SLAVERY AND RACIALISM IN ALAGOAS: POLICE, PRESS AND COLOR CLASSIFICATIONS IN THE 19TH CENTURY (1842-1890)
19th century, Alagoas, racialism, Police, Press.
This work is the result of research into how two institutions of the 19th century Brazilian State, the Press and the Police, began to classify in their daily activities, based on racialist criteria, the different groups of people that made up society in Alagoas in the 19th century. . Analyzing applications for issuing passports, passport records made by the Provincial Police Department, newspaper advertisements, original and purchased articles and serials published in Alagoas periodicals throughout the second half of the 19th century, we seek to show how the Police Department, the administrative part of this institution, and the Press in Alagoas used specific mechanisms of classification and social ordering for the entire population. Terms such as white, semi-white, black, brown, black, goat, Fula, creole, present in the dynamics of slave social relations since the colonial period, were also widely used in the 19th century. It is from the uses that were made of them by Police Chiefs and in the Alagoas press periodicals, that we will observe the way in which they were used in the new political, social and cultural context of the country, now independent and in the process of building and consolidating a nationality. , seeking to understand the meanings, meanings and possible consequences of these processes.