Migrations, displacements and black peasants in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in the nineteenth century

This article focuses on the decade of the abolition of slavery in southeastern Brazil by comparing Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. It aims to link the emerging forms of slave resistance, such as the organized flight from coffee plantations and the formation of runaway communities, with the advent of small black peasant communities in the post-emancipation years, and with present day communities of slave descendants currently demanding legal titles of land.