The threat of reenslavement: Legal battles to maintain freedom in seventeenth-century Mariana, Brazil

Abstract

This article examines civil lawsuits brought to maintain the freedom of former slaves in Mariana, a town in the Captaincy of Minas Gerais, during Brazil's colonial period. To avoid reduction to slavery, threatened individuals took their matters to court. The authors of the lawsuits chose to obtain a public deed that certified their legal status as freed people (alforriados), or other instruments capable of safeguarding the freedom they already enjoyed. In the public sphere, they employed several strategies to achieve their goals. Given that, we strive to relate information about threats to freedom and the way by which it was possible to defend it in court, in order to understand aspects of slavery hitherto unexplored. It is of particular concern how the different ways to obtain freedom influenced the post-emancipation stage and how these differences proved relevant to the experience of former slaves.