Abolicionismo e lógica penal: análise de discursos sobre a abolição da pena de açoite para escravos no Senado Imperial do Brasil em 1886

Abstract

In this work will be analyzed the political speeches in the Imperial Senate, in 1886, about the abolition of the whipping penalty for enslaved. Parliamentary debates will be crossed by the dispute between the abolitionists, who aimed at a legal and immediate end to slavery and the development of a “civilized” penal system, and those who sought to prolong the use of enslaved labor and guarantee rights to the masters who were being deprived of their properties. But the central question for both groups will be: How can taking freedom from someone who doesn’t have it be an effective punishment? The project aimed to build an efficient punitive mode. Some senators, who were in part slave owners, believed that prison would be a boon to the enslaved criminal, as their life in captivity could be more painful than in prison. There was therefore a difficulty in reconciling a punitive mode based on the appropriation of the subjects' time with slavery. This incompatibility, as understood by the senators, put in question the maintenance of the use of black slaves. According to them, building a civilized society along the lines of European civilizations would be difficult while maintaining barbaric customs. The substitution of the black slave labor by the salaried work of white european immigrants was understood by the manor class as the best alternative to this problem. Finally, we will see how laws such as the law of the free womb, the law of the sixties, the abolition of the whip, and the Aurea law, were produced by conservative offices that sought to keep the black population in a subordinate condition and to promote a project to whiten the nation.