O RESGATE DAS MADALENAS: MUCAMAS DO SÉCULO XXI

Abstract

This article analyzes work analogous to slavery in the domestic sphere in Brazil, as well as the factors that contribute to its permanence and invisibility. Starting from the microanalysis of two cases widely reported by the press, in which black domestic workers were rescued after several decades of abuse and exploitation, we seek to understand the permanence of this slavery logic in Brazil after 134 years of the abolition of slavery and 34 years of the promulgation of our citizen Constitution, as well as to discuss the factors that contributed for these workers to remain in this situation for so long. The first case analyzed refers to the worker Madalena Gordino, rescued in Patos de Minas/MG in 2020, and the second concerns the domestic worker Madalena Santiago da Silva from the municipality of Lauro de Freitas, in the metropolitan region of Salvador, rescued in 2022. This work has as its starting point a concern and the following question: what explains the persistence of cases like these even today in Brazil? To answer this question, the study makes a dialogue with Lélia Gonzalez's conceptions about the myth of racial democracy and the ideology of whitening, as well as the idea of ​​self-definition defended by Patricia Hill Collins.

Keywords: Work analogous to slavery, racial democracy, whitening ideology, racism by degeneration and self-definition.