“Buried in Silence”? Illegally Enslaved Africans in the Debate on Brazilian Slavery in the Nineteenth Century

The existence of Africans who were brought into Brazil after the prohibition of the slave trade was widely known, yet their right to freedom was the most sensitive issue of the public debate over Brazilian slavery, which remained largely unspoken for its explosive potential. Approximately 760,000 Africans were imported to Brazil after the enactment of the Anglo-Brazilian treaty of 1826 in March 1830, and the Brazilian law for the abolition of the slave trade, enacted on November 7, 1831. While Brazilian government officials turned a blind eye to smuggling and did not prosecute slave masters, thus unofficially legalizing property over the illegal slaves, British representatives in Brazil and early Brazilian abolitionists (such as Tavares Bastos) picked up this issue in the 1860s, fuelling the debate over the (il)legality of slave property. Playwright Martins Pena referred to the illegally-enslaved Africans as “meia-caras” (“half-faces”); a judge in Rio Grande do Sul feared they were “buried in silence”, since their right to freedom could not, for reasons related to the public order, be recognized publicly. This paper will seek to explore the ways in which these illegally-enslaved Africans and their right to freedom were represented in literature and in the political debate, drawing from plays and dispersed parliamentary debates, resolutions of the State Council, judicial records and pamphlets, as well as from Foreign Office correspondence contained in the FO 84 series (Slave Trade). Reading into the silence and into what was said between the lines, and also interpreting the choice of words of each historical actor are often the only ways of accessing sensitive issues lived in the past, and this attempt will follow this path, while reflecting on the method itself and its limitations.