Rebouças brothers in the Paraná of the 19th century and the black intellectuals

Abstract

This article analyzes the legacy of the brothers Antonio and André Rebouças in the state of Paraná in order to, through their trajectories, think about the participation of black intellectuals in the historical formation of this region. The article is divided into two parts. At first, it follows the trail of the Rebouças brothers, through the evidential method, questioning some of the documentary sources. In the second part, it tenses the Rebouças historiography and memory in Paraná, comparing them to other sources. Contact with primary sources (in particular the newspapers press and photographs) reveals how such a society was marked by the black perfomance, not only in the economic field - enslaved or as a free worker - but also in the intellectual field. At the same time, it demonstrates how the racial identity of the Rebouças and other black intellectuals already suffered erasure in the period in which they lived, through social whitening strategies, characteristic of a racist and personalist society as was the Brazilian in general, and Paraná's in particular. This paradox, in our view, is an important clue to the production of another memory and history about the presence of Antonio, André and other black intellectuals in Paraná's past.