The Figure of the Gypsy (Cigano) as a Signpost for Crises of the Social Hierarchy (Bahia, 1590s–1900s)

Abstract

AbstractGypsies (Ciganosin Portuguese) have been present in Brazil since the earliest days of Portuguese colonization. Part of the (free) masses (o povo, “the people”), they were known primarily as itinerant traders of trinkets, slaves, and animals, and were one category of intermediaries who made the internal economy function. Authorities viewed their lifestyle and activities with suspicion. Focusing on the state of Bahia, in the north-eastern region of Brazil, between the late sixteenth and late nineteenth centuries, this article shows that the tenuous position of Gypsies was amenable to transformations reflecting political priorities and ideas about the proper social order. The continued difference ofCiganosand their independent way of making a living were at times problematized by elites, embodying wider tensions between the authorities and the people. The case of BahianCiganosis revelatory within Romani-related historiography in that it foregrounds connected developments within locales enmeshed in a metropole–periphery relationship, continuities between imperial and nation-building projects, and the centrality of race on which they were built.