Reivindicações e resistência: o não dos africanos livres (São Paulo, séc. XIX)

Abstract

This article uses fragments of the life histories of liberated Africans to show the daily resistance of those who believed in their right to freedom. Believing in their unique condition as liberated slaves or individuals rescued from the slave trade, they represented themselves as free individuals to the authorities, thus coming into conflict with the practices of public and private administrators. This resulted in several attempts to prove illegal enslavement, numerous confrontations with the guardianship system - one of the guises of slavery - and various other demands with interesting implications. Thus, their daily resistance exposed the vicissitudes of the relations between liberated Africans and public administrators, as well as the conditions to which the former were submitted in the jobs to which they were assigned.