Dos registros paroquiais de terras de Santo Antônio do Paraibuna aos “senhores e possuidores” do distrito rural de São Francisco de Paula (1850-1880)

Abstract

In Imperial Brazil, the 1850’s was marked by legal innovations, especially with regard to access to land and slavery. The present dissertation was based on the “Registros Paroquiais de Terra” (RPT) of the municipality of Santo Antônio do Paraibuna, produced between 1855- 1856, an important source, but still little explored, which arose as a result of the regulation of the “Land Law” of 1850, through decree nº 1318 of January 30, 1854. In the same year in which the legal news was promulgated, the Vila de Santo Antônio do Paraibuna - MG was emancipated from the term of Barbacena - MG, institutional autonomy won by the growing economic and social importance. Santo Antônio do Paraibuna gained autonomy because the exponential increase in coffee plantations, based on African slave labor. In this way, the city’s RPT were the starting point to establishing hypotheses and understand the region at Minas Gerais. This exercise took the research to the rural district of São Francisco de Paula, where the trajectories of some historical characters that emerged from the RPT as landowners were pursued. Through the documentary analysis of “lords and possessors” who lived there, it was possible to capture - from sources such as inventories, wills, civil and criminal cases, in addition to population censuses and nominative lists produced between 1830 and 1872 - fragments about productive activities, conflicts by land and proprietary strategies.