A native morality of the land: Experience, resistance and revolt of national workers in the Parish of São Bernardo (1883)

Abstract

This article examines the actions of national workers in the Freguesia of São Bernardo, part of the ABC region, in 1883, in defense of customary practices related to traditional land use, shaped over centuries through locally transmitted and reinterpreted knowledge. It focuses on two episodes: a January conflict between national and German settlers sparked by an animal trespass, which escalated into violence and arson; and the March occupation and destruction of a mill dam owned by the Italian Palharini Veneri. Although seemingly unrelated, both events are analyzed as part of broader territorial disputes, in which traditional conceptions of land use clashed with emerging notions of private property. We argue that these customary practices – possibly influenced by Indigenous knowledge and rooted in the communal lands of the Amador de Medeiros sesmaria – were gradually appropriated and reconfigured by the local population throughout the 19th century, shaping patterns of occupation and circulation that informed the 1883 events.