A REGULAÇÃO DA PELE NEGRA E A TIPIFICAÇÃO DA VADIAGEM: O PAPEL DO DIREITO NO CONTROLE DOS CORPOS NEGROS ENTRE O IMPÉRIO E OS PRIMEIROS ANOS DA REPÚBLICA

Abstract

Law can be analyzed from the perspective of a power relationship, in which the part of society that controls it uses its mechanisms to assert its will. In recent years, Brazilian law has shown itself to be a vanguard movement in guaranteeing social rights and combating forms of discrimination. However, it has not always served that purpose. In the 19th century, the Brazilian legal system served as the basis for maintaining the slave regime, first through the influence of Portuguese royal ordinances and later through local legislative production. The Republic, founded by the same oligarchy that made up the Empire, used the legal apparatus to control the mass of freed blacks who immigrated from the countryside to the capital in search of better opportunities. The typification of vagrancy was widely used to expel the poorest from the city center and imprison those who “chose” idleness over work. The main focus of this work is to analyze the role of law in the control of black bodies, throughout the 19th century and in the early years of the Republic, and to define it as a tool for rigging the dominant ideology.