Memórias do tráfico ilegal de escravos nas Ações de Liberdade: Bahia, 1885-1888

• Main Author: Ricardo Tadeu Ca\u00EDres Silva
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal da Bahia - Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais 2007-01-01
• Series: Afro-Ásia
• Online Access: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=77003502

In this text I discuss the use of the first article of the law passed on the 7th of November, 1831, which considered free all Africans who arrived in Brazil after that date, as an important abolitionist strategy for the release of slaves in the second half of the decade of 1880. By analyzing testimonies of some of these Africans, in addition to other documentary sources in court cases to free individuals who were illegally enslaved (initiated by the Africans themselves or by their friends and family) I try to highlight the importance of the agency of enslaved people in the abolition movement. When recollecting the hard memories of the Middle Passage and captivity, abolitionists and slaves took advantage of a law considered by many to be a dog and pony show and used it to defeat the legal and moral power of the owners´ social class, forcing a radical release without indemnification for loss of property