freedom. On May 13, 1888 Princess Isabel the Lei Aurea, or the “Golden Law”, that would definitively abolish slavery all across Brazil.9 This finally came over sixteen years after Princess Isabel’s initial attempt to foster freedom for Afro-Brazilians through the ratification of the law of the free womb.
Considering that Brazil’s society was majorly anchored on the employment of slavery makes the fullest abolition of slavery very difficult. However, this was not the case everywhere in the country, especially in the years leading up to abolition. By this point the institution of slavery was greatly in decline due to the flood of European immigrants into the nation, and in particular Sao Paulo.10 The huge influx of European immigrants began at the beginning of this decade, and forced a dramatic change in the depths of Brazilian society. The ethnic landscape had noticeably changed, and the state was no longer solely dependent on the employment of slave labor. The abolition of slavery was eight years in the making and finally culminated in the Golden Law. This lack of dependence is clearly the most direct and driving cause toward abolition, which raises several questions about previous …show more content…
attempts. There were obviously many in favor of slavery, none more so than Francisco de Soles, a former minister and head of the Bank of Brazil.11 Society was too entrenched in the employment of slavery to abolish it a decade earlier. There were several economic and social pitfalls that were inevitable to occur, racism, violence, poverty, economic viability, if slavery was abolished in, for example, 1971 instead of 1988. Instead, the leaders of the nation implemented the law of the free womb. One conclusion suggests that this was entirely an empty gesture. The thought and hope of a freedom for Afro-Brazilians had to exist because the abolition of slavery was rapidly flooding the United States and the rest of the western world. However, abolition would never come to Afro-Brazilians until it was socially and economically viable for Brazil and its oligarchy. This also calls into question the other forms of freedom that the nation’s leaders implemented or accepted leading up to abolition. All the stipulations surrounding the purchasing of a slaves’ freedom, manumission, long legal proceedings over wills and ownership, among a number of others are serious cause for suspicion. It is more than likely that Brazil’s leadership and oligarchy never intended to abolish slavery through its early motions and policy. Rather, they were patient and slowly phased out slavery as it became less and less important to the economic and social structure of society. Once Brazil could stand on its own, due to eight years of steady European immigration, abolition became a viable option. For Afro-Brazilians living in a racial democracy meant living in a society that pursued a political existence that was untainted by racism and racial discrimination. The racial democracy constructed in Brazil transformed the nation from a slave state and into one of racial imperialism. The government and oligarchy’s power and influence took the route of diplomacy, while still exerting the same abusive pressures and forces on Afro-Brazilians. Living in a racial democracy placed limitations on the freedom of former slaves. They could not escape plantations and factories and reach some form of a middleclass standing. The middleclass was overwhelmingly Caucasian, particularly in Sao Paulo. These conditions made it impossible to strive for the goal of an economic base for a “would-be black elite”.12 Between the years 1900 and 1920, Afro-Brazilians accounted for only 3.2% of all professionals in the state of Sao Paulo, while representing 12.2% of the working population.13 Almost the entire population of freed slaves could not escape agricultural work, where there were no meaningful changes. Afro-Brazilians could not escape the slave-owner relationship either. Freed slaves working on plantations entered into labor contracts that were not entirely different from slave-owner relationships, just refurbished and renamed as employee-employer relationships. These contracts would suppose that slaves would never be idle. Prior to abolition slaves and masters had work arrangements drafted by lawyers, which were mostly codified to prohibit idleness and lethargy at one’s place of employment.14 These arrangements disappeared post-abolition but returned disguised in employer-employee contracts. The inherent imperialism that followed the settling of a racial democracy in Brazil made it near impossible for Afro-Brazilians to gain any level of elevation or standing in society post-abolition. Nothing had changed for freed slaves between the introduction and employment of abolition in policy in the early 1970s and full abolition in 1888. The initial assumption that abolitionist policy would gradually phase out slavery in Brazil prevented the government and oligarchy from instituting any form of policy that would successfully integrate Afro-Brazilians into society once total abolition was implemented. Racial democracy on propagated the social stigma that suggested that Afro-Brazilians were inferior to the rest of society. Their inability to elevate their social standing by infiltrating the white-collar and professional and skilled labor sectors furthered that social stigma. The intense racism and awareness of the color spectrum in Brazil did not aid their cause. The consequence was a spike in domestic violence, abuse, and unlawful arrests.15 The lack of accommodation made for Afro-Brazilians, that would have prevented large-scale poverty, and the sustainability of the slave-owner relationship, set the integration of freed slaves back several decades. This also culminated in the social stigma that still follow Afro-Brazilians to this day. Brazil, being as vast as it is, offers several examples of former slavers being exploited and abused, while offering several exceptions in other areas. The social stigma that followed blacks, mulattos, mestizos, and others varied depending on location. However, this social stigma was still very apparent on the level of the “casa & rua” or house and street. Households worked energetically to separate and establish boundaries between the house and the street; the house referring to the household and street referring to the undesirable aspects of society, namely Afro-Brazilians. These boundaries through social interaction were not very effective at separating the middle and upper classes from the lower class. Middle and upper classes were forced to deal with the dilemma of hiring servants who belonged to disorderly streets into the intimate confines of their home because they were a necessary to cultivating the household.16 The lack of infrastructure directed at integrating Afro-Brazilians into society resulted in the aforementioned spike in domestic violence, abuse, and unlawful arrests. All of this culminated in the social stigma that created the boundaries between the social classes of Brazil. However, these boundaries were vulnerable due to the importance of servants to the household. The result of this was a discriminatory paradox, wherein slaves were vital but vulnerable to relentless discrimination and domestic abuse. In 1978, there were an estimated 750,000 Japanese-Brazilians and Japanese immigrants to Brazil.17 For Japanese-Brazilians and immigrants the social landscape and situation was not all that different from that of former slaves. Immigrants in Brazil, including children, began their new life as farmers and their wages were very low. The stigma surrounding the Japanese-Brazilians and Japanese immigrants was far different that that of freed slaves and Afro-Brazilians even though they, for a relatively long period of time, both find themselves working as cheap labor on plantations prior to total abolition. The social stigma that followed Afro-Brazilians into the post abolition years is what separated them from the Japanese and other immigrant groups to Brazil. The attitude surrounding immigrants, and the Japanese in particular, was that aspirations were not in the direction of mere wage earning through employment, rather their goal was capital accumulation and thus they were oriented toward independent farming, cash cropping, thrift and achievement. Unlike Afro-Brazilians, the Japanese did not stay farmers for long and quickly acquired farms of their own.18 Brazilian society continually beat down on the Afro-Brazilian population unequalled to the treatment of any other minority in the country. The most likely explanation for this circumstance is the social stigma that follows Afro-Brazilians through every endeavor. The bottom-line is that society was racist and discriminatory towards freed slaves, which was unparalleled by any other minority group in Brazil. This is a result of the early containment of Afro-Brazilian potential, through policy and law, and continued post total abolition. Afro-Brazilians will never be able to dismiss the slave mentality that frames their peoples’ struggle and will forever limit their development and potential to pursue meaningful ways of life in Brazil. There will always be a sense of dissatisfaction by afro-Brazilians. The fight by Afro-Brazilian organization post WWII continued and was carried forward by rappers who configure the past as a source of strength, and not powerlessness.19
Works Cited
Andrews, George R.
Blacks and Whites in Sao Paulo, Brazil 1888-1988. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Davis, Darien J. Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean. Toronto: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2007.
Davis, Darien J. Slavery and Beyond: The African Impact on Latin America and the Caribbean. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc, 1995.
De Queiros Mattoso, Katia M. To Be a Slave in Brazil 1550-1888. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1979.
Goldstein, Donna. ""Interracial" Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin
Concepts?" American Anthropologist 101, no. 3 (1999).
Graham, Sandra L. House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio De Janeiro. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in Brazil. N.p.: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Makabe, Tomoko. "The Theory of the Split Labor Market: A Comparison of the Japanese Experience in Brazil and Canada."Social Forces 59, no. 3 (March 1981): 786-809.
Nishida, Mieko. "Manumission and Ethnicity in Urban Slavery: Salvador, Brazil, 1808-1888." The Hispanic American Historical Review 73.3 (1993): 365.
Print.