A memória do cativeiro e os braços do trabalho: dicionários, escravidão, escravizados e suas ocupações ao final do período colonial no Maranhão (1760-1822)

Abstract

This work aims to reflect on the Memory of Captivity, which focuses on the pain, violence, and subordination of Black captives. This is a common memory of slavery maintained in national education and recalled at different times. Based on this understanding of this memory, we created a didactic-pedagogical resource entitled "Illustrated Dictionary of the Occupations and Trades of Enslaved People." First, we will understand "slavery" in light of hegemonic Western knowledge conveyed in dictionaries and other reference and reference publications. Then, we will present slavery, particularly from the perspective of enslaved people's experiences of the forms of exploitation they suffered, and the occupations and trades they held in Maranhão between 1760 and 1820, as recorded in manuscript inventory documents. This serves as a point of reflection on slavery in Brazilian society. Maranhão, especially the production units along the Itapecuru River, was one of the main locations in Portuguese America where slavery was established as a model of large-scale exploitation for the Atlantic trade controlled by European overseas empires. This creates a form of slavery, studied in school history, which ignores the experience of enslaved people in slavery and describes them superficially through a traumatic memory that persists and repeats itself in various ways, justifying the subordination of a group classified by ethnic-racial characteristics, descendants of Black captives exploited in colonial slavery. Given this context, we intend to present the scenario of modern slavery in Maranhão, characterizing how this enslavement functioned, highlighting the occupations of enslaved people, and emphasizing its impact on the construction and conquest of the colonial world. This teaching material focuses on the enslaved person as a subject based on the labor activities they perform and the knowledge they possess and apply to their activities. The aforementioned dictionary was used and applied to elementary school teachers in the cities of Itapecuru-Mirim and Caxias, in Maranhão, who noted the reminiscences of slavery and the memory of captivity in our formal education. However, it can also be an important resource and component of a practice that promotes historical recognition of Black people. Therefore, it is a matter of reviewing and reflecting on slavery, using a decolonial and anti-racist perspective that focuses on the existence of Black people of African descent in the construction of history.