The Mina Coast African Maria Francisca do Rosário: Slavery, Color and Social Ascension in a Frontier Context (Brazil, Second Half of the Nineteenth Century)

Abstract

The present study use some fragments of the trajectory of the Mina Coast African Maria Francisca do Rosário – and her relatives – to discuss issues such as social classification through color and possibilities of social ascension that Africans trafficked as slaves to Brazil in the 19th century has to deal. For this, the main source used was the baptism records, although several documents, such as criminal cases and manumissions, among others, have also been explored. The region that was focus of the study was the South-Rio-Grandense Campaign, at the southern end of the Brazilian Empire. More specifically, the collected documentation focuses on the locality of Bagé, where Maria Francisca lived almost whole her life. It was possible to observe, through the serial analysis of the baptisms, that color, as a way of qualifying/classifying individuals (especially those who had part of their past or their ancestors, linked to slavery) did not disappear. In the same way, it was possible to verify that the construction of solid bonds of friendship and family opened up possibilities of social ascension – a ascension that, in the last instance, could make the color or even the stigma of the slavery of a certain individual (or his relatives) disappear, or at least change in a positive sense (for that society), of the documents.