Gold and God: church, state and slaves in Ouro Preto

I spent the day wandering around Ouro Preto today. Ouro Preto was to gold and Portugal what Potosí was to silver and the Spanish. It was a learning day:

There are a hell of a lot of churches here (that sentence amuses me), which suggests that some of the wealthier people had doubts about what they were doing. Given this involved not only having slaves (ie they owned other people, and the children these people had), they routinely starved them off they didn't work hard enough and castrated them to either a) prevent them growing too tall to work in the mines or b) prevent the tall ones having children to increase the proportion of small slaves to work in the mine (I'm not sure which, this is the current limit of my Portuguese) I think it's probably a good thing they weren't comfortable.

That said, the nascent independence movement that took hold here in 1789 seemed to have more to do with getting rid of the "fifth" of all gold mined that went to the Portuguese crown than getting rid of slavery. On this at least they have something in common with the US independence movement (taxation without representation is unacceptable but owning other people is just fine). What they don't have in common was the latter's success. The leaders of the Ouro Preto rebellion were arrested and exiled or in Tiradentes case executed (the details that I've heard / read but variously involve being dragged behind a cart through the streets of Ouro Preto, drawn, quartered, beheaded and his head taken to Rio to warn off others). It seemed to work. Brasil got its independence in 1822 on the crowd's terms when the Prince Regent, Dom Pedro decided he didn't want to go back to Portugal [1], staying in a now independent Brasil, becoming Pedro I of Brasil.

A child-sized hole,
for (slave) child miner

Alternatively, the churches may have been following the money. There's a legend of an entire tribe being taken from Africa to Ouro Preto to work the mines, including the tribe's chief. By working any days off the chief saved enough money to buy his freedom. Then, working on his own account he bought his son's freedom. They then gradually bought out all of the other slaves in the tribe, then bought the rights to one of the mines in Ouro Preto, making them all pretty wealthy. This is now my definition of leadership in difficult circumstances! However, the King of Portugal apparently caught wind of this and was not amused, making it impossible for slaves to buy their freedom. So instead the slaves would sneak bits of gold out in their hair and under their finger nails. They'd then wash themselves in the baptismal fonts in the churches on the understanding that when enough gold had accumulated the priest would "buy" them from their owner (allowed) and give them their liberty.

But like anything in life, sometimes you got a bad priest who wanted to keep the gold for himself and there was obviously no recourse for the slave.

Maybe the churches had it right when they said that money is the root of all evil, but then forget to put it into practise...

Notes:
1. The Portuguese court had relocated to Brasil in 1807 after the Napoleonic Wars meant that Portugal had become the set for Wellington (with some help from Sharpe and the Royal Green Jackets) to beat the French during the Peninsula campaign.