Militias, Colonial Racial Order, and Black Social Ambitions in Minas Gerais, Brazil

On April 9, 1785, the Mestre de Campo of the pardo troops of the Town of Sabará, Antônio Vieira da Costa, reported to the governor of Minas Gerais that he had imprisoned one of his captains, João Paulo Pereira, for insubordination. Pereira, it seems, resisted taking the “oath of the holy gospel” as ordered and directed several insults at his commanding officer. According to the report, the source of Pereira’s frustration was that he believed he should be captain in the white, not pardo, militia. The tropas auxiliaries, or auxiliary troops, that formed the colonial militia were an important part of the military structure of colonial Brazil. These were not professional members of Portugal’s defense forces, but rather members of the broad male population who were required to volunteer their time to protect the interests of the crown. In observation of the existing social-racial order, troops were organized according to class or quality into separate regiments of white, preto (Black), or pardo (mixed-descendant) men. Assigning men to each category was not, however, a straightforward process, as the confrontation between the Mestre de Campo and his captain indicates. Each man had their own sense of his social distinction and entitlement, which they asserted and performed to the best of their abilities when opportunity or necessity arose. This paper will explore this episode of insubordination and reconstruct parts of these men’s life trajectory to make sense of the impact the clash between the colonial racial project and individuals’ life projects had on eighteenth-century race relations in Brazil.