In Rio de Janeiro, slave traders—prominent businessmen, respected and revered—had much influence in society and government affairs. In the Portuguese court, they took pride of place among the greatest donors, duly compensated with distinctions and titles of nobility. A native of Porto, Elias Antonio Lopes, a trafficker, arrived in Brazil at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1808 he already had received a knighthood in the Order of Christ and the title of notary and scribe of the village of Paraty in return for the “noteworthy generosity and demonstration of loyal subjecthood in tribute of my Royal Person.” That year he offered the prince regent a palace on the São Cristovão ranch. Also that same year, the prince granted him the post of deputy of the Royal Council of Commerce. In 1810, he was consecrated a knight of the Royal House and graced as permanent captain-general and lord of the village of São José Del Rei, a district of Rio de Janeiro. He also became a broker and trustee of the House of Insurance of the Court Square, and in time he received responsibility for levying taxes in various locales. At his death in 1815, he owned 110 slaves and a fortune of 236 million réis ($7.5 million) in palaces, plantations, shares of the Bank of Brazil, and slave ships.18
Unloaded by the thousands in Rio, slaves were a relatively affordable possession even for the middle class. James Tuckey, a British navy official, relates that in 1803 an adult slave sold for £40, the equivalent today of $6,300, less than half of the price of a mid-range car.19 Women cost a bit less, around £32, and boys £20. Blacks who had survived smallpox cost more since they developed an immunity to the disease and therefore had a chance of living longer.20 “I bought a negro for 93,600 réis,” wrote Luiz dos Santos Marrocos to his father on July 21, 1811, after his arrival in Rio de Janeiro.21 This amount corresponds to a little more than 20 pounds sterling ($3,200) at the time, the price of an adolescent slave. In another letter, dos Santos Marrocos refers to the slave as “my little urchin.”22
A common way of evaluating the price of a slave was comparing him to a pack animal. From the point of view of their owners, this comparison made sense: Both were destined for the same activity. A century earlier, the reports of Jesuit priest Father João Antonio Andreoni—author of Culture and Opulence in Brazil through Its Drugs and Mines, a classic of Brazilian history—had established the equation. Writing under the pseudonym André João Antonil, Andreoni relates that in 1711, “a well-built, brave, and wily negro” cost 300 eighths of gold, equal to three times the price of “a riding horse.”23 In the time of the Portugese court, a tame beast of burden cost approximately 28,000 réis, the price that Austrian botanist Karl von Martius paid for an animal in 1817, according to historian Almeida Prado.24 Therefore, dos Santos Marrocos paid for his slave the equivalent of three pack mules, curiously maintaining an exact parity of price between slave and animal a hundred years later.
In Rio de Janeiro, anyone with social standing owned slaves. Spanish traveler Juan Francisco de Aguirre records in 1782 that the thirty monks of the convent of São Bento—the richest in Brazil at the time—lived on income acquired from “four sugarcane mills employing 1,200 slaves and from some houses for rent distributed throughout the city.” Benedectine monks and Jesuit priests also kept slaves according to de Aguirre.25 Some landowners had more slaves than necessary for their activities and leased the excess slaves to third parties for yet more profit. There were even brokers who specialized as intermediaries in this type of negotiation—a system not unlike today’s real estate agents or car rental agencies. “Those who can acquire half a dozen slaves, live in idleness upon the ways of their labour, and stroll the streets in all the solemnity of self-importance,” wrote Englishman James Tuckey in 1803.26 “As such, anyone with a whiff of nobility could reap income from more humble labor without degrading themselves or callusing their hands,” observed historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda.27
German traveler Ernst Ebel recounts that upon arriving in Rio de Janeiro in 1824 he hired a slave for 700 réis per day, a little less than $18 in today’s currency. Unsatisfied with the man’s service, he fired him and after some time advertised in the Fluminense Daily for “a negress that knows how to wash and iron.” He hired a sixteen-year-old “blacky”—his description— named Delfina, who cost 11,000 réis per month: 6,000 in cash and the rest in food and other daily necessities. For this amount, equivalent to about half of contemporary minimum wage, Ebel wrote, “I make use of someone who not only washes my clothes and sews them, but in case of necessity, knows her way around the kitchen, staying in the house more and more, to my own greater safety.”28
Another variation of slavery developed in the form of moonlighting “for-profit” slaves. These slaves, after finishing their work in the houses of their owners, went into the streets in search of supplementary activity. They sold their labor piecemeal to diverse clients, offering services from a few hours’ duration to a full day. It became such a popular system that commercial houses specialized in renting them. Moonlighting slaves did everything: fetched water, did the shopping, removed garbage, delivered and collected messages, and accompanied women to church. John Luccock recounts that some were even hired to say Ave Marias for their temporary employers in the many oratories in the city.29
Exploited by their owners, slaves moonlight for profit as itinerant vendors in the streets of Rio de Janeiro.
Pretos de ganho, engraving from Views and Costumes of the City and Neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro by Henry Chamberlain, London, 1822, Lucia M. Loeb/Biblioteca Guita e José Mindlin
At the end of each day, the moonlighting slaves passed part of their earnings to their owners, a previously determined figure. A slave who surpassed this amount kept the difference. “This form of work was equally as convenient for the owner as for the slave,” writes historian Leila Mezan Algranti, an authority on the subject. “The master did not bother with the occupation of his workers, nor with controlling them. The negroes, in turn, lived free in the streets, enjoying a liberty never dreamed of by their counterparts in the countryside.” According to Algranti, the system proved profitable: Some masters lived solely on the labor of one or two “profit-blacks.” At the same time, some moonlighting slaves not only paid the agreed rental price to their owners but even managed to make enough money to buy their freedom.30 If a slave didn’t reach the target amount, however, he was punished.
Colonial period museums teem with horrifying instruments of punishment and torture used on slaves. As classified by historian Artur Ramos, various categories of punishment existed in Brazil. The first involved punishment with instruments of capture and restraint, including: chains, iron collars, handcuffs, fetters and shackles (for feet and hands), in addition to the pillory and the viramundo, a smaller pillory made of iron. A tinplate mask prevented a slave from eating sugarcane or brown sugar or from swallowing precious stones or gold nuggets. Pilliwinks—iron rings to crush the thumbs—obtained confessions. Thrashings made use of a paddle or a “codfish,” a whip with a short handle of gold or wood and five points of twisted leather. Hot irons branded a slave with his or her owners’ initials or the letter F for fugitive. The libambo consisted of an iron hoop fastened around the neck, from which a long iron stem or stems protruded and bent down to the top to the slave’s head, sometimes with rattles at the tips.
The three instruments used with the most regularity were the whip, the pillory, and shackles. The most common punishment was lashing, either on the back or buttocks, for when a slave tried to escape or committed a crime or some great fault on the job. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Italian friar Jorge Benci recommended that whippings not surpass forty per day to avoid mutilating the slave.31 But travelers’ and chroniclers’ reports reference two hundred, three hundred, and even up to six hundred lashes. That mind-boggling amount of whipping left the back or buttocks completely shredded. At a time without antibiotics, the risk of death by infection, gangrene, or sepsis was great, so the punished slave would be bathed in an excruciating mix of s
alt, vinegar, or chili pepper in an attempt to stave off any infection.32
Painter Jean-Baptiste Debret recounts that in Rio de Janeiro slaves accused of grave misconduct such as escape or theft received punishments of fifty to two hundred lashes. The master had to report “the name of the delinquent and the number of lashings he was to receive” to the jail authorized by the police superintendent. The tormentor charged with executing the punishment received one pataca, a silver coin worth 320 réis, for every one hundred lashes applied. “Every day between nine and ten in the morning, one can see the queue of negroes waiting to be punished,” wrote Debret.
They are chained at the arm, two by two, and escorted by the police to the place designated for their punishment. To this end pillories are erected in every major public square, with the intention of displaying the punished. . . . After being released from the pillory, the negro is laid on the ground face down to avoid blood loss. The sores hidden below their shirttails thus escape the bites of the swarms of insects seeking this horrible repast. Finally, the beating complete, the condemned adjust their trousers and return to prison, two by two, with the same escort that brought them. . . . Back in prison, the victim is subjected to a second trial, no less painful: washing the sores with vinegar and chili pepper, a sanitary procedure with the intention of preventing infection.33
A key difference between urban and rural slavery was the administration of punishment. On plantations and in gold and diamond mines, overseers or masters punished slaves directly. In the city, this task fell to the police. Slave owners who didn’t want to punish a slave personally could appeal to their services—for a fee of course. Blacks were punished in the prisons and pillories around the cities. Consul James Henderson witnessed one of these punishments in Rio de Janeiro:
A gentleman obtained an order for the flagellation of one of his runaway slaves, with two hundred lashes. On his name being called several times, he appeared at the door of a dungeon, where the negroes seemed to be promiscuously confined together. A rope was put round his neck, and he was led to a large post, in the adjoining yard; around which his arms and feet were bound, while a rope secured his body in like manner, and another, firmly fastened round his thighs, rendered the movement of a single member wholly impossible. The black degradado set to work very mechanically, and at every stroke, which appeared to cut part of the flesh away, he gave a singular whistle. The stripes were repeated always upon the same part, and the negro bore the one hundred lashes he received at this time with the most determined resolution. On receiving the first and second strokes he called out “Jesus” but afterwards laid his head against the side of the post, not uttering a syllable, or asking for mercy.34
With the exception of homicide, the most grave misconduct a slave could attempt was escape. Nearly 16 percent of the total arrests by the court police between 1808 and 1822 were of runaway slaves. It was an age-old conflict. Nearly a century earlier, in March 1741, responding to a request by the miners of Minas Gerais, the crown ordered that all runaway slaves found on quilombos, “if they were there voluntarily,” should be branded with an F, for fugitive, on their upper backs. Repeat offenders had one of their ears cut off, and if caught a third time they were sentenced to death. Despite these measures, escapes continued in great numbers. In 1755, the City Council of Mariana, in Minas Gerais, proposed that captured fugitives have their Achilles tendons cut so they could no longer run but remain able to work limping. The court found this measure overly inhumane and unchristian and denied the request.35
The surrounding areas of Rio de Janeiro, replete with forests and mountains, offered refuge for hundreds of runaway slaves. The Tijuca Forest, Santa Teresa Mountain, and the regions of Niteroi and the present-day Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon became famous for sheltering quilombos. Their inhabitants foraged in the forest, collecting fruit and root vegetables, and hunted small animals and rodents. Their principal sustenance, however, came from neighboring farms that they frequently raided. At times the runaway slaves even managed to sell stolen goods in the city.36
In contrast to what we might imagine, however, most runaway slaves took refuge not in the forests or solitary rural locales but the city itself. Given the many freed slaves and mulattos in the urban environment, runaway slaves blended easily with the crowds. It was practically impossible for the police to verify the identity and status of every black slave in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. As a result, newspapers brimmed with announcements describing runaway slaves and offering rewards for their capture, a practice that continued almost up to abolition in 1888. Here is an example of one such announcement at the time:
A slave named Lourenço escaped two months ago from the farm of Francisco de Moraes Campos of the parish of Belém, municipality of Jundiaí, province of São Paulo. . . . He has the following traits: about 30 years old, average height, long face, handsome features, shaggy hair, a refined nose, mouth and lips quite regular, with the lower lip thicker and redder, good teeth, very dark skin color, a thin beard, a fine frame, the crown of his head worn bald from carrying objects, thin legs, reedy, feet jutting outwards, he is very wily. He is a ploughman, and a very good muleteer. I will handsomely reward anyone who catches him and pay all expenses incurred up until his delivery.37
Woodsmen often had the task of capturing runaway slaves, their work similar to bounty hunters of the American Wild West. Armed with lasso and harness, they traversed forests and rural areas in search of fugitives. They used announcements published in newspapers or nailed on posts along roadsides or in public squares as clues. When they recaptured slaves, they tied them with ropes and forced them to walk on foot behind their horses. Some woodsmen even had pillories at home to hold recaptured slaves while negotiating rewards with their owners. “The woodsmen were armed, but only used their weapons if they met with resistance,” according to Theodor von Leithold. “Negroes killed in skirmishes with the police had their heads cut off and staked atop poles on the corner of the main roads as warnings.”38 In general, the sum paid to woodsmen amounted to around 15 to 20 percent of the total estimated price of the slave and included the bounty for the capture, reimbursement for food, and a fee for guarding the slave until his return to his owner.39
Rio de Janeiro had hundreds of manumitted or freed slaves, called forros. Luccock estimated their number at around one thousand in 1808. A slave could gain his freedom in many ways. He could purchase it at a previously negotiated amount, generally equal to what the owner had paid for him. The slave accumulated this money himself, earned it by doing piecemeal work for others, or received it through the help of family members or a brotherhood. Owners could grant freedom outright, and some manumissions had deadlines. For example, a slave might have to remain captive and in service until the owner’s death, after which he was legally free, as stipulated in his owner’s will. The government could also intervene in cases of abandonment, illness, or maltreatment.40
The law also outlined special conditions that authorized manumission. A slave who found a diamond of twenty carats or more, for example, gained his freedom, and in this case the owner received an indemnity of 400,000 réis, enough to buy four more slaves. Englishman John Mawe describes this system of manumission by reward in the diamond mines of Cerro Frio in Minas Gerais, which he visited in 1810:
When a negro is so fortunate as to find a diamond of the weight of an octavo (17½ carats), much ceremony takes place; he is crowned with a wreath of flowers and carried in procession to the administrator, who gives him his freedom, by paying his owner for it. He also receives a present of new clothes, and is permitted to work on his own account. When a stone of eight or ten carats is found, the negro receives two new shirts, a complete new suit, with a hat and a handsome knife.41
A slave who denounced his master for smuggling also legally received his freedom. In this case, the slave himself received a reward of 200,000 réis.42
Many forros, having become rich enough to acquire land and other propert
y, became slave owners themselves. These cases were rare, but they add a surprising element to the landscape of slavery in Brazil. The most famous case concerns the mulatta Francisca da Silva de Oliveira, known as Chica da Silva, of the Tijuco diamond district in Minas Gerais. Chica was born a slave but gained her liberty in 1753, granted by the diamond miner João Fernandes de Oliveira who bought her from Manuel Pires Sardinha, a Portuguese doctor. While they never legally married, she and de Oliveira had a seventeen-year relationship during which they had thirteen children. Among Chica da Silva’s possessions was a “sizeable pack of slaves,” according to historian Ronaldo Vainfas.43
The power brokers of Brazil, who considered slavery an economic institution to be preserved, didn’t view manumission kindly. Historian Leila Mezan Algranti cites the case of the forra Clara Maria de Jesus, who requested of Dom João the freeing of her son Jorge Pardo, slave of the priest João da Cruz Moura e Camara. She claimed that Jorge was the son of a free man, the lieutenant colonel of the line troops in Angola, conceived while she was still in captivity. Clara Maria was willing to pay 200,000 réis for the manumission of her son, but the priest refused the deal. The superintendent general of police, Paulo Fernandes Viana, denied her request. According to him, “nobody should be forced to sell their property” because “a good slave is a good find, and precious property.” Viana advised against manumission because the country couldn’t afford the risk of a large population of freed blacks. “The evils that we await from blacks are even greater when they are free than when captive,” he warned, concluding ominously that he couldn’t grant Clara Maria’s request because “there are more powerful political motives at large in this country.”44
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