ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: SLAVE LEGACIES, AMBIVALENT ...

workers, but the civil code throughout the nineteenth century maintained the status
of the slave as property and not worker. Moreover, the problem of citizenship and
slavery did not only affect the enslaved, but also the free African-descended
population, as modern notions of race emerging in the nineteenth century tended to
limit citizenship rights of people of African descent. 24 With the passage of the Free
Womb Law in 1871, Brazilian policymakers began debating the issue of slaves as
workers. 25 According to Grinberg, “[o]ne must understand the urgent need for
contracts in the 1870s: it was necessary to outline new rules to take account of the
diverse free labor relations created beginning in 1873, especially the case of foreign
laborers, who were arriving in great numbers.” 26 Although a comprehensive law on
labor contracts was needed well before abolition, the paradox of slavery and
liberalism complicated the practice of contract labor because as Grinberg explains
since “slaves did not own their own persons, they could not guarantee their
contracts.” 27
The emergence of contracts in the 1870s, however, was to ensure the service
of libertos to their ex-masters. 28 Patronage and relationships of dependency also
bound foreign immigrants to patrons, as was the case with numerous Portuguese,
Italians, Spaniards, and Syrio-Lebanese peddlers who required a fiador to sell on
24
Mattos, Escravidão e cidadania. Also see, Keila Grinberg, O fiador dos brasileiros: cidadania,
escravidão e direito civil no tempo de Antônio Pereira Rebouças (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização
Brasileira, 2002).
25
Keila Grinberg, “Slavery, liberalism, and civil law: definitions of status and citizenship in the
elaboration of the Brazilian Civil Code,” in Honor, Status, and Law in Modern Latin America, ed.
Sueann Caulfield, Sarah C. Chambers, and Lara Putnam (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005);
Nunes Mendonça, Entre a mão e os anéis: A lei dos sexagenários e os caminhos da abolição no
Brasil; Spiller Pena, Pajens da casa imperial: Juriscultos, escravidão e a lei de 1871.
26
Grinberg, “Slavery, liberalism, and civil law,” 116.
27
Ibid., 117.
28
Nunes Mendonça, Entre a mão e os aneis; Spiller Pena, Pajens da casa imperial.
12