Catarina Cassange, 1838, Rio de Janeiro
In 1906 Machado de Assis published the short story "Pai Contra Mãe"(Father Against Mother) in his book "Relíquias da Casa Velha" (Relics of the Old House). Eighteen years had passed since the end of slavery and he seemed to want to ironize the trades and moral dilemmas that that society had created and perhaps had not disappeared. No longer escaped slaves and their persecutors, but distressed mothers and fathers. In his literary drama - on a fictitious date in 1850 - Cândido das Neves would appear, a very impoverished "white" man who was about to hand over his newborn son to the "Wheel of the Exposed". To raise funds, he would invest in capturing runaway slaves, appealing to the newspaper advertisements that abounded in Rio's urban press. He would try to capture Arminda, a Brazilian-born slave who had run away precisely because she was pregnant. Apart from novels and fiction, not a few enslaved black women chose to run away when they were pregnant, in an attempt both to have a more peaceful birth and to prevent their offspring from remaining enslaved or even being separated for sale. Six or more years on the run could provide many black women with a strategy to free their children from captivity or even to call on their black community at the time of childbirth and at the beginning of their children's lives.Catarina Cassange was one of them. Her strategies could be seen in several advertisements between 1838 and 1839. Her owner, Manoel da Rosa, announced in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro that she had escaped being four months pregnant. Like the advertisements of the time, her body and behavior were described. The first announcement of her escape was followed by at least three more announcements in the space of four months. Even without being able to capture her, information was obtained about her whereabouts. Known as "preta ao ganho", a saleswoman used to circulate around Valongo beach and Rua do Livramento, where many Africans were concentrated. She could even have been seduced. A month after the first ad, another was published saying that Catarina - with the help of seducers - was trying to follow Minas Gerais. In yet another ad, it was said that she was spending the nights hiding in anchored boats and was already pregnant. Catariana managed to remain a refugee for a year, only to be captured at the end of 1839. She revealed that she had been to many places in the city and in the Guanabara region. The person who had helped her the most was the freedman Aleixo, a Mina African who worked as a barber. For a long time he hid Catarina in his house in Rua dos Ferradores. With the support of several helpers and temporary protection, Catarina managed to have her son - named José - and was even taken to the surroundings of the "quilombo of Laranjeiras".
Source: ARAUJO, Carlos Eduardo Moreira de; SOARES, Carlos Eugênio Libano; FARIAS, Juliana Barreto; GOMES, Flávio dos Santos. Black Cities: Africans, Creoles and Urban Spaces in Slave Brazil. São Paulo, Alameda, second edition, 2006
GOMES, Flávio dos Santos; SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz; LAURIANO, Jaime. Enciclopédia Negra: Afro-Brazilian Biographies. Companhia das Letras, 2021.