The Súcia of the Judge’s

Son Debauchery and Freedom in the Interior of the Brazilian Empire (1869)

Abstract

This paper reconstructs and interprets, from a legal-historiographical perspective based on an unpublished official document, a conflict that occurred between police authorities and different segments of the local population in Santa Maria de Taguatinga—then part of the town of Arraias—in 1869. The conflict stemmed from the “sussa” festival and, as explored, from the conditions that the festival temporarily imposed on the imperial administration, creating opportunities for enslaved people to escape and for Black soldiers to desert. On June 27, 1869, the police order to end the celebrations was met with resistance, led by a teacher—the son of a colonel and a local municipal judge—who was embedded in a network of alliances that ultimately prevailed over the efforts of the police subdelegate to convict the teacher and other revelers of the crime of sedition.