“THAT THE MURDERER HAD NO RELIGION, NOR COUNTED ON GOD, THE FATHER”: Slavery, Afro-Catholicism, paternalism and criminality (Quilombo Island, Rio Grande do Sul, 1874)

Abstract

Abstract: The anti-slavery public consciousness, rising from the 1860s and especially the 1870s, hit the courts and imperial society in various ways. In the case that we will report hereafter, we perceive that this change of sensibility with respect to the enslaved also had an intention to stifle or limit potential disturbances that, starting from a micropolitical instance, would spread to larger dimensions. It was important to value the motivations of the crimes of the enslaved, pondering whether they would not have been impelled to the crime by the bad manners of their masters. Moreover, in this plot that we will approach through a judicial document, it is evident that devotion was one of the main cultural artifacts that interconnected the peoples approached by the transatlantic traffic. Its analysis allows us to perceive the hybrid forms with which the real and supernatural started to be realized, in those identities and sensibilities marked by the diaspora.

Keywords: Slavery. Paternalism. Justice. Devotion.