In the 1880s, Mariano Pereira dos Santos lived the only way he knew: On a farm in Paraná. being treated as if he was an object, he already worked all day and earned only enough food to keep himself from starving. He could only rest at night, when he slept huddled up with his companions.
Mariano or Marianinho, as he was called by his friends, was one of the more than 700. 000 enslaved people that existed in Brazil, when Princess Isabel signed the Golden Law, in May 1888. That law was a response to the persistent struggle of social movements and the resistance of the enslaved.
In several cities people celebrated the end of slavery. Marianinho also celebrated. Now he was a free black man and he could go wherever he wanted and start his life over.
Problem was that Mariano had nowhere to go, neither any prospect of a future. How could he go back to his ancestors' land without money? Where would he live if he couldn't even pay rent?
That was the situation that almost all the enslaved freed people would have to face from that 13th of May 1888. I invite you to see what happened to these people after the abolition. And if you can, leave your like to help us spread this video and subscribe, so you won't miss our new videos!
This video has been made with the help of historian Dirceu Lima Júnior, professor of African History and Black People in Brazil. and also by Caio Vinicius Godoy, our own historian on the channel. To help tell you this history, I brought here a singer who's also my dear friend, Rael!
[RAEL] Hello, hello, nostalgic beings! Alright, Castanhari! Let's tell this history!
[CASTANHARI] Let's 'take a tour' through the history of Brazil? [RAEL] Let's go! [ ANIMATED NOSTALGIA ] [CASTANHARI] After the 13th of May 1888, thousands of black people began to roam freely througout the country.
Many moved away from the places where they'd been enslaved and tried to find their relatives, who'd been sold to every corner around Brazil. As you might imagine, their lives were far from easy. Many barely owned clothes or hygiene items and were constantly repressed by the police and accused of loitering.
Many of these policemen were descendants of white men with black women, because they had lighter skin and played alongside the oppressor, so they could have less of a worse life. [RAEL] Getting a job was also not an easy task for blacks who'd been enslaved. Firstly, because of prejudice they got stereotyped as lazy, mean-spirited and even dangerous.
Secondly, according to that since 1818, European workers immigrated to Brazil. This number started to increase from 1850, because the price of enslaved people was getting so high, that the wage labor ended up being cheaper for the big farmers. [CASTANHARI] But the economy wasn't the only reason for this immigration.
At that time, many theories of eugenics arose about European whites being of a superior race. This conversation also took place in Brazil, on attempts to whiten the population. One of them was the government's incentives to attract European immigrants, so that their descendants would increase the number of white people population, leaving Brazil similar to European nations, seen at that time as more civilized.
[RAEL] The immigrants who headed to the south of the country, for an instance, were able to acquire lands, agricultural tools and seeds. Of course during this process, many of them owed money to the government, but over time, these debts have been forgiven. [CASTANHARI] But what about the black people who'd been enslaved?
They haven't received any assistance from the government and were left to fend for themselves. Because the idea of the whitening plan was to make them disappear in the midst of misery and hunger. Therefore, they could only count on themselves.
Those who remained in the countryside looked for work on farms, but many landowners refused to pay them wages. So some of them simply camped in vacant places to cultivate the land. [RAEL] Others ended up heading to the cities.
They worked as street vendors, masons or in domestic services. They lived together with the poorest people in tenements, where each room was occupied by an entire family. The government and the elite did not like these tenements at all.
They said that they were places full of diseases, depravity and that it hindered the beauty of cities. Thus the government created a series of legal measures, disguised as sanitary actions, initiating urban reforms that wiped these tenements off the map, forcing black people and the poorest people to move to places where there was no light, water or transportation. [CASTANHARI] That changed entire neighborhoods.
With the black culture of these landscapes being replaced by that of the new residents and little by little, completely forgotten. An example is the neiborhood called 'Liberdade' [Freedom] in São Paulo, it's name originates from the fight against slavery. Nowadays, it's home to the city's Japanese community.
But in the past, it was a black neighborhood and all of its traces have been completely erased from its streets. Another emblematic case was the giant Cabeçade Porco tenement, in Rio de Janeiro. When it was ordered to be demolished in 1893, many of its 2,000 inhabitants ended up building houses on Morro da Providência.
This originated of one of the first favelas in the country and to this day, one of the oldest communities in Brazil is still there. [RAEL] So black people didn't have decent housing nor jobs to improve their living conditions. What could have changed this, would've been quality education.
But at the time, they didn't have any access to that. When these people started to move to the slums and suburbs, their children and grandchildren were directly impacted, as there were no schools close to their homes and in many cases black children couldn't enroll, because they didn't even have any documents. It was as if they didn't exist.
In other words, black people were excluded economically, socially and intellectually, since the beginning of the Republic. This is where we see racism already present in the structure that supports society. This is structural racism.
[CASTANHARI] It's important to mention that employed and poorer immigrants did not accept being treated as 'ex-slaves', and demanded their own exclusive rights. Over time, these rights became privileges, helping racism spread once and for all to the middle class and even to the lower classes. This was supported by the media, which would mock black people and their cultures with racist texts and images.
[RAEL] When he was still enslaved, Marianinho was not allowed to talk during work and spent the whole day silent. After the abolition, he was finally able to speak his mind, but was still ignored until his impressive 114 years. Brazil never wanted to listen to Marianinho or any other black person, who'd been freed from slavery.
[CASTANHARI] On the contrary: Our country preferred to sweep the history of slavery under the rug. An example is what happened in 1890, when Rui Barbosa was the finance minister. He was being pressured by farmers who wanted to be compensated by the government, for having been forced to give up their slave labor, so he had all documents involving slave trade and import burned.
However, the destruction of these documents also ended the chance of former slaves to understand their origins. People from different parts of the world came to Brazil, but black people were the only ones who did it against their will. The ships that transported them were so insecure that many died on the trip.
Some even committed suicide or were killed in rebellions on the way. [RAEL] They'd had their past stolen and had also lost their future. Precisely because of the way the government dealt with the enslaved after abolition.
Because as we've seen, things happened in a linked way. [ RECAP ] After the liberation, black men and women were replaced on the farms by European immigrants, who came to Brazil for economic reasons and as part of a plan to whiten the population. Time has passed and little has changed.
Prejudice made black people continue to be treated as slaves in several regions. So many of them went to the cities, where they got underemployed and lived in tenements. This lasted until the government brought down these tenements, with sanitary laws, which strengthened structural racism by the government itself.
Then expelled from their own homes, black people and lower class people built slums and since their children and grandchildren didn't even own documents, they could not enroll in schools, which were also far away from where they lived. This caused a further distancing of education. Not to mention that the past of the enslaved, including the places where they were born, the names and locations of their relatives have been erased, when documents of slavery got destroyed by the government.
[CASTANHARI] All this started a cycle. The more racism spread, the more the black people were excluded from society thus spreading more racism. Brazil freed the enslaved, but it never really wanted to resolve the legacy of slavery we've had here.
[RAEL] As you have seen, the exclusion of black people in our society hasn't been resolved with the abolition of slavery. This problem has been gaining new faces over time, but it has always existed in Brazil. Yes, our society has advanced a lot from the end of the 19th century to now.
Nowadays there are many laws and public policies created to fight racial inequality, but that doesn't mean that racism is over, bro. [CASTANHARI] Also because slavery was something so cruel that it has created a priceless historical debt. The tiniest public policies that are created still face resistance from many people until today.
Brazil is still a country full of prejudice, whether you believe it or not. One of the solutions is to apply a law that exists only on paper. Law 10.
639 determines that the subjects about African History and Black People in Brazil must be taught in every school. Racism started out as a bad education and can only be tackled with fair and inclusive education. [RAEL] Slavery lasted for over 350 years!
And since 1888, only 132 years have passed. This is a struggle that must continue and we cannot be neutral about it. Pretending that racism doesn't exist, just collaborates with racism.
It's not enough not being racist, you must act against racism. In fact, I invite you to fight it now! Send this video to at least three people.
Let's fight prejudice with information. [CASTANHARI] Exactly, Rael. That's the message!
Share this video. It's very important. By the way I want to thank my dear friend, Rael, who's brightened this video with his incredible voice, thank you very much!
Please go check out his channel, it's on the screen. Subscribe to him, the link will also be in the description. Thank you very much, Rael!
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