Reformadores da escravidaõ Brasil e Cuba c. 1790 e 1840

Abstract

Th is article analyzes debates about slavery in Cuba and Brazil, between the 1790s and 1840s. In diff erent contexts, the reformers were divided between slaveholders and abolitionists and discussed the insertion of Afro-descendants in the mentioned societies. Th e former defended not only slavery but the insertion of free slaves, blacks and mulattos as part of the heterogeneous Brazilian and Cuban population. However, abolitionists considered the mixture of races to be an obstacle to the formation of the nation or the origin of social integration diffi culties. Unlike slaveholders, they defended the homogeneity of the population, repudiated the disproportionate increase of "internal enemies", and encouraged European immigration. Th e "racialization" of the project for the nation was a trend more evident in Portuguese and Brazilian writings before the 1830s. In Cuba, the debate became more intense when the reformers detected an increase in the black and mulatto population in the decade of 1830s.