Marriage, Black Women's Social Mobility, and White Male Networks in Colonial Minas Gerais

Shortly before his death in 1771, the rich Portuguese miner and property holder Antônio de Souza Lima named his wife, the Senhora Jacinta de Serqueira da Costa, executor of his estate and tutor to their children. Nothing in his estate succession papers hinted at Costa’s ancestry or associated her to a particular socio-racial category. Yet the couple’s petition to the bishop of the city of Mariana in 1753, requesting the dispensation of a marriage impediment of consanguinity, reveals that Costa was in fact of African descent. She was the daughter of another rich Portuguese miner, João de Serqueira da Costa, and Inácia Mina, of the Courana nation. The couple was related by blood in the third degree, Lima being the son of one of João de Serqueira da Costa’s cousins. The petition justified the requested dispensation on the grounds that such a union enabled Costa to marry a man of “the condition of the petitioner.” The same justification appears in other marriage impediment dispensation cases. The emphasis on the benefits marriage to a Portuguese man offered to African-descendant brides obscures though the advantages of such unions to the grooms. Through his marriage to Costa, Lima reinforced his family ties to one of the most prosperous mining families of Minas Gerais. Moreover, Costa’s dowry allowed him to immediately establish himself as a member of the local mining elite. This paper looks at mixed marriages in colonial Minas Gerais to craft a fuller picture of the social, economic, and political implications of these unions. It rethinks the role mixed marriage played in cementing male networks that supported Portuguese colonial efforts by centering African descendant women. In doing so, it offers a different perspective from which to assess the centrality of black women to the construction of a Portuguese Atlantic World.