Vida e rastros de crianças negras no Brasil do século XX

Abstract

The aim of this study was to understand black children without childhood in the 20th century. We recounted the historical process of the concept of childhood: in the Middle Ages, children were portrayed as miniature adults in society and in iconography, considered to be unimportant at the time. Returning to Brazilian history, we see black childhood, from the 19th to the 20th century, as something forgotten and relegated to the Brazilian social-historical process. In this way, we aim to present the historical aspects of black childhood in Brazil in the 19th century; as a way of discussing the invisibility of black children in 20th century Brazilian society and, in the light of the documentary O menino 23:infâncias perdidas, to debate the reproduction of structural racism in this period. We deal with the invisibility of black children in 20th century Brazil, revealing the reality of infants after the end of slavery, when facing the Minors' Code and the Service of Assistance to Abandoned Children. At this juncture, the state took on the guardianship of abandoned black children, but the aim was not to protect these children, but to guarantee the social order, which led to the reproduction of structural racism. Finally, the debate on the documentary "O menino 23 - infâncias perdidas no Brasil: reprodução estrutural do racismo" is about the lives of 50 black male children who were taken from the Romão de Mattos Duarte orphanage of the Brotherhood of Mercy to be exploited through child labor in conditions analogous to slavery by an influential family of the Brazilian elite. The documentary makes it clear that the structural racism promoted by guardians and consented to by the state and the Juvenile Court is a reproduction of capitalist relations.