"Fazer da nossa história uma outra história": uma análise bibliográfica sobre a presença negra em São Carlos - SP

Abstract

Focused on analyzing the presence of the Black population in São Carlos, in the interior of São Paulo, this study investigates the forms of resistance, continued presence in urban spaces, social interactions, and collective memory of this ethnic group during the transition from the slave-owning regime to the post-abolition era. A qualitative, bibliographic methodology is adopted, involving data collection from institutional repositories and academic databases, with the selection and cataloging of articles, theses, and dissertations published between 1995 and 2024. The analysis reveals that the municipality’s emergence is linked to the sesmaria system, the expansion of the coffee-growing agricultural frontier, and the resulting expropriation of indigenous populations and small farmers. It is evident that the end of slavery in 1888 was accelerated by direct acts of resistance and uprisings by the enslaved population itself, generating fears among the agrarian elite that drove the implementation of state-subsidized immigration policies, grounded in racist and eugenicist discourses. The findings indicate that the attainment of legal freedom did not guarantee the dignified integration of freed people into class-based society, perpetuating subtle and violent mechanisms of racial subordination in both rural and urban daily life. It is evident that, both on coffee plantations and in new urban workplaces—such as the railroad company—Black people were systematically marginalized and relegated to the most menial, physically demanding, and grueling positions compared to white European workers. It can be concluded that the legacy of slavery tended to perpetuate itself within the municipality’s socio-spatial structure, creating invisible barriers to social interaction and pushing the Black population into the earliest peripheral neighborhoods—a process that required constant strategies of everyday resistance and the redefinition of identities in the struggle for urban territory.