O moleque Ricardo como crônica de vida de famílias negras urbanas na época da decadência do patriarcalismo

Abstract

Based on an ethnographical reading of O Moleque Ricardo, one of the novels that forms José Lins do Rego’s sugar-cane cycle, published in 1935, this article reflects about the configuration and transformations of the free black family, in a context different from that of the casa-grande (the slave-owner’s house). From the novel’s main thread – wage-workers’ labor - we will explore the relationship between the engenho (sugarcane farms and mills) and the city and the social plots in which issues such as politics, religion, work and carnival delineated codes of solidarity and recreated other family arrangements among the mocambeiros (those who live in the mocambos, city slums in Recife), quite different from those who lived at the senzalas (slave houses).