A luta abolicionista, a Ave Libertas e uma nova geração feminina de ativismo (Recife, 1884-1888)

Abstract

Different profiles of women engaged in an institutionalized way in the abolitionist movement during the 19th century. In Pernambuco, this action was consolidated by the society Ave Libertas, which, with a board of directors composed exclusively of women, managed to seek freedom for hundreds of captives, leveraging the abolitionist idea in the city of Recife. In view of this, this paper analyzes the trajectories of the women who participated in this mobilization in the Pernambuco province, from the beginning of Ave Libertas in 1884, until the legalization of the end of slave labor in 1888. In this way, we investigate the pluralities of actions among the female public and how this participation created a network of activism capable of increasing the discussions about women's ability to get involved in political debates. Creating a generational dynamic that encouraged many women. Through the onomastic method, oriented by Carlo Ginzburg, we identified the names of women who were associated with abolitionist actions and investigated, mainly through research in Jornal do Recife and Diário de Pernambuco, the lives of these ladies and young women, listing information that would bring us closer to the paths taken by them to conquer the spaces of information, communication and intellectuality. With this, we explore how the Recife women’s group used the movement’s strategies, acting in urban spaces, in public demonstrations, and in the press, besides analyzing how close the activists got to the enslaved black population through their actions. Therefore, this research is based on the precepts of Social History and microanalysis, observing the characteristics of different social groups through the concept of historical experience in order to verify the transformations driven by social mobilization, in addition to using gender as a category of historical analysis, in order to attest to the importance of women’s action in the anti-slavery mobilization in Pernambuco.