Chica da Silva: A Brazilian Slave of the Eighteenth Century (review)

In this captivating study, Júnia Ferreira Furtado unravels the history of the remarkable eighteenth century woman of mixed descent, Chica da Silva, who captured the heart of the Portuguese diamond contractor, the High Court judge João Fernandes de Oliveira, in the mining district town of Tejuco (current day Diamantina), Brazil. Chica da Silva was popularized through a 1970s feature film, Xica da Silva, and in a telenovela the 1990s, as the sexy and wily seductress who conquered the heart of the Portuguese bureaucrat. In fact, the award winning Portuguese edition of Furtado's book, published by Companhia das Letras in 2003, was titled Chica da Silva e o contratador dos diamantes: o outro lado do mito, in direct reference to the way that the study counters the many myths that have circulated for decades about Chica da Silva. Nevertheless, the author does not focus on myth busting in her study. Instead, by painstakingly piecing together detailed historical documentation from numerous archives in Brazil, Portugal, and Rome, Furtado allows Chica da Silva to emerge as a real person as she moves from being the daughter of a slave from West Africa and a Portuguese aristocrat, the slave girl Francisca parda, to the freedwoman and fifteen year companion and lifelong partner of João Fernandes, Francisca da Silva de Oliveira.

The book is divided into eleven chapters organized chronologically with a preface and an introduction to the English edition. The preface and introduction work together to introduce the reader to the intentions of the author, the myths of Chica da Silva as propagated through novels and films and popular history and especially how they relate to the historiography of ideas of racial democracy and its detractors, and the general history of Brazil and the mining district. The chapters break roughly into three parts. The first section contrasts the origins of Francisca da Silva and João Fernandes and then discusses their meeting and their lives together. The detailed look at Chica's birth to her slave mother and Portuguese father and her subsequent sale to a Portuguese physician and the birth of her first child with him help to highlight the quotidian nature of these unequal and often coercive relationships in eighteenth century Minas Gerais. In contrast, João Fernandes' early life helps to shed light on the ways that networks of patronage could allow certain families to gain both riches and favor in the Portuguese Empire. If Chica da Silva's early life demonstrates the inherently unequal nature of white man/black female slave relations, her relationship to João Fernandes shows the ways that those relationships could express real affection and lead to stable partnerships. João Fernandes bought Francisca parda, freed her only months after the sale, and established the relationship with her that produced thirteen children and a lifelong bond. The second section of the book uses their relationship as a stepping off point for discussing daily life in Tejuco and the webs of relationships that formed the backdrop to everyday life. In these chapters, Furtado discusses patterns of consumption, including the purchase of slaves, and the importance of social networks such as godparentage and the association within brotherhoods. She also examines education and the arts, while always placing in high relief the racial and gendered complexity of the colonial mining region.

After fifteen years together, João Fernandes was forced to return to Portugal to defend his interests after his father's death. The final chapters of Furtado's book examine these years of separation and the fate of his children. A large part of this section is dedicated to the effort he made to leave a patrimony for his children. Leaving such a patrimony involved the sleight of hand of minimizing their racially mixed backgrounds. In fact, João Fernandes made this effort not only with his own children with Chica da Silva, but with her first son, Simão Sardinha Pires, the off...