FIGURE 5. The Caminho Novo (ca. 1750)
Plantation Lad
IN HIS ARTICLE in O carioca, Paula Brito gave a very succinct account of his childhood: “A son of the City of Rio de Janeiro, but raised far away from the perils of [that city], I always lived in the bosom of my family, with parents of small means, until the age of thirteen.” However, a little later, the printer associated the color of his skin with the causes of the dire events of December 5, 1833: “I am Brazilian, albeit a man of color, the main cause of the war against me; but it honors me just as much as those of a lighter color than mine glory in being white.” Paula Brito concluded by stating: “I am speaking of my nation’s business because the Constitution of my Country gives me that right.”1
It is interesting to note how color and the Constitution intersected in the printer’s narrative. Indeed, the Imperial Constitution, enacted in 1824, when Paula Brito was fifteen years old, did not discriminate between Brazilian citizens on the basis of skin color.2 The way Paula Brito developed his argument a decade later demonstrates the political implications of the absence of a racial clause in the definition of Brazilian citizenship. Despite his cor trigueira (brown color), which so incensed his enemies, Paula Brito viewed himself as a full citizen with the backing of the Constitution. And he was not the only one to see himself that way.
Paula Brito belonged to a generation of educated men of color who were born free between the end of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth century, reaching political adulthood between the twilight of the First Reign and the dawn of the Regencies, standing out in politics and journalism, among other fields.3 As we will see, the historical experience of these young citizens de cor trigueira was closely linked to the emergence of newspapers and satirical publications such as O mulato, ou, O homem de cor (The mulatto, or, The man of color), printed in Paula Brito’s press in 1833. Among other demands, they advocated giving that significant segment of society access to public office. First, however, we must consider that the experience of full citizenship by men of color in the first decades of the Empire of Brazil was forged by the experience of freedom in Portuguese America. Because that movement was exemplified by Paula Brito and his family, we will take a look at it in this chapter.
The surname that Paula Brito adopted from his maternal grandfather came from the latter’s father and former owner, Portuguese sergeant major Francisco Pereira de Brito,4 who, together with his brothers Captain José Pereira de Brito and Second Lieutenant Julião Pereira de Brito, left Portugal in the 1720s, crossed the Atlantic and climbed the sierra to reach the mines of Serro do Frio, where it was said that gold and diamonds sprang from the ground.
Sergeant Major Francisco Pereira de Brito owned many slaves who were baptized in the village of Tapanhuacanga, which suggests that Paula Brito’s great-grandfather settled there. Seven leagues from the Vila do Príncipe, it was the county seat of Serro do Frio, created as a result of the discovery of gold in those parts in 1714. That precious metal was the cause of the first exodus toward that area in the early eighteenth century. However, the mass immigration intensified in the 1720s, when diamonds were found in Arraial do Tejuco. By the time the governor officially notified King João V of the discovery of diamonds in 1729, the news had already spread like wildfire in Lisbon. Some even suspected that the governor had taken his time to write to the king, because it was said that he had benefited from clandestine mining. Thus, the Crown only extended its administrative, military, and tax apparatus to the extraction of the diamonds in that year.5
Between 1725 and 1737, certified church records—basically the baptism and death records found in the Ecclesiastical Archives of the Diocese of Diamantina, Minas Gerais—show that the Pereira de Brito brothers became the masters of most of the enslaved in the Vila do Príncipe area. Considering the cases in which some records may have referred to the same individual, we can estimate that Captain José Pereira de Brito owned roughly twenty-five slaves, while Sergeant Major Francisco Pereira de Brito was the owner of about twenty.6
One of the enslaved women the sergeant major owned was Rosa who, after obtaining her manumission, adopted her former masters’ surname, becoming Rosa Pereira de Brito. Rosa was born in 1722, and at the age of fifteen, in 1737, while still enslaved, gave birth to a son, Martinho, sired by her master.7 The boy was not the only child that the sergeant major had with his slave women. Martinho had at least two half-sisters: Marcelina,8 the sergeant major’s daughter with Florência, a black woman, and Natalina, who appeared in the baptismal records of Anna do Ó, a slave of Captain José Pereira de Brito, as the “daughter of Sergeant Major Francisco Pereira de Brito, a free parda [brown or mixed-race woman].”9
Possibly because he was the master’s son, Martinho was freed at the font when he was baptized by Second Lieutenant Julião Pereira de Brito in São José chapel in Tapanhuacanga. As we have seen, Rosa also obtained her freedom and, years later, in 1762, on the occasion of her son’s marriage, declared to the vicar of the parish that her name was “Rosa Pereira de Brito, free black woman, single, born in this parish and presently a resident of Vila do Príncipe who works for a living and says she is forty years old, a little more or less.”10 “Works for a living” says very little about how Rosa supported herself and her children. In any case, she owned at least one slave woman, Maria, of Angolan ethnicity, who died in September 1758.11 By that time, however, Martinho Pereira de Brito no longer lived near his mother. In 1751, at the age of fourteen, the boy decided to head down Caminho Novo, the road to Rio de Janeiro.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, Rio de Janeiro’s strategic geopolitical importance in the Portuguese Empire was becoming increasingly clear. Coincidentally, the freedman Martinho Pereira de Brito arrived in that city in the same year as the creation of the Tribunal da Relação (Court of Appeal), whose jurisdiction included the captaincies in the central-south of Portuguese America, from Minas Gerais to Santa Catarina. Due to its proximity with Minas and the disputes between Spain and Portugal over the territories in the Sacramento colony, to the south, Rio de Janeiro became the seat of government of the state of Brazil, and the residence of its viceroys in 1763.12 Martinho worked there as a silversmith, a trade he may have learned in Vila do Príncipe. The young man also enlisted in the city’s pardo battalion. As a result, in January 1765, Lieutenant Martinho Pereira de Brito, then twenty-eight, lived in the parish of Sé, making a living “from his trade as a silversmith.”13
Martinho became a renowned artisan, and in May 1787 he was hired to put the final touches on the silver lamps that would adorn the Benedictine monastery’s chancel. The contract with then Captain Martinho Pereira de Brito was signed at a time when the manufacture of the lamps had already caused serious problems for the abbot, Friar José de Jesus Campos. Six or seven years earlier, his predecessors had commissioned Caetano Ferreira de Aguiar “graciously to prepare and have made two lamps for the chancel of his monastery.” At that time, Caetano was given the silver from the old lamps, as well as a large amount of money. However, time passed and the work was not finished. In view of this situation, the abbot was forced to sign a new contract with Captain Martinho and João Paulo Meira so that they could make the lamps.14
According to the contract, the artisans would receive “six thousand cruzados, less one hundred thousand réis, due to the risk they presented to us.” For that sum, they were entrusted with making the molds for the lamps, as well as paying for the services of the goldsmith and silversmith. In the “Current Account of Expenses” attached to the engagement letter signed by the individuals responsible for the project, we find the names of the other artisans involved, including the “woodworker Valentim,” who received 32,000 réis for the “molds for the lamps.”15 The woodworker must have been Valentim da Fonseca e Silva, also known as Mestre Valentim, a sculptor and metal, wood, and ivory carver who was known for important urban planning projects in Rio de Janeiro, such as the Public Promenade built when D. Luís de Vasconcelos was viceroy of Brazil. The records for the lamps made for the Benedictine monastery suggest that Captain Martinho had very close ties with Mestre Valentim. As both were the sons of Portuguese men and their enslaved women, they shared similar backgrounds. Furthermore, Valentim was born in Arraial de Gouveia, near Vila do Príncipe, in around 1740.16
In 1765, after going through lengthy proceedings to obtain a marriage license, Captain Martinho wedded Anna Maria da Conceição, a slightly younger woman who had been baptized in the See Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro in December 1741.17 Anna Maria was “the natural [illegitimate] child of Francisca Ribeira, a single, free black woman” and an unknown father. Like the groom, Anna Maria may have been born a slave, as she is described as a parda forra (mixed-race freedwoman) in some documents.18 Although she had submitted all the necessary certificates, the young woman was obliged to give a statement to the Matrimonial Judge at the Ecclesiastical Chamber of Rio de Janeiro. On that occasion, she repeated her declaration that she was “single, free, and unencumbered, and had not promised marriage to anyone except Martinho Pereira de Brito, declaring that she wanted to marry him of her own free will.”19
The children of Captain Martinho and Anna Maria began coming into this world the year after the wedding. Maria Joaquina da Conceição, in 1766;20 José, in 1768;21 and Francisco, in 1771.22 José and Francisco were baptized in Candelária Church, which suggests that the family lived in that parish. Pinpointing their address even more precisely, the “Almanaque da cidade Rio de Janeiro para o ano de 1792” (1792 almanac for Rio de Janeiro), in which Captain Martinho was listed among the artisans of the “fourth auxiliary battalion of pardo freedmen,” states that the family lived on Rua do Cano.23 Two years later, the 1794 almanac reported that Martinho, described as captain of the Fourth Grenadiers of the third auxiliary battalion of pardo freedmen, lived on Rua do Piolho.24 In the nineteenth century, that street was renamed Rua da Carioca, and all indications are that Captain Martinho’s family lived in that area for generations.
In 1795, the captain’s eldest daughter, Maria Joaquina da Conceição, married the carpenter Jacinto Antunes Duarte. Then described as a pardo forro (mixed-race freedman), the “son of Anna, the parda slave of José Duarte,” her husband was born enslaved in Nossa Senhora do Desterro de Campo Grande parish, Rio de Janeiro. He was baptized in September 1764, and his freedom, together with that of other slaves owned by José Duarte, came six years later, in June 1770.25 His master had died around that time, and Silvestre Rodrigues, José Duarte’s executor, was responsible for the “manumission through coarctation” that the deceased had ordered in his will. Coarctation involved paying for manumission in installments, which was apparently advantageous for masters and slaves in the eighteenth century.26 In addition to Jacinto, who was valued at 20,000 réis, the pardo Pantaleão, 64,000 réis, the crioulos (Brazilian-born children of Africans) Francisco and Domingos, 30,000 and 38,000 réis respectively, and Maria Benguela, valued at 15,000 réis were freed by the same means.27 We do not know how each slave went about paying the amount assigned to them. Jacinto was worth 5,000 réis more than Maria Benguela, which leads us to presume that she had recently arrived from Africa. Furthermore, it must be considered that Jacinto was too young to raise a large amount of money. Therefore, his mother, who may have obtained her freedom some time before, could have played a decisive role in his manumission.28 Years later, when he had to prove that he was free to marry, Jacinto told the Matrimonial Judge that he had left Campo Grande when he was “little,” and gone to Rio de Janeiro, where he made a living as a carpenter.
The couple were wed in late April 1795. Two years later, their first child, José, was baptized in See Cathedral in May 1797. Francisco de Paula, possibly one of the younger children, if not the youngest, was born twelve years later, on December 2, 1809. Moreira de Azevedo also mentions that the couple had a daughter named Ana Angélica.29 The carpenter, Jacinto, his wife, and their children lived in Rio de Janeiro until 1815. That year, when Francisco de Paula was about six years old, the family moved to São Nicolau de Suruí, a district of the town of Magé, a few leagues from Rio.
They moved because Jacinto had leased a plantation owned by the widow Bernarda Pinto Pereira. In November 1810, the widow purchased fifty-two braças (about 104 yards) of land in Suruí from Captain Luiz Manuel da Silva Paes Bolina. In the deed of sale drafted in Rio de Janeiro, there is no mention of improvements to the farm, such as houses, mills, or fields. This indicates that Bernarda may have invested more money in the property before leasing it to Jacinto.30 The region had been an important producer of cassava flour since the eighteenth century. Thus, like the farm on which Paula Brito spend a considerable part of his childhood, most of the properties in the Recôncavo Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro bay area) produced cassava flour.31 The lease that his father signed on August 28, 1815, stated that the farm consisted of “houses with tiled roofs, a flour mill. . . . Two cassava grinding wheels, two copper ovens [and further] items for making flour and a canoe.” The lease also included “a beast of burden” and ten slaves who lived on the property, of whom we have the names of eight: José, João, Sebastião, Francisca, Diogo, Violante, Quitéria, and Domingos. Regarding the enslaved individuals, the lease stated that if any of them should die during the period of the contract, Jacinto would have to repay the cost of that loss, which was to be included in the annual payments made to the widow or her heirs. The lease was for twelve years. During the first two, Jacinto was to pay 100,000 réis per annum, and 150,000 réis annually for the remaining ten.32 Based on the dates in the lease, the Paula Brito family was supposed to return the farm to its owners in 1827.
Paula Brito returned to Rio before that date. However, he lived on the cassava farm in Suruí between the ages of six and thirteen. His family must have lived in one of the tiled-roof houses, and Maria Joaquina da Conceição may have used one of the enslaved women listed in the lease as a house slave. The young man probably knew all the enslaved people working for his father. It would not be going too far to imagine that Paula Brito’s childhood was not very different from that of many other children raised on farms in nineteenth-century Brazil, living amid festivities, early schooling, and slavery. Just another plantation lad.
“Without lessons or teachers,” according to his first biographer, he supposedly learned to read and write from his sister Ana Angélica in Suruí.33 That is unlikely, however, particularly when we see the number of documents his forebears signed that are still extant—as we can see in Figures 6 and 7, which show the signatures of the publisher’s maternal grandfather and father. Although historians of reading have observed that it is risky to consider a signature, or better yet, the ability to write one’s own name, as an indication of full literacy,34 such documents show that these men and women who had emerged from slavery in Portuguese America had somehow learned to read and write and taught those skills to their children, perceiving their importance in the conscientiously undertaken process of social advancement.
We do not have enough data to determine to what extent the literacy of Francisco de Paula Brito’s family was an exception or the rule among freed-persons in Rio de Janeiro in the latter decades of the eighteenth century. Although we have valuable information on pardo and mameluco priests who, despite being excluded from high ecclesiastical posts, received an education and played important roles in the Portuguese Atlantic world, as well as literate pardos and blacks in eighteenth-century Paraíba,35 historical research has a long way to go to produce a social history of literacy among freed people of color and their free-born descendants. In the long term, however, the effects of this process can be understood when men of color who were one or two generations removed from slavery saw themselves as citizens of a newly created Empire and, with that prerogative, went into the streets and the newspapers to demand their rights.36
