Das tramas de homicídio ao caso Emerenciana: escravizados, libertos e o controle das condutas em Uberaba (1841-1877)

Abstract

This dissertation, situated within the field of the Social History of Slavery, investigates the dynamics of enslaved agency and the control of behaviors in the Comarca of Uberaba between 1841 and 1877. The primary objective is to analyze cases of homicide involving enslaved individuals, using the criminal proceedings of the First Criminal Court as a privileged source to access the daily tensions and survival strategies of this population. The research pays special attention to living in captivity in a region characterized by small-scale slaveholding and constant physical proximity between masters and the enslaved—a scenario that fostered both rigorous control and the opening of loopholes to negotiate existence. Complementarily, it analyzes the Emerenciana case (1864) which, although not a crime of homicide, reveals how the justice system and the community mediated conflicts rooted in customs and morality. The investigation also contextualizes Uberaba within its formative period, highlighting its transition from a transit point between captaincies to an important commercial hub following the decline of mining. This territorial occupation, marked by the persecution of marginalized groups such as Indigenous peoples and quilombolas in the name of progress, shaped a social structure where state violence and the strengthening of judicial institutions became regulatory tools. State intervention, through the judicial apparatus, sought to fill the authority vacuum left by the erosion of private seigneurial control, consolidating public justice as an indispensable space for arbitration in the nineteenth-century sertão mineiro.