RESUMO Os fragmentos de vida que reunimos sobre Rufina ajudam a melhor compreender problemas ainda pouco estudados pela historiografia. Neste artigo, dois pontos serviram como fios condutores da análise: a posse de escravos por escravos e a noção de direito de propriedade a partir das concepções de cativos e libertos. Com isso, o objetivo principal é analisar, mediante fragmentos de vida de Rufina, a sua inserção no mundo da liberdade, buscando compreender a construção de hierarquias sociais no interior das propriedades escravistas, bem como a noção de direito de propriedade que ela trouxe como herança da escravidão. Discutimos, também, as condições que favoreceram sua ascensão social ainda em cativeiro e em que momento se formou sua visão sobre os direitos como proprietária, pautados em costumes construídos nas terras dos beneditinos.
This article explores gradual manumission policies on the Order of Saint Benedict's slaveholdings in the Northeastern province of Pernambuco, Brazil, between 1866 and 1871. Relying on private religious records from the Monastery of Saint Benedict of Olinda (in Pernambuco) and parliamentary debates, we contend that the Benedictine order was the first corporate enslaver to implement institutionalized strategies of gradual manumission in Brazil. To do so, they relied both on enslaved women's reproductive capabilities and on their adherence to church-sanctioned gender roles. We further argue that the order's decisions and actions were ahead of national developments in several important ways, and that, to some degree, these projects were a test case for future national abolitionist policies. Although the congregation did not involve itself in political debates, its actions created a working example of gradual abolition based on enslaved women's bodies that abolitionists used to make their case nationally.
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