Pós-abolição no Piauí (1888–1940): entre o campo, a cidade e as experiências de trabalho e disciplina da população negra

Abstract

In an attempt to record the survival strategies of the black population after the end of slavery, this work explored the experiences in the city, in the countryside, at labor, and in the discipline relegated to the black population in post-abolition Piauí. In view of the policies to end slavery, we sought to understand the impact of the labor pedagogy policies constructed by the state on the black population in the post-abolition period. With this question in mind, the research set out to understand the labor practices developed by the black population in line with the state's practices of subordination. We explored the agricultural centers set up in the imperial period, and their continuity in the Republic, as well as the disciplining practices imposed on the population with State Codes of Posture and other forms of labor education. To this end, we used as our documentary corpus the Livro de Detidos de Teresina (1900-1926), the Rol de Culpados do Piauí (1889-1919), the Códigos de Postura of the cities of Piauí and the laws that built the agricultural centers, in order to understand the state's apparatus of subordination. In the search to locate the black population, and by carrying out a demographic analysis based on the sources, we aimed to problematize the labor spaces occupied by the black population in the post-abolition period, as well as observe the practices that indicate the black population's search for autonomy with the end of slavery. In addition, it was possible to observe the constant mobilization of the state to build a labor space for the black population, immobilizing them in the countryside and in subordinate labor. Inspired by Clóvis Moura's analysis, we call this movement social immobilism against black people in the labor market. We also observed practices of subversion of the norm by the black population, who joined family farming as a form of resistance to oppression on the land.