Os pardos da Vila do Penedo do rio São Francisco: escravidão, hierarquias e distinção social em Alagoas (1758-1819)

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to analyze the trajectories of the pardos of Vila do Penedo, Comarca de Alagoas, through their participation in religious brotherhoods and militias, in the period from the mid-eighteenth century to the second decade of the nineteenth century. The brotherhood that housed those pardos was the one that was built around the first brown devotion of the Americas: São Gonçalo Garcia. The participation in the militia was essential for us to know the profile of the group and to understand its dynamics and the possibilities of social mobility. From this, we seek to understand the role that these two institutions, brotherhood and militia, played in the lives of these descendants of Africans inserted in a slave society of Old Regime.