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Chapter Nine Slavery and the Social and Cultural Landscapes of Luanda Roquinaldo Ferreira On July 10, 1771, Manoel de Salvador, a slave living in Luanda, was arrested on the accusation of committing a burglary. To defend himself, he laid out a set of startling arguments. According to Salvador, he had been “shipped from this city [Luanda] together with his mother and his brother to Rio de Janeiro when he was a child, and later he returned to this city [Luanda] and his brother stayed in Rio de Janeiro.”1 In addition, he claimed that the significant amount of money that the Luanda authorities found at his house was “brought [to Luanda] by his friends from Brazil” and was the proceeds of the sale in Rio de Janeiro of “straws, pipes, and mats that he [Salvador] shipped to Brazil.”2 In Luanda, Salvador used the money to purchase nice clothes and dispense gifts to several girlfriends. In Salvador’s words, “to some [women] he would give two hundred and fifty réis and to others he would give two hundred réis.”3 The incident that led to Salvador’s arrest began when several female slaves of Manoel da Silva Machado Palhares, the Portuguese owner of a tavern in Luanda, ran out of Palhares’s house and screamed for help during the night of July 10, 1771. Three black soldiers, part of the police force that regularly patrolled the streets of Luanda, intervened and took Salvador into custody. In addition to a cloth bag that would presumably be used to carry stolen items from the house, two Dutch knives were found with Salvador.4 According to Salvador’s description of his actions on the night of the alleged burglary, his owner sent him to the house of João dos Santos to deliver a letter, after which Chapter Nine 186 he returned home to deliver Santos’s answer to his owner. He subsequently left again to take a walk and was joined by his friend Joaquim, another slave. The two men went to a tavern, and Joaquim drank some rum. Later, Joaquim returned home but Salvador stayed longer because he “was trying to date a young slave woman called Tereza that belonged to the owner of the tavern [Palhares].”5 In order to find Tereza, Salvador decided to enter Palhares’s house, which was next to the tavern. Already inside the house, he was forced to hide underneath the bed after noticing that Palhares was at home. According to Salvador, he wanted to wait for the owner of the house to leave “so he could talk to the black woman and stay with her until late at night.”6 After returning home briefly to deliver the letter, Salvador did not stay long “because if he did it, the door would be closed and he would miss the chance to enter the tavern.” Although authorities became suspicious from the onset of Salvador’s version of why he had entered Palhares’s house, a series of testimonies and cross-examinations with key witnesses further undercut Salvador’s explanations. During a cross-examination with Joaquim, the slave who had met Salvador on the night of his arrest, Salvador became “vacillating and confused” after Joaquim denied meeting him or drinking with him at the tavern. Furthermore, his owner, João Sylva Franco, denied having sent him to deliver a letter to someone in Luanda. The biggest blow to his credibility came when he was accused of a series of burglaries that had recently taken place in Luanda, including the high-profile looting of the warehouse of the Portuguese-controlled Company of Pernambuco, which was responsible for shipping 30 percent of the slaves exported from Luanda and owned the largest warehouse in town.7 The Social Milieu of Taverns in Angola Salvador’s interactions with various slaves and masters in Luanda reflected the urban dynamics of taverns and nightlife that troubled colonial officials in port cities throughout the Black Atlantic. Beginning in 1759, a local chamber regulation required taverns to close at 7 p.m. during weekdays and remain closed on Sundays and religious holidays.8 Faced with resistance by owners and patrons, city officials decided to allow taverns to remain open until 9 p.m.9 However, existing regulations were frequently violated, and it would not be surprising if the tavern that Salvador went to remained open later than the time allowed by law. In fact, taverns that closed doors to the Project MUSE (2024...

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