Viver honradamente de ofícios: trabalhadores manuais livres, garantias e rendeiros em Mariana (1709-1750)

Abstract

Scholars of Brazilian colonial history have long examined labor and workers as categories that were marked by degradation and social declassification. While this argument is not totally incorrect, such attitudes were not absolute and both categories need to be re-examined. That is the objective of this text. The basic idea here is that during the Modern Age life experiences acquired through honest and just labor could contribute positively to social classification. The town of Mariana (1709-1750) in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was chosen as the locus for analysis in attempting to understand different forms of labor* as readily available and valid sources of social classification. To do so it was necessary to: i) reconstitute a portion of the free labor market in a colonial slaveholding society; ii) understand access to and operational mechanisms specific to that labor market, as well as local credit networks; iii) narrate fragments of the trajectories, behavior, and strategies of local masters and journeymen. The results indicate the dimensions of free manual labor as a decisive part of economic and social dynamics in Mariana, especially because local production proved essential to regional economic survival. What emerged from the narratives were free workers who carried out their work in honorable fashion within the community. The trajectories of the master artisans Antônio Coelho da Fonseca, Pedro Rodrigues da Costa, and João Marques Pimenta, for instance, show that manual labor, whether learned or inherited, was a source of livelihood and was regarded as decent and honorable, giving workers the possibility of living like nobles. The experience in the world of labor may have been brief for some, but for many freeborn and freed workers and slaves it would never be forgotten. It was a page of the utmost importance in the moral narratives of many.