Liberated Africans, Slaves, and Convict Labor in the Construction of Rio de Janeiro's Casa de Correção: Atlantic Labor Regimes and Confinement in Brazil's Port City

Abstract

From 1834 to 1850, Latin America's first penitentiary, the Casa de Correção in Rio de Janeiro, was a construction site where slaves, “liberated Africans”, convicts, and unfree workers interacted daily, forged identities, and deployed resistance strategies against the pressures of confinement and the demands of Brazil's eclectic labor regimes. This article examines the utilization of this motley crew of workers, the interactions among “liberated Africans”, slaves, and convict laborers, and the government's intervention between 1848 and 1850 to restrict slave labor at the prison in favor of free waged workers. It asserts that the abolition of the slave trade in 1850 and the subsequent inauguration of the penitentiary augured profound changes in Rio's labor landscape, from a predominantly unfree to a free wage labor force.

Violence and intimacy in colonial and postcolonial Africa

“…His contribution advances recent scholarship on incarceration and convict labour in post-emancipation contexts. While existing scholarship has begun to highlight the ways in which local penal systems were embedded in trans-imperial circulations of ideas and practices of punishment and forced labour contexts (Lichtenstein 1996; Paton 2004; Penn 2008; Anderson 2011; Jean 2016; 2019; Lopes 2022), Holdridge’s focus on violent intimacies sheds light on the ‘“messiness” of human actions’ that exposed the imperfections of colonial rule.…”

Another “education by stone”: An archaeological case study in Brazil's environmental law

“…In Brazil, discursive events remembering slavery continue to influence not only the production of history but also the production of space. Who remembers slavery, how it is remembered, and where it is remembered have clearly shaped very different historical narratives (Chalhoub 1990; French 2006, 2009; Jean 2019; Mattos 2005; Reis [1983] 2003). Their consequences for land ownership and land use have been no less significant.…”