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

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

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municipal government had administered. 47 The few ganhador license<br />

registrations from 1886 demonstrate that the shift from municipal to police<br />

regulation <strong>of</strong> street commerce marked the last decade <strong>of</strong> slavery and<br />

foreshadowed certain legal and attitudinal changes and attitudes regarding street<br />

commerce <strong>of</strong> the early post-abolition and republican period. In addition, the<br />

experience <strong>of</strong> the urban police as overseer <strong>of</strong> slave and free street labor set a<br />

precedent, pushing street commerce toward a path <strong>of</strong> marginalization shaped by<br />

associations with criminality.<br />

If the tenuous and transitional historical moment <strong>of</strong> imminent abolition<br />

positioned street commerce near a crossroads between criminality and urban labor<br />

market regulation, the republican Penal Code <strong>of</strong> 1890 ensured that disciplinary<br />

measures established by criminal law would focus on correcting individuals and<br />

not inadequately regulated street commercial activity. Thus, the minor José<br />

Martins, to be found next to a café quiosque <strong>of</strong> the Praça da República on a winter<br />

morning in 1893, possessed a blade that for him was a working tool to unpack and<br />

distribute newspapers, but that authorities interpreted as the well-known weapon<br />

<strong>of</strong> capoeiras. 48 Chapter Three discusses legal changes and citizenship<br />

experiences that defined the transition from imperial to republican rule in 1890-<br />

1902. The shift from the regulation <strong>of</strong> street commerce to monitoring <strong>of</strong> behavior<br />

is evident in the hundreds <strong>of</strong> registry entries recording the detention <strong>of</strong> peddlers at<br />

the turn <strong>of</strong> the century in the municipal House <strong>of</strong> Detention, or Rio‟s Casa de<br />

Detenção. Public disorder followed by vagrancy and inebriation were the most<br />

47 Abreu, O Império do Divino.<br />

48 Discussed in Chapter Three.<br />

22

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