The Slave Silvestre’s Disputed Sale: Corporal Punishment, Mental Health, Sexuality, and ‘Vices’ in Recife, 1869-1879

Abstract

In the provincial capital of Recife, Manoel de Alves Vianna, the buyer of
the slave Silvestre, went to court to rescind the sale because he alleged that the
bondsman had long suffered from mental illness and practiced the ”vício de
sodomia” (vice of sodomy). The trial opened before a Municipal Judge in 1870,
but the case was only concluded in 1879 in Recife’s regional Appeals Court
(Tribunal de Relação).1 The slave Silvestre’s original owner was a widow, Dona
Anna de Santa Ursula. The title “Dona” suggests a respectable woman of means,
but the reasons she desired to sell Silvestre go unnoted. It is quite possible that
she sought to rid herself of an irksome slave whose shaky mental health had
become evident. Rather than sell the slave herself in the coarse, manly world
of the slave market (where it was common to inspect a slave’s private parts),
Dona Anna sold Silvestre to a slave dealer by the name of Flavio Ferreira Catão
on December 15, 1869. The legal suit began only after the slave dealer resold
Silvestre to Manoel Alves Vianna, however the legal proceedings would ultimately
lead back to Dona Anna.