Mathias Henrique da Silva e Faustino da Silva

A reading club organized by and for the enslaved? In the middle of the Abolition decade? These would be the news coming from the countryside of the state of São Paulo. The enslaved Mathias Henrique da Silva and Faustino da Silva would sign a letter – published in several periodicals in Minas Gerais – in which they requested contributions, especially sending copies to their reading club.

In 1882, this news – almost turned into a joke, since it was probably considered surrealist and at the same time credible and threatening – was published in the Minas Gerais periodicals "O Baependiano" and "O Colombo" that mentioned the existence of a reading club created by abolitionists in Bragança Paulista , not far from Itu. The signatories of the letter – Mathias Henrique da Silva and Faustino da Silva – were not only enslaved scholars, but respectively president and secretary of this abolitionist initiative. Long before, there had already been news of abolitionist associations that were establishing night literacy classes for the enslaved, freed and their descendants. Since the 1870s in various parts of Brazil similar news has been common, although we have not yet been able to measure the reach of these various initiatives and the number of black men and women involved.

In Bragança Paulista, the thing had started with abolitionists – linked to the newspaper "O Guaripocaba" – who had established night schools for the free poor. Not very sporadically, many freedmen and their children – in addition to the enslaved themselves – always looked for such spaces and opportunities. Some abolitionist sectors might even be interested in promoting reading and literacy for the enslaved. In the organization of the Slaves' Literary Club in Bragança, there were night groups that had the support of local abolitionists and volunteer teachers. From that newspaper – with its positivist face and local Masonic participation – white sectors would help in the propaganda and expansion of the initiative. The Club of Bragança, founded between 1881 and 1882, would operate in a modest house in the center of the city, having around 40 children. The novelty would be on account of the direction of this club, with enslaved people in front.

What are the expectations of these enslaved with such a Reading Club? What did this mean in a context where abolitionists and monarchists were accused of manipulating the enslaved in the abolitionist and republican campaigns? Teaching the enslaved to read so that they could participate in the debates was one of the republican messages when reporting such initiatives. But enslaved people didn't exactly need literacy to make political assessments of the atmosphere in which they lived. The letter from the Reading Club, sent to the newsrooms of the newspapers and the signature of slave signatories – therefore already sufficiently literate – suggest thinking about mediations and symbols in the confrontations and black mobilization. The letter published in the newspapers spoke – in an authorial tone of the enslaved themselves – that they were “degraded by their abject condition” being “eliminated from the bosom of humanity and equated with the tiniest animals”, therefore they were the “black spot of the Brazilian name”. Although "without a homeland and without freedom" considered "wandering outcasts" and "renegades of a civilization" they assessed that literacy was the only solution, namely "that education is the only possible means" being this "the reason for the foundation of the Club Literary of Slaves in Bragança”. The enslaved were willing to invest in “unheard of efforts employed in hours of rest” in the present to escape the “miseries of a lifetime” in the future. Updating the debate that spoke of political manipulation and the lack of interest of farmers in the fate of ex-slaves, they guaranteed: “instruction is a necessary preventive for social ills that can result from emancipation”. They even claimed that it was “education” that had to prepare “freedom”.

Fonte/Source:

SILVA, Jacinto da. No Tempo da Escravidão: experiências de senhores e escravos em Bragança Paulista (1871-1888). Dissertação de Mestrado, Departamento de História, PUC-SP, 2009

MACHADO, Maria Helena & GOMES, Flávio dos Santos. “Eles ficaram 'embatucados': seus escravos sabiam ler. Abolicionistas, senhores e cativos no alvorecer da liberdade. In: Mac CORD, Marcelo; ARAUJO, Carlos Eduardo Moreira de; GOMES, Flavio dos Santos. (Org.). Rascunhos Cativos. Educação, Escolas e Ensino no Brasil Escravista. 1ed.Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras, 2017, pp. 253-283.

FONTE: GOMES, Flávio dos Santos; SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz; LAURIANO, Jaime. Enciclopédia Negra: Biografias Afro-Brasileiras. Companhia das Letras, 2021.