<b> Cartas, procurações, escapulários e patuás: os múltiplos significados da escrita entre escravos e forros na sociedade oitocentista brasileira </b>

Abstract

This article aims to present and discuss letters written by slaves in the XIX century, found between judicial documents of São Paulo. How the slaves are introduced into the world of the alphabet; in which historical conditions they learned to write and to read; how this apprenticeship had enlarged into a wider group of slaves and freedman that worked and lived in the cities; the magic sense of the words and letters of freedom, the frontiers between the oral and write culture are some of the questions brought with the main theme. This article is also a contribution to the discussion of the meanings of formal and informal education between the black populations in the Brazilian society after the Abolition in 1888.