“HE MANAGED TO SIGN HIS NAME, NOT PERFECTLY, ONE CAN EVEN SAY BETTER THAT HE DREW HIS NAME”: PATHS OF A BLACK MAN (I) LITERATE IN THE POST-ABOLITION PERIOD (PAULINO DE SOUZA BASTOS - FLORESTA AURORA - PORTO ALEGRE - RS)

Abstract

According to Petrônio Domingues (2010, p. 132), black associations are composed of “a polyphony of racial voices, speeches and rhetoric”. The heterogeneous collectives that set up and maintained active and combative clubs, newspapers and brotherhoods for decades, still lack investigative investments. We propose to follow the trajectory of a black man, from his family experiences between slavery and freedom, to his affirmation as a free man. We will emphasize your associative investments and political preferences, successful and failed labor projects. The oscillating trajectory of the worker-musician-mason-painter-butcher Paulino de Souza Bastos can help us to understand the composition of the black elites of the period, with their social and professional variations throughout lives marked by instability, in a difficult exercise to survive and maintaining hard-won material assets and social prestige.