Punishment in Paradise by Peter M. Beattie

8/9/2019 Punishment in Paradise by Peter M. Beattie

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PUNISHMENT IN PARADISE

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PUNISHMENT IN PARADISE

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© 2015 Duke University PressAll rights reservedPrinted in the United States o America on acid- ree paper ∞Designed by Heather Hensley

ypeset in Minion Pro by Westchester Publishing Services

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beattie, Peter M., 1 63–Punishment in paradise : race, slavery, human rights, and anineteenth- century Brazilian penal colony / Peter M. Beattie.pages cmIncludes bibliographical re erences and index.

7 -0- 223-5 16- (hardcover : alk. paper) 7 -0- 223-5 30-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 7 -0- 223-75 -0 (e-book)

1. Prisons—Brazil—Fernando de Noronha— History—1 thcentury. 2. Prisoners— Brazil—Fernando de Noronha.3. Fernando de Noronha (Brazil)— History—1 th century. . itle.

5 4. 47 43 2015365'.34—dc23 2014034 50

Duke University Press grate ully acknowledges the supporto Michigan State University, Department o History, whichprovided unds toward the publication o this book.

Cover art: Fernando de Noronha Island, 200 . Photo by BrunoBarbey. © Bruno Barbey / Magnum Photos.


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I dedicate this book to my wi e,

And to my son,

Te two souls most responsibleor my regeneration.


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Te Idée FixeSo, long live history, voluble history,which is good at anything, and,getting back to the idée xe, let me

say that it’s what produces strong menand mad men. A mobile idea, vagueor changeable, is what produces aClaudius—according to the ormulao Suetonius.

A Project Te need to regenerate him [Quincas

Borba], get him back to working andhaving respect or his person was llingmy heart. I [Brás Cubas] was starting toget a com ortable eeling, one o uplif,o admiration or mysel .

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xi

1 : Fernando de Noronha Island:Foil, Paradox, Paradise, or In erno?

12 1. Getting to Know “Fernando”

23 2. “Te Key to the Americas”?

4 3. Fernando de Noronha’s “Dark wins”:Licit and Illicit Commerce

75 4. “Brothers o the Peak”: Prosopography o aPenal Community

101 5. Te Jealous Institution and Brazilian Penology

124 6. “A Stench in the Nostrils o God”? Te Materialand Social Li e o Exile

14 7. Crime, Con ict, Corruption, and Cooperationon an Atlantic Frontier

177 . Te reatment and Categorization o Slave Convictsin a Penal Archipelago

200 . O Captivity and Incarceration: Human Rights Re ormin Atlantic Perspective

227 : Punishment in Paradise Foiled Again

241 : Statistical ables 25 263 301 327


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xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

saved me rom numerous errors o act and interpretation. Both Celso andElizabeth helped me to reconceive the manuscript’s or ganization. AlthoughI am not sure I was able to ully capture their sage advice in my reworkings,their scholarly and collegial generosity has made this a much better book.

My compadre Pro essor Marcus Joaquim Maciel de Carvalho read partso this manuscript and gave me invaluable comments about his homeground o Pernambuco. He was an amiable host to Erica and me as visit-ing Fulbright scholars in his department at the Universidade Federaldo Pernambuco ( ) on two different occasions. He introduced me toinvaluable sources and many colleagues and students who helped me withintellectual and bureaucratic matters, Bruno Câmara in par ticular. Mar-cus and his beauti ul wi e, sociologist Andrea ereza Brito Ferreira, our

comadre, arranged Aodhan’s baptism in a Catholic church in Boa Viagem.Tey even trusted us with their talented daughter, So a Brito de Carvalho,who spent a couple o months with us in our home in East Lansing in 2014.A special thanks to your amily and your colleagues and students at .

I thank my mother, Regina O’Connor Beattie, who at ninety- our yearsembodies perseverance and love. She taught me at a young age to love read-ing and learning. Bonnie Messe, my mother- in-law, recently moved to thegreat white north. She has helped Erica and me to raise our son. My broth-ers, sisters, nieces, and nephews have always been supportive, and as I grewup, the youn gest o nine, each o them taught me, and continues to teach me,something different.

Jeffrey Lesser read an earlier, much cruder version o this manuscript andprovided guidance and insight as he has on previous occasions. Jerry Davila,and the participants in his graduate seminar at the University o Illinois, Ur-bana-Champagne, read the manuscript and helped me to draw out the mean-ing and signi cance o the process o “category drif” analyzed herein and toreconsider pop ular attitudes toward the anti ogging and anti– death penalty

movement in Brazil. My Michigan State University colleague Lisa Fine alsoread and provided valuable eedback on an early draf o this manuscript.Many years ago James C. Scott, while a visiting scholar in our department

at Michigan State University, encouraged me to read Lewis Coser’s work,which helped me to conceptualize the bene ts that Brazilian authoritiesbelieved marriage had or men and women o the ree and enslaved poor,even those living in penal exile. Tis turned out to be consequential or myanalysis o gender and sexuality.

Te members o Reci e’s Instituto Arqueológico, Histórico e Geográ coPernambucano ( ) honored me in 2006 with a corresponding mem-


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii

bership (sócio correspondente) to their august institution (a distinctionI later learned I shared with some o Fernando de Noronha’s command-ers). My colleagues at the shared documents and ideas with me andhelped me to eel at home in Reci e. A special thanks to Reinaldo CarneiroLeão, primeiro secretário perpetuo do , who shared so many storieso Pernambuco’s past on the paralelepípados below the Igreja Matriz da BoaVista on the Rua do Hospício.

Grazielle Rodrigues generously arranged or me to give a talk on my re-search to the residents and tour guides o Fernando de Noronha on the Dayo Black Consciousness in Remédios in 200 . Tis was a grati ying experi-ence that allowed me to contribute to and learn rom the historical memoryo this unique island community. I thank them or their warm hospitality

and openness.Numerous other colleagues and riends have been help ul to me directlyand indirectly on this long walk to completion: Marta de Abreu Estevez,Marília de Azambuja Ribeiro, B. J. Barrickman, Fernanda Batista Bicalho,Dain Borges, Marcos Luiz Bretas, Suzana Cavani Rosas, Sueann Caul eld,Marcos Costa, Celso Castro, Sidney Chalhoub, imothy Coates, Hebe Mariada Costa Mattos Gomes de Castro, John French, ácito Galvão, FlávioGomes, Gilberto Hochman, Marc Hertzman, Marc Jay Hoffnagel, VitorIzecksohn, Silvana Jeha, Simone Petraglia Krop , Michael LaRosa, HalLang ur, Linda Lewin, Joseph Love, Mara Loveman, Ana Maria Lugão Rios,Marcelo Mac Cord, Maria Helena Pareira oledo Machado, Beatriz Mami-gonian, Bryan McCann, Frank D. McCann, Gillian McGillivray, Joan Meznar,Zach Morgan, Gizlene Neder, Jeffrey Needell, Clarissa Nunes Maia, GláuciaPessoa, João José Reis, Rogério Rosa Rodrigues, Tomas Rogers, MarthaSantos, Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy, Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares, Nísia rin-dade Lima, Barbara Weinstein, Joel Wol e, Christine Paulette Yves Ru noDabat, and so many others. In the end, I accept ull credit or any errors

herein, but I share credit or what may be use ul in these pages with manycollaborators.Te archivists, librarians, and staffs o the Biblioteca Nacional, the Ar-

quivo Nacional Rio de Janeiro (especially Sátiro Nunes), the , theArquivo Público Estadual Jordão Emerenciano, and the Instituto HistóricoGeográ co Brasileiro all collaborated generously to uncover use ul docu-mentation and secondary sources during the research pro cess.

Te editors and staff at Duke University Press have been extremely at-tentive and help ul rom the review process to overseeing my revisions andinto the production phase. Editor Gisela Fosado expressed enthusiasm and


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xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

encouragement or my manuscript and made many help ul suggestions thatimproved it. Editorial associate Lorien Olive went beyond the call to helpme with the images or the cover and those interspersed in the text.

Finally, I would like to recognize the insights and eedback I receivedrom my many colleagues in Michigan State University’s Department o

History, especially Liam Brockey, Glenn Chambers, Walter Hawthorne,Vanessa Holden, Jessica Johnson, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Edward Murphy,Javier Pescador, David Wheat, and Erica Windler. I hope we will get our onagain, off again reading group on the lusophone and hispanophone Atlanticworlds going again soon.


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Te memory does not make me ear ulNor does crying make me eel sympathy:I’ll send you to Fernando de NoronhaI’ll shove you into that depraved prisonI you grumble, you get clapped in etters.I you cry, you get ogged.— (“ ,” .1870–1930),

Severino Perigo depicts the agricultural penal colony on the islando Fernando de Noronha as a place o suffering where prisoners wereshackled, whipped, and subject to debauchery. Te colony held thelargest concentration o convicts rom across the Brazilian Empire(1822–1889), and Perigo’s imagery o it mirrors accounts o France’sDevil’s Island, Britain’s asmania, Argentina’s Ushaia, or Rus sia’s

Sakhalin. Other voices, however, countered this image o an Atlan-tic hell some two hundred miles rom Brazil’s northeastern shores.In 1884, the American novelist and geographer Frank de Yeaux Car-penter, a member o Brazil’s Geological Commission, described thecolony as an “ocean resort” or criminals who lived the Li e o Rileyunder rustling palms, ringed by golden beaches and azure waters. Carpenter echoed Brazilian mainlanders who elt that convicts thereenjoyed a leisurely li e that was exasperating, especially in the case oslave convicts. Similar idyllic portrayals o asmania, Devil’s Island,Ushaia, or Sakhalin are rare. What do these con icting images tell

Fernando de Noronha Island: Foil, Paradox, Paradise, or Inferno?


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us about imperial Brazil? Tis remote island is an illuminating oil thathighlights evolving cultural values, practices, and perceptions on Brazil’smainland and across the Atlantic in relation to justice, punishment, reha-bilitation, color, class, civil condition, human rights, and labor. Brazilianso all classes long used Fernando de Noronha as a re erence point to de nesocial norms and the meanings o reedom and captivity.

Te con icting portrayals o Fernando de Noronha re ect different per-

spectives on crime and punishment in a new nation that underwent mo-mentous transitions. In dependence brought Brazil to a crossroads wherenew penal practices associated with the rise o nations challenged thoseo the old regime. Te implementation o liberal ideals o equality in a

edgling nation where a large proportion o the inhabitants were enslavedproved a paradox that induced lawmakers to establish distinct punishments

or bonded criminals. For many, prison seemed a reward or slaves. As Sena-tor Paulo de Souza put it, “Will the slave who lives bowed under the weighto his labors by any chance have a horror o being incarcerated in a prisonwhere he can abandon himsel to laziness and drunkenness, the avorite

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.1 Fernando de Noronha in relation to mainland Brazil.

2 INTRODUCTION


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FERNANDO DE NORONHA ISLAND 3

passions o a slave?” With this ste reotype in mind, Article 60 o Brazil’sCódigo criminal (1830) speci ed that slave convicts could be ogged ratherthan imprisoned unless sentenced to capital punishment or galés (literally,

orced labor in Mediterranean naval galleys; but in Brazil, it meant prison atlabor in etters). Save or the gallows, the empire banned corporal punish-ment or ree convicts.

Anxieties over appropriate criminal punishments grew more t ul afer1850 as the slave population diminished when the government effectivelyen orced laws that banned the transatlantic slave trade. International pub-lic opinion turned against cruel punishments and bondage, and Brazilians

ound themselves increasingly isolated as advances in human rights becamegauges to measure a nation’s progress. Afer 1865, Brazil became the last in-

dependent nation in the Americas to tolerate slavery, and many Braziliansexpressed their embarrassment over their “national shame.” Emperor PedroII (1840–1889) personally opposed slavery and the death penalty, and heworked with allies to abolish them. Tese pro ound transitions shaped li ein Fernando de Noronha and mainland perceptions o it. Brazilians inher-ited the island rom the Portuguese, who had inhabited it mostly with sol-diers and convicts rom Brazil. Afer in dependence, Brazilians continuedto populate it with convicts and soldiers. In the 1870s, an offi cial re erredto the island as “Brazil’s central depository or civilian convicts” because itheld more than 1,500 inmates rom the empire’s twenty provinces and capi-tal district.

Fernando de Noronha provides a little- considered perspective on theinterconnected struggles against ogging, the death penalty, and slaveryon Brazil’s mainland. Pedro II used his constitutional powers to commutemany capital sentences to li e imprisonment beginning in the 1850s, andmany o the bene ciaries o his clemency, including slave convicts, ended upin the penal colony. Tere ore, the treatment o slave and ree convicts there

uncovers the extent to which the state exerted itsel to maintain distinctionsbetween slave and ree. As Lynn Hunt put it, in the old regime “those guiltyo crime could only be controlled by external orce. In the traditional view,ordinary people could not control their own passions. Tey had to be led,prodded to do good, and deterred rom ollowing their baser instincts.” Tus, the ghastly spectacle o executions near the sites o crimes reshenedthe hoi polloi’s respect or the law. While Brazil’s new laws adopted tenets omodern penology or ree citizens, Brazil continued to treat slaves accordingto older precepts. Brazilian law maintained the legality o ogging or slavesand enlisted soldiers and sailors, but it reserved the gallows or the heinous


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crimes o murder, rebellion, and treason. Tis contrasts with Britain andthe United States, where courts applied capital punishment to a ar wider variety o elonies, especially or slaves.

Tese struggles or human rights ed anxieties about whether enslaved,reed, or even common reeborn Brazilians could be disciplined without

recourse to harsh punishment. As Carpenter’s aside suggests, the image oimpunity or Fernando de Noronha’s convicts had become a part o master-class olklore, a color ul story to regale a oreign visitor. While slaveownersconstructed one vision o Fernando de Noronha, less privileged men, likeSeverino Perigo, presented a decidedly different one. Both have elements otruth, but neither is entirely precise. Tis book analyzes how historical ac-tors’ views o the colony changed over time and how their experiences and

political positions shaped their perceptions o it.Beyond insights into social anxieties over crime and punishment in a so-ciety making a slow transition rom slave to ree labor, why is the history oan isolated penal colony o broader signi cance? I believe there are a num-ber o reasons. First, Fernando de Noronha offers an unparalleled panoramao justice in imperial Brazil. Te colony held the largest population o convicts rom across Brazil, so its records reveal the crimes and criminals thata precarious justice system spent scarce resources to try, convict, and exile.

oo ofen, the study o crime and criminality is limited to a study o arrestsor trials, but Fernando de Noronha’s documentation allows one to explorehow convicts lived their sentences. A collective biography o convicts andan analysis o their treatment and how they responded to it brings new in-sight into how contemporaries grappled with questions o justice, individ-ual responsibility, citizenship, honor, status, amily, and clemency. Tis casestudy also lends itsel to comparative Atlantic history. In contrast with theUnited States, or example, Brazilian authorities did not expend signi cantresources to de end the evolving lower boundaries o “whiteness” in basic

state institutions like prisons, penal colonies, and the military’s enlistedranks, but they more consistently used marriage and heterosexual conjugalliving to rank, reward, and discriminate among slaves and marginal mem-bers o the ree poor o all colors.

Second, Fernando de Noronha was in essence a large, i exceptionallyisolated, plantation where convicts provided most o the labor. Te levelo record keeping there allows or an unusually detailed microhistory ointeractions between many more spheres o li e than is possible or main-land plantations and communities. In this sense, the colony is a somewhatexaggerated meta phor or Brazilian society as it exempli ed state making

4 INTRODUCTION


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on its social and geo graph ical margins. Tough sui generis, the army offi -cers who served as colony commanders aced challenges similar to those oplantation own ers who employed slaves and mainland army offi cers whoseenlisted men were mostly summarily pressed into ser vice. Tis study sug-gests the interrelatedness o these different civil conditions. A telling sign otheir connection is ound in a column or “civil condition” in the colony’sconvict matriculation books that used the ollowing categories: ree, slave,

reedman, army enlisted man, navy enlisted man, arsenal worker, Indian,and national guardsman. In part, the column indicated that military menwere subject to courts martial while Indians in government- organized vil-lages were sent to juvenile courts. However, this cannot be the rationale be-hind the column’s creation because slaves and reed persons were subject

to the same courts as ree Brazilians. Te column’s construction made itimpossible to list military enlisted men, arsenal workers, Indians, reedmen,and even relatively privileged national guardsmen as “ ree.” Te logic behindthe column’s construction suggests that these categories marked degrees o“un reeness.” It reveals how offi cials constructed ways o seeing individualslike a state and their ofen- rustrated attempts to x them geo graph icallyand taxonomically.

I use a shorthand o my coinage, the “intractable poor,” to re er jointlyto convicts, slaves, military enlisted men, Indians in government- organized villages, and ree A ricans (A ricans liberated rom ships illegally transport-ing slaves rom 1821 to 1856 who served ourteen-year apprenticeships inBrazil). Te term “intractable poor” re ects how power ul social actorsstereotyped these unsavory social categories as unruly, wanton, and shif-less. I am aware that re erring to the enslaved as “poor” seems incongru-ous given their legal status, but in effect, their status made the vast majorityo them poor. I do not naively suggest a social or legal equivalence amongthese categories, but they did share a vulnerability to coercive labor extrac-

tion and their treatment presents revealing parallels and divergences. Bycomparing convict workers to those in related coercive labor regimes, myapproach highlights patterns that are less visible when examined separately.In a nation so dependent on bonded labor in almost every part o its econ-omy, there was a basic contradiction between the in uential British penalre ormer Jeremy Bentham’s belie that labor was the best method to reha-bilitate convicts and the aristocratic view o Brazilian masters that manuallabor was not ennobling, but a duty t or dishonorable slaves. Fernandode Noronha was a penal laboratory where compromises and clashes be-tween modern and old regime values and practices played out.


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Tird, Fernando de Noronha highlights the little analyzed circulationamong categories o the intractable poor that I re er to as “category drif.” For example, the Brazilian state mobilized hundreds o slaves (purchasedwith taxpayer money or “patriotically” donated) to ght as soldiers in theWar o the riple Alliance (1864–1870). In return or their ser vice, the stategranted reedmen-soldiers conditional letters o liberty i they ought at the

ront and completed a nine- year military contract. It also mobilized scoreso convicts rom Fernando de Noronha and other jails to ght the same war.In peacetime, military convicts who completed their sentences were rou-tinely reintegrated into Fernando de Noronha’s army garrison. Dischargewould have been a reward because most enlisted men had been summarilypressed into ser vice or vagrancy or suspected crimes. Unscrupulous Bra-

zilians illegally reduced ree and reed men and women o color to slav-ery. Enlisted men, slaves, ree A ricans, and Indians could be convicted ocrimes that made them prison laborers in jails, arsenals, and penal colonies.Many ree A ricans worked alongside convicts and enlisted men in peni-tentiaries, orts, and arsenals. Still others were sent to live with Indians instate-organized villages in Paraná. Offi cials ofen ignored laws and contrac-tual obligations that applied to the intractable poor with impunity. Speci cexamples in the chapters that ollow demonstrate category drif and howmembers o these categories requently interacted. Category drif on the so-cial margins shows how these low- status civil conditions were interrelated,and in many ways, mutually rein orcing, even as they allowed or small stepsup or down the lower end scales o social mobility. I argue that they are akey to understanding how Brazilian society transitioned rom slave to reelabor because re orms that bene tted one category o the intractable poorbecame more diffi cult to deny to other categories. As slavery declined afer1850, the status o being ree began to lose its luster, and as a result evenrelatively privileged members o the ree poor became more anxious about

their vulnerability to category drif and the coercive labor extraction it couldrepresent.Category drif among the intractable poor highlights the relationship

between slaves, convicts, ree A ricans, Indians, and military enlisted men,but circulation extended to the lower ranks o the police, National Guard,paramilitary orces, and organized crime. Not a ew ormer enlisted men be-came police, and many policemen and national guardsmen became soldiersduring the War o the riple Alliance. Authorities punished undisciplinedpolice, guardsmen, and the soldiers o regional insurgent orces with ser vicein the imperial army and navy. Not a ew deserters rom the police, National

6 INTRODUCTION


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Guard, and the military became eared criminals, insurrectionary leaders,or chie s o maroon communities. Some later became convicts. Tis is not tomention bandits and capoeiras (practitioners o the A ro-Brazilian martialart, dance, and musical orm who ofen ormed urban gangs) who providedparamilitary security or political bosses. Tus, the criminal underworldand the oot soldiers o order and insurrection interpenetrated one another,and many moved between a number o these categories in a li etime.

Fourth, Fernando de Noronha serves as an institutional limit case be-cause o its isolation, dangerous labor orce, and multiple purposes as a site

or punishment, exile, rehabilitation, colonization, and production. Outo necessity and tradition army offi cers developed hybrid penal practicesthat combined modern and traditional understandings o these multiple

missions. Tey drew on their mainland experiences to orge the everydaypractices that they elt maximized discipline while still meeting other insti-tutional and personal objectives. Te island’s offi cers, employees, convicts,soldiers, and other residents’ pursuit o personal gain ofen contradicted

ormal institutional hierarchies, missions, and rules. Tis makes Fernandode Noronha an ideal site to examine corruption’s role in promoting coopera-tion and con ict among the colony’s different social strata. In part, corrup-tion emerged because the administration ailed to supply convicts essentialgoods and in rastructure. Tus, an unplanned commerce emerged romabsolute necessity. Te state also had a habit o underpaying and neglectingto pay in a timely ashion many o its offi cials (including convict workers).Tis encouraged bribery and other kinds o unorthodox payment or services and goods. Both reveal problems o bureaucracy, economy, and idealsthat surpassed the state’s institutional capacity to deliver. Tese conditionsinevitably induced commerce and corruption to resolve institutional short-

alls and provide incentives.Fifh, Fernando de Noronha is also a limit case or evolving notions o

color, slave, and criminal status. For many Brazilians, penal re orms wereemblems o national progress, and modern penology offered a “scienti c”answer to the eared decline o seignorial authority as Brazil’s slave popu-lation declined afer 1850. Tis belie in rehabilitation con ronted the Ital-ian criminologist Cesare Lombroso’s idea o the born criminal in the 1870s.Despite these theoretical countercurrents, most imperial penal offi cials es-poused a continuing belie in the re ormative power o hard work, amilyliving, and “normal” heterosexuality without re erence to a convict’s color,class, or civil condition. Afer the republic’s promulgation in 1889, a newgeneration o criminologists more rigorously applied Lombroso’s theories to


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Brazil’s diverse population. It is still unclear, however, the extent to whichthese ideas in uenced everyday penal practices under Brazil’s republic, butcon icting ideas about how to treat slave convicts in relation to ree onestroubled imperial offi cials. Con icts between the Justice Ministry and thearmy offi cers who managed the colony reveal differences o opinion aboutsegregation on the basis o civil status (slave or ree), much less color, andindicate a broad Brazilian pre erence or integration in state institutions thatincorporated the intractable poor.

Sixth, Fernando de Noronha’s history lends itsel to international com-parisons o the sequencing and depth o institutional re orms, an approachthat I describe elsewhere as “institutional t.” Tis highlights the casestudy’s utility as a oil not only or institutions on Brazil’s mainland but also

or comparative Atlantic history. Why was Brazil the last in dependent na-tion in the Americas to tolerate slavery while it was among the rst to bringabout a de acto (1876), soon ollowed by a de jure (1890), end to capitalpunishment? By comparing the institutional t o re orms in Brazil to othernations, new hypotheses o conditions that avored or hindered the evolu-tion o human rights can be pondered.

Finally, Fernando de Noronha provides unexpected insights into con-ceptions o gender, sexuality, and heterosexual conjugality. Authorities al-lowed some married convicts to be joined by their wives and dependentsand permitted others to marry or to live with a heterosexual consensuallover (amaziado ) in exile. Te policies re ect the clashes and compromisesbetween liberal ideals o individual responsibility and traditional patriarchalduties and privileges. Tey also highlight how assumptions about genderundergirded debates about how to make convict workers productive andmoral. Imperial justice displayed a keen gender bias in that the vast majorityo de endants convicted were men. However, the segregation rom societythat modern prisons, poor houses, asylums, barracks, and penal colonies

required ran counter to critiques o inhibiting a man’s heterosexual releasethrough continence or imposed abstinence. Brazilians disagreed over theaccess priests, slaves, physicians, soldiers, and convicts should have to nu-bile women, but most shared belie s about the male sex drive, even as theybickered over how to manage it. Conditions in the colony sometimes orcedactors to articulate cultural understandings that did not arise with the sameurgency and requency on the mainland. In En glish, “nubile” denotes a mar-riageable woman, but in Portuguese, núbil applies to both genders. Teseusages suggest distinct cultural views o gender, marriage, and sexuality, andto highlight this, I use the incongruous term “male nubility” to describe

8 INTRODUCTION


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men whom authorities granted heterosexual conjugal privileges within totalinstitutions.

My approach to heterosexual penal conjugality among convicts on Fer-nando de Noronha and other categories o the intractable poor requires abrie digression. David Garland’s appraisal o the Marxist, Durkheimian, andFoucauldian traditions in penology accents the need to combine strengthso each to create “more o a three dimensional perspective than is usuallyperceived.” I share Garland’s view, and to examine heterosexual penal conjugality, I invoke two scholars whose work is less cited in recent scholarship:Erving Goffman and Lewis Coser. Tese sociologists offer points o depar-ture to rethink the relationships between disciplining institutions, amily,and gender to elucidate how Brazilians mediated the individualized punish-

ment o liberal penology.Goffman shrewdly conveys the tensions between amilies and total insti-tutions (penitentiaries, mental asylums, barracks, and so orth) in his 1961classic Asylums:

otal institutions are . . . incompatible with another crucial element oour society, the amily. Family li e is sometimes contrasted with solitaryliving, but in act the more pertinent contrast is with batch living, orthose who eat and sleep at work, with a group o ellow workers, can

hardly sustain a meaning ul domestic existence. . . . Whether a par tic-ular total institution acts as a good or bad orce in civil society, orce itwill have, and this will in part depend on the suppression o the wholecircle o actual or potential households. Conversely, the ormation ohouseholds provides a structural guarantee that total institutions will notbe without re sistance.

I build on this insight to explore batch and house hold living in Brazilianinstitutions that integrated the intractable poor. Goffman developed these

conceptions in his study o mid- twentieth century U.S. total institutions. Iuse them to explore nineteenth- century Brazilian slavery, military barracks,prisons, and penal colonies, which, as the pro cess o category drif outlinedearlier suggests, were considerably more porous and less totalizing thantwentieth- century U.S. asylums.

Inspired by Goffman, Coser de ned a related group o “greedy institu-tions” that sought to monopolize the primary loyalties o individuals romcompeting societal associations without necessarily segregating them.Greedy institutions cultivated individuals whose authority could not bepreserved without the institutional leadership’s support. Tus, sovereigns


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sought trusted administrators rom court Jews, eunuchs, oreign mercenar-ies, and others. Likewise, the Catholic Church, radical organizations, andmillenarian groups limit their members’ abilities to develop entangling rela-tionships with outsiders who might put their loyalty to the test. Te CatholicChurch, or example, requires clerical celibacy in de erence to theologicalconsiderations, but also to bolster delity to the hierarchy and to protectinstitutional property rom dissipation through inheritance. Coser even in-cludes house wives and live-in servants as subject to the greedy institution othe nuclear amily. Writing in the 1970s, he notes eminist critiques o genderexpectations that pressured house wives to limit commitments and contactsoutside o the amily in de erence to their roles as mothers and caretakers.While Coser stresses the amily’s limitations on mothers and wives, he does

not address whether it limits husbands and athers. Clearly, in the 1970smost husbands developed more commitments outside their amilies thantheir wives, but Coser’s silence also re ects an era be ore gender became amore established analytical category.

Intriguingly, many nineteenth- century Brazilian authorities (almostall men) posited that male jealousy or a wi e or consensual heterosexualpartner “naturally” bound him to a more orderly, productive, and moralli estyle. Somewhere between and overlapping with Coser’s greedy andGoffman’s total institutions, offi cials experimented with hybrid penal prac-tices that combined modern and traditional elements to cultivate what Iterm the “jealous institution o heterosexual conjugal living.” Te jealousinstitution is a male codicil to Coser’s characterization o house wives assubject to the greedy institution o the nuclear amily. It describes an ideal-ized belie in the less restrictive but still limiting “natural” in uence thatheterosexual conjugality and amily had over male lovers, husbands, and

athers. Authorities tested the potential o heterosexual penal conjugalityon Fernando de Noronha in de erence to deep- seated belie s about gender.

Tey argued that the presence o wives and dependents would make convictmen more productive and stem same- sex eroticism. Tis study analyzes o -cials’ aith in the jealous institution’s power and how their experiments

with it ared.In general, my study is distinct rom Foucauldian studies o prisons and

sexuality that tend to ocus on transgressive sexual behavior and JeremyBentham’s panopticon architecture. Instead, I privilege the nuclear hetero-sexual amily as a reputed source o male discipline and productivity in ahybrid penal regime bounded not by walls but by ocean. It has long beenargued that the penitentiary evolved rom medieval monastery practices

10 INTRODUCTION


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that sought to modi y individual behavior with cellular isolation. Otherstudies suggest that some colonial prisons developed rom prisoner- o -warcamps. I argue that the conjugal penal experiment on Fernando de Noronhaevolved rom a repertoire o Portuguese strategies to manage the labor, dis-cipline, and strategic diaspora o intractable poor men and women. In sodoing, I seek to put the little explored subject o labor and conjugal relationson a more rigorous theoretical and comparative ooting. Tis Brazilian casestudy is a precocious example o a state developing and implementing poli-cies intended to promote heterosexual citizenship.

I bring together the analytical threads laid out here within and amongchapters in a layered ashion. Most chapters are thematic save or chapter 2,which provides a historical narrative to situate Fernando de Noronha’s evolv-

ing place in Brazil’s penal system, politics, and imaginations. In so doing, Ioffer a critique o the shallow southward reach o Atlantic history. Tis bookseeks to expand this sub eld geo graph ically by “Re-Capricorning” the At-lantic to bring the south Atlantic more ully into Atlantic history’s purview,and temporally to ollow Atlantic history themes out o the early modernperiod and into the long nineteenth century.


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INTRODUCTION

Epigraph: “Lambança [ sic] não me az medo / Nem choro não me az dó [sic]: / Eute mando pra Fernande [ sic, de Noronha] / e meto no xilandró. . . . / Si resmungar,leva peia! / Si chorar, leva cipó!” Leonardo Motta, Violeiros do norte, 86–87. I thankLinda Lewin or sharing Severino Perigo’s verses. For more on Severino Perigo, seeNei Lopes, Enciclopédia brasileira da Diáspora Africana , 164.

1. Carpenter used the phrase “ocean resort” in his novel, but I added the expres-

sion “Li e o Riley” to describe his depiction o the lives o convicts on Fernandode Noronha. Carpenter, Round about Rio, 328–29; “Cornell Men in Brazil,”Cornell Alumni News, Ithaca, New York, May 9, 1906.

2. Beattie, “ ‘Born under the Cruel Rigor o Captivity’ ”; Hughes,Fatal Shore;Red eld, Space in the ropics; Edwards, “From the Depths o Patagonia”; Chekhov,Sakhalin Island .

3. De Souza originally cited in Rodrigues et al., O parlamento e a evolução nacio-nal , 2:345–346. Au derheide cited and translated de Souza in “Order and Violence,”308–309; on improper sentencing, see Bandeira Filho, “In ormações,” 21.

4. In 1850, an imperial decision clari ed that slave convicts could not bene trom Article 311 o the Penal Code, which substituted the sentence o galés or that o

prison with work; see Brazil, Código Criminal do Imperio do Brazil , 26n23.5. Barman, Brazil, the Forging of a Nation, 1798–1852; Carvalho, A construção da

ordem, ch. 3; Chalhoub, Visões da liberdade; Needell, Te Party of Order ; Pereira,Visões da monarquia .

6. Fleury, “Parecer,” 5.7. Hunt, Inventing Human Rights, 92; Algranti, O feitor ausente, 36.8. Linebaugh, Te London Hanged ; Beattie, Policing and Punishment . Some U.S.

states experimented with the “milder” punishment o castration or slaves convicted


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o rape; see Summerville, “Rape, Race, and Castration”; Coates,Convicts and Or- phans; Bender, Angola under the Portuguese.

9. Notable exceptions are Aguirre, Te Criminals of Lima ; Salla and Adorno, As prisões em São Paulo.

10. Te Justice Ministry changed the title o commander to director in 1877; butto avoid con usion, I re er to the colony’s chie offi cial as the commander through-out the book.

11. Livro da Matricula geral dos sentenciados com declaração de todas as cir-cumstancias desde sua chegada a este presidio, e sua retirada, con orme determinao regulamento mandado executar pelo decreto, no. 3.403, de 11 de Fevereiro de 1865,Fernando de Noronha, ANR, Seção de Justiça, livro IIJ 7 94; the phrase “degree oun reeness” invokes Rebecca Scott’sDegrees of Freedom; I also borrow rom JamesC. Scott’sSeeing Like a State.

12. Mamigonian, “ o Be a Liberated A rican”; Souza,Escravidão ou morte.13. MacCord analyzes how ree artisan laborers o color in Reci e battled the “de-

eito mecânico,” or the low esteem o manual labor; see Arti ces da cidadania, 27–31.On labor and charity, see Fraga Filho, Mendigos.

14. I borrow rom Cope’s use o “racial drif” inTe Limits of Racial Domination .15. Mamigonian, “ o Be a Liberated A rican,” ch. 3; Kraay, “Te Shelter o the

Uni orm”; Bieber, “Slavery and Social Li e”; Beattie,Te ribute of Blood ; Meznar,“Te Ranks o the Poor,” 336–337; Carvalho, “Os índios de Pernambuco”; Carvalho,“Quem urta”; Chalhoub, A força, esp. chap. 9. Te struggle to abolish military im-pressment and slavery in the Atlantic world has historic parallels. Peter Linebaugh

and Marcus Rediker in Te Many-Headed Hydra show that members o Cromwell’sNew Model Army compared military impressment to slavery and called or bond-age’s abolition in Britain’s Caribbean colonies. Te French compared ser dom andslavery (Harms, Te Diligent , 22–23); Brazilians noted the relationship betweenser dom and coercive military recruitment in Rus sia to highlight the similar lowlystatus o soldiering in their own slaveholding nation (Beattie, “Mea sures o Man-hood,” 233–234).

16. Soares, A negregada instituição; Chandler, Te Bandit King Lampião ; Lewin,“Te Oligarchical Limitations o Social Banditry”; Holloway, “A Healthy error”;

Holloway, Policing Rio de Janeiro.17. Nina Rodrigues, As raças humanas e a responsibilidade penal no Brasil .18. Beattie, “Conscription versus Penal Servitude.”19. Garland, Punishment and Modern Society , 278.20. Goffman, Asylums, 11–12.21. Coser,Greedy Institutions; Scott, “Gender.”22. Some women o public authority were Pedro’s daughter, Princess Isabel; his

wi e, the Imperatriz Leopoldina; and the imperial midwi e, Madame Durocher; Bar-man, Princess Isabel of Brazil ; Windler, “Madame Durocher’s Per ormance.”

23. Foucault, Discipline and Punish; Foucault, Te History of Sexuality . For acritique o Foucauldian approaches in Mexico, see Piccato, “Such a Strong Need.”

264 NOTES TO INTRODUCTION


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NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 265

24. Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain, 11; Zinoman,Te Colonial Bastille , 16–17;Coates, Convicts and Orphans, 21–41. My views coincide with critiques o thedichotomy between premodern and modern penology; see Czeblakow, “A Prison byany Other Name.”

25. Canaday, Te Straight State .26. Beattie, “ ‘ReCapricorning’ the Atlantic”; Szuchman, Te Middle Period in

Latin America; Voss, Latin America in the Middle Period . Green and Morgan call orextending Atlantic history orward chronologically in “Introduction: Te PresentState o Atlantic History,” esp. 21.

1. GETTING TO KNOW “FERNANDO”

1. FFMV ao FAR, FN, Jan. 10, 1853, APEJE, l. FN-5, . 60.2. Carvalho describes the lives o escravos de ganho in Liberdade, 253–274; on

Quitandeiaras, see Silva, “Delindra Maria de Pinho.”3. Relação dos sentenciados que declararam terem vendido legumes a preta Iza-

bel que az parte da amilia do illustrissimo enente Coronel Commandante FFMVao FAR, FN, Jan. 14, 1853, APEJE, l. FN-5, . 60.

4. D R ao LRB, FN, June 22, 1819, APEJE, l. FN-1, . 50–51.5. Branner noted that his voyage to the island on a “small steamer” took two- and-

one-hal days; “Te Convict Island,” 34.6. Diário de Pernambuco , Reci e, Aug. 26, 1885.7. Captain Joaquim Domingos de Carvalho ao FJPL, FN, Oct. 21, 1881, l. FN-21,

no . nos.

8. “Fernando Noronha,” Scribner’s Monthly , Feb. 1876, 538–539.9. Beaurepaire Rohan, “A Ilha,” esp. 25.10. Branner, “Te Convict Island,” 34–35.11. Nicoll,Tree Voyages of a Naturalist , 13.12. FJPL ao JMF, FN, Aug. 19, 1884, APEJE, l. FN-23, no . nos.13. Songini,Te Lost Fleet , 177.14. Warrin, So Tis Day Ends .15. Semmes, My Adventures A oat , 597.16. Lea, “Te Island,” 427.

17. Derby, “Fernando de Noronha,” Rio News, Feb. 24, 1881, 1.18. Relatorio, FN, Jan. 1, 1885, APEJE, l. FN-24, . 17, 85.19. Derby, “Fernando de Noronha,” Rio News, Feb. 24, 1881, 1.20. Freyre compared slave quarters to jails in Te Mansions and the

Shanties, 170.21. FJPL ao BVB, FN, April 28, 1868, APEJE, l. FN-13, . 301.22. In 1869, there were ar ewer buildings owned by individuals: seven made

o stone with clay tile roo s, 48 o stone with thatch roo s, and 284 made o taipa.Mappa de Edi cações, FN, Jan. 1, 1869, APEJE, l. FN-14, . 20.

23. Derby, “Fernando de Noronha,” Rio News, Feb. 24, 1881, 1.24. SARB ao S M, FN, Oct. 16, 1856, APEJE, l. FN-6, . 449.

Punishment in Paradise by Peter M. Beattie

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