Making a Life in Casa Verde (1930-...)

Mirroring the previous chapter, this chapter follows family trajectories in Casa Verde, where the social configuration differed from that of Rio de Janeiro. Two factors reinforced racial identities there. First, both Afro-Brazilian migrants and recent European migrants—especially Italians—came from the coffee plantation regions, where they had already shared experiences shaped by both racial mixing and social conflict. Second, the rivalries forged on the plantations continued in the city, where the production of urban space further intensified social segmentation. Neighborhoods commonly regarded as "Black"—Peruche, Casa Verde Alta, and Vila Espanhola—remained socially mixed, yet racial identities were expressed more explicitly in the interviews and reflected distinct migratory memories: Italian family histories centered on an ancestor or the transatlantic journey, whereas Afro-descendant memories focused on narratives of settlement and rootedness in the neighborhood. In both Madureira and Casa Verde, attachment to local forms of sociability—carnival, samba, and football—did not express a sense of "Black pride" or the celebration of an African heritage. Rather, it reflected a historically rooted urban belonging. This reference made it possible to minimize the resonance of the term "Black," a label imposed in São Paulo and merely assumed in Rio de Janeiro, which still evoked the condition of enslavement in the 1930s. Four decades after abolition, the generation born in Madureira and Casa Verde remained one of the "colors of silence," unlike, perhaps, their grandchildren, who were born in the 1980s amid the emergence of affirmative action policies.

Author Biography

Aurélia Michel

Maîtresse de conférences HDR en Histoire des Amériques noires à l’université Paris Cité, Aurélia Michel est chercheure au CESSMA (Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques). Ses travaux portent sur les conséquences de la colonisation et de l’esclavage dans les sociétés contemporaines (au Mexique, au Brésil, et plus largement dans l’espace atlantique). Elle est l’auteure de l’ouvrage Un monde en nègre et blanc publié au Seuil en 2020 et elle a également collaboré au scénario du documentaire Les Routes de l’esclavage (Arte, 2018).

https://www.cessma.org/michel-aurelia

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8 July 2026

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