The maintenance of slavery: Socioeconomic inequality, compadrio and social hierarchy in the South of Minas Gerais - Vila de Santa Maria do Baependi, 1830-1888.
Slavery, hierarchy, cronyism, paternalism and thevillage of Baependi.
The present research is concerned with the establishment of a slave society in a village located in the district of Rio
dos Mortes do Sul, Minas Gerais, in a period extending between 1830 and 1888. The spatial coverage of this work
circumscribes the Vila de Santa Maria do Baependi, a locality dedicated to the production of agricultural and
livestock genera that supplied several markets in the center-south of Brazil. The main objective is to ascertain
how socioeconomic inequality, the spread of slave ownership and the relations of paternalism and paternalism
between lords and captives were essential for the maintenance of slavery. To this end, a series of sources were
explored, such as postmortem inventories, parish baptismal registers, wills, nominative lists of the term of
Baependi, reports of the President of Minas Gerais, and the industrial and administrative almanacs of Minas
Gerais produced in the second half of the eight hundred. In this reality, the concentration of wealth, the acquisition
of captives by different local families, and the hierarchy in the interior of captivity were fundamental for the
re-establishment of a slave society deeply marked by exclusion and inequality. In the same way, it was observed
in conjunction with these mechanisms that the parental links between the members of the large house and the
individuals bound to captivity were essential traits for the conservation of seigniorial status.