Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Political Citizenship by Celso Thomas Castilho (review)

What played out in the streets of Recife from the late 1860s had a major impact on the abolitionist movement in Pernambuco and Brazil. Through meticulous research, historian Celso Thomas Castilho sheds light on numerous individuals, groups and episodes tied to the largest abolitionist movement outside of the capital of Rio de Janeiro. One antislavery group named Outreiro Democratico (perhaps translated as the Democratic Hill Gang) "literally transformed the street into their pulpit" during the year 1870. Gathering for "meetings [documents in Portuguese most often use the English word] in the public square" over the course of ten months, these activists, some of them being law students, commonly faced off against "unseemly characters, men in political gangs, who came nightly for the speeches" and tried to break up those gatherings (41). Five years later in 1875, a liberal group named Club Popular mobilized in Recife and interior towns to protest against the slave regime. These mass meetings occurred in public squares, "places that the elite scorned because of the 'unrefined habits of those who ate at the square' and due to the nuisance of 'street children and slaves who climbed on the gates'" (62). Nine years later, in the turbulent year of 1884, a twenty-two-year old abolitionist speaker shouted out: "Fellow Citizens! It is here, in the public square, that you should assemble . . . for revolutions are born in meetings and on the streets. It is here where we need to build the altar of liberty, and avenge the injustices of tyranny and oppression" (3). Common folk listened and observed closely. Famed abolitionists Joaquim Nabuco and José Mariano did the same, adopting mass meetings as a key tactic to gain publicity and political support.

Abolitionist mobilization took many manifestations. Poetry recitations, public readings of newspaper articles, theater presentations, petition campaigns, the appearance of mixed-race associations, protests by women, music, parades, speeches, dances, manumission ceremonies, freedom lawsuits, all contributed to the "politicization of new public spaces" (52).

Planters, merchants, officials and conservatives took notice, responding with a long list of accusations. "Pseudo-abolitionists" had inspired "abolitionist delirium" enabling the nearby province of Ceará to end slavery in March 1884. The elite of Pernambuco and other provinces could not accept "the creation of a new Canada, a promised land as it's being called [an allusion to the 100,000 escaped slaves in the US who traveled north to Canada]" (111). "Subversives" spread "false political doctrines," "bad seeds that will never bear good fruit" (5). To halt this "reactionary wave" by an "ignorant and reckless multitude," planters made token gestures; some freed their slaves. They claimed such generosity "was an example of their sensitive and compassionate spirit." Furthermore, it showed that "it is not only the proletariat who adhere to the cause of emancipation" (51). In spite of a myriad of attempts to undermine and marginalize abolitionists, popular mobilization created real tensions. Soon after the appointment of the Bahian João Maurício Wanderley (Baron of Cotegipe) to prime minister in August 1885, the governor of Pernambuco banned political theater and public meetings. This only fueled further protest.

Astutely building on the rich historiography of Brazilian and Atlantic abolition, Professor Castilho affirms that slaves played a decisive role in forcing the movement forward from the late 1860s through final abolition in 1888. This included flight, traveling to court houses to protest abusive treatment or claim the right to freedom papers, communicating with abolitionist associations, making contact with representatives of a sea-faring "underground railroad" that transported some 3,000 escaped slaves northward out of the province, and using savings to purchase their freedom at emancipation events. Furthermore, he provides numerous examples to link local, provincial, national and international events and pressures. Analysis of the debates surrounding the 1871 Free Womb Law and its aftermath, an electoral law of 1881 and the conservative swing of the Republican party after emancipation in May 1888 sheds new...