According to the historiography about the end of slavery, the social ties constituted while still in captivity were essential to those liberated in the construction of a trajectory leading from slavery to liberty. Taking as a focus the municipality of São Carlos, this article analyzes the tensions present in the interpersonal relations woven between the Afro-Brazilian slaves, on one side, and the farmers and small, rural land-holders on the other, during the post-emancipation period. Through the close-reading of two police reports of the era, one can perceive that the moral codes which orient these sociabilities were (re)constructed, in part by the Afro-Brazillians, starting from the articulation of two lived experiences: the internal migration of slaves, which occurred during the final decades of slavery, and the process of redefinition of determined social hierarchies consolidated in the post-abolition era. These moral codes, in their turn, ended up delimiting a specific vision regarding familial sociability.
Post-abolition; West São Paulo; Blacks; Coffee economy; Interpersonal relations