Double CEstA with Luma Prado (Master's in Social History at USP and author of Cativas Litigantes) and Gustavo Velloso (Department of History at FFLCH/USP)
Luma Prado: The Illicit and the Legal in the Enslavement of Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon under Portuguese Colonization, 18th Century
Indigenous slavery is a little-known, if not hidden, chapter of our history. However, in the 17th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of Indigenous people were enslaved—both legally and illegally—in the Amazon and other parts of the American territories under Portuguese colonization. In the states of Maranhão and Grão-Pará, the main labor force was Indigenous until the mid-18th century, whether enslaved, in villages, or under other forms of forced labor. Through the analysis of second examinations of captivity and complaints of irregularities related to slavery presented by Indigenous people to colonial legal and administrative authorities in their demands for freedom, this paper will allow us to survey current practices of captivity carried out in violation of the law in the 18th-century Amazon, as well as discuss the licit and illicit aspects of Indigenous enslavement.
Gustavo Velloso: Indigenous Deposit: A Changing Labor Category in Unequal Times of the Colonial Process in the Americas
This paper follows the genesis of the category "Indigenous deposit" and its metamorphoses as it moves between different contexts. It will be explained that, from a simple commercial and/or judicial operation, the deposit, with the addition of "de Índias" in the context of the initial formation of the New World, soon became both a category and a practical form of labor throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the second half of the sixteenth century, albeit circumstantially, it became a regulated labor relationship and, finally, prohibited—though not entirely abolished, persisting in different forms at least until the final decades of the eighteenth century. Special attention will be given to two spaces-times in which a pair of particular categorizations of deposits gained prominence: in the region of New Galicia, in the second half of the sixteenth century, and in southern Chile, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century.
Luma Ribeiro Prado is a historian. She is a researcher at the Center for Mesoamerican, Amazonian, and Andean Studies (CEMAA/USP), at Laboríndio - Research Group on Labor in the Americas (CNPQ/USP), and at the Indigenous Peoples in Brazil program of the Socioenvironmental Institute (PIB/ISA). At PIB/ISA, she also works with Indigenous women and education, strengthening the implementation of Law 11.645/08, which mandates the teaching of Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian histories and cultures in all schools nationwide. She holds a Master's degree in Social History from USP and is the author of Cativas Litigantes (Elefante, 2024).
Gustavo Velloso is a professor in the History Department of the University of São Paulo (USP). He holds a PhD in Social History from the same institution (PPGHS-USP) and in Modern History from the University of Seville (USP). His research focuses on processes of social change and conflict at the interface between the history of Indigenous America and the history of Colonial America, with an emphasis on the forms of Amerindian labor, multiethnic insurrections, the reconfiguration of Mapuche societies, and the crisis of the 17th century. He coordinates the "Research Group on the World of Labor in the Americas," established in 2018 and registered in the CNPq Research Group Directory since 2020. He is the author of the book "Idle and Seditious: Indigenous Populations and the Times of Labor in the Camps of Piratininga, 17th Century" (São Paulo: Intermeios, 2018) and the thesis "The Knots of the Arrow: Crisis and Uprising on the Southern Frontier of the Spanish Empire (Chile, 1655-1662)" (USP/US, 2022).
Date: October 31, 2025, at 5:30 p.m.
CEStA Headquarters: Rua do Anfiteatro, 181, Colmeia - Favo 8
University City, São Paulo-SP