A resistência preta ao poder punitivo escravista entre 1830 e 1850

Abstract

From racialized lenses, from the field of critical criminology and marxism, this work analyzes the black resistance to captivity carried out by the enslaved themselves during the first phase of slavery, especially in the period located between 1830 and 1850, when quilombagem and the various forms of black rebellion systematically corroded the support bases of the slave society. In contact with secondary sources, we seek to understand the complexities that cross the relationship between punitive power (state and domestic) and the revolts of enslaved people. Although the demand for order has justified the constant expansion of punitive power through the development of different mechanisms and structures for surveillance, punishment, persecution, capture and extermination of enslaved people, while the enslaved, in addition to being an enemy whose existence terrified their masters, also it was a commodity and a means of production that enriched its executioners, their collective or individual struggle fractured the slaveholding structures, imposing economic, political and psychological wear on the landlord class. One can see, on the one hand, the interest of the Empire to take the punitive reins for itself, minimally regulating the exercise of punishments applied against the enslaved. On the other hand, mainly after the publication of Law nº 4 of June 10, 1835, that the domestic punitive power tried to make difficult the application of the death penalty and galleys to the enslaved, because, in both cases, the death of the enslaved merchandise was, ultimately, a dilapidation of the manorial patrimony. Understanding the dynamics of the struggle of enslaved people in this historical period will be essential for the subsequent understanding of the relationship between the struggle of enslaved people and the retreat of punitive power that will be registered in the second phase of slavery, as a form of manorial strategy for maintaining the structures of exploitation of slaves. enslaved and their descendants. Here the revolt of the enslaved is read as a source of rights that made the masters retreat and realize that it would be more profitable to free them to preserve the political, social and economic stability of slave domination, maintained in different ways until the present day.