No apagar das luzes : policiais e escravizados na última década da escravidão em Pernambuco (1880-1888)

Abstract

This work has as object of study the relation between urban enslaved and the police in the context of the daily life of the city of Recife in the final years of the Empire. It intends to analyze the role of the police as an apparatus of social control and, consequently, as an instance of power in relation to the enslaved population that lived between the years of 1880 and 1888. For this it tried to problematize the police structure and its limitations in the technologies of social control in Recife of the period focused, the repression exerted on the enslaved and how the latter avoided or reacted to such control. We can see by this study that the arrest of the enslaved could indicate an action that exposes a threatened power, since the owners used na external instance (the police) to control your property. We have also noticed how the force was appropriating this function of control, not only of the free, but also of the captives and used a kind of mechanism of suspicion on the population, where the enslaved could be imprisoned for many reasons. However, we broadened this debate about the repression of the police on the captive portion of the city during the 1880s, to further analyze the relations between these groups especially in the scenario of falling of the slavery institution. This work follows the line of Social History and made use of police documents, from the governmental sphere (with the reports of the president of the province), of the judicial sphere (with the Criminal Code of 1830), besides some newspapers of the time, especially the Jornal do Recife and the Diário de Pernambuco.