The Girl Who Never Saw Herself Playing

Abstract

This article analyzes a legal case involving a ten-year-old Black girl named Maria, a victim of violence and neglect by her informal guardians, in the city of Ribeirão Preto in 1898. The archive analysis used a historical-documentary and archaeogenealogical methodology. The research investigated how the justice system at that historical moment treated poor and Black childhoods, revealing the continuity of practices inherited from the slaveholding regime even after legal abolition. The study demonstrates the perceptions attributed to the divisions between “child” and “minor” and the legal, social, and political consequences of this differentiation. The case demonstrates the brutality suffered by many children during the period, as well as the limits of institutional protection. Although recognized as a victim, Maria did not have her rights guaranteed, and the perpetrator was acquitted. The study demonstrates how discourses of moral and material abandonment and licentiousness worked toward the criminalization and silencing of these children. This research is situated within the field of the history of Black children and childhoods.