The Slave Evaluator

power and hierarchy, representation and exclusion (Rio de Janeiro - 1808-1831)

Abstract

The carioca Municipal Council, which was the scenery of several relationships of clientage and fight for power, was the locus of the cream of local society, who had exclusive rights and they were the only considered citizen in the first quarter of XIX century. Councils were political and administrative organisms in the logical of the Portuguese empire, that had actual condition of autonomy, driving the participants interests. While hierarchy helped some people, it put others at the society borderline. Therefore the gregarious thinking and solidarity feelings of the simplest people in having power, took them to accept ordinaries jobs at council. This is the case of the slave evaluator, who was the legal representative that promoted the legalization of slavish ideology, and this classified people according to having or not slaves. More than create exchange values to the publics money-box, it kept the slavish structure and the status quo of that cream of society, that gained with the law established in the Portuguese America.