Brazil's Caixa Econômica Federal Investigates Savings Accounts of Enslaved People

We know his name was Ambrozio, that he was enslaved, and that in 1887 he signed with his own hand the documentation with which he opened a savings account in his name at a public bank in Brazil: Caixa Econômica Federal. At that time, the debate on the abolition of slavery — a milestone that would arrive the following year — was very much alive in this country because, in the rest of America, the children of the slave trade were already men and women free.

Like many, Ambrozio dreamed of one day buying his freedom. To achieve this, many enslaved people saved real by real. But he didn't have to wait too long. A few months later, Princess Imperial Isabel signed the Lei Áurea, which granted freedom to the hundreds of thousands of people who, as had been happening for more than three centuries, were mere merchandise that could be bought, sold, rented, or inherited.

Ambrozio returned to the bank as a free man, withdrew the 50,000 reais from his only deposit, and closed the account. Others, like Lidia, a washerwoman in Rio de Janeiro, “enslaved by Maria Carlota Fortuna,” according to her passbook, never recovered that money earned through her effort, which went almost entirely into the pockets of the masters.

With the promulgation of abolition in 1888, Lidia stopped making deposits at Caixa Econômica Federal. Her money remained in the bank, growing thanks to an interest rate of 6% semi-annually. Entering the 20th century, the account held 300,000 reais, which by 1931 had tripled, according to the research of historian Keila Grinberg, from the Federal University of Rio and the University of Pittsburgh, who rescued the stories of Ambrozio and Lidia from the bank's archives.

Almost a century and a half later, the Public Prosecutor's Office of Rio de Janeiro (an agency with powers similar to those of prosecutor's offices in other countries) wants to know what happened to the savings of the enslaved. “Knowing the whereabouts of these accounts is a historical demand, an issue that was silenced, and we want it to be a priority for Caixa Econômica Federal and the Brazilian State,” explains prosecutor Julio Araújo, by phone, from Rio. Brazil commemorated the 138th anniversary of the abolition of slavery this week.

The first steps have served to locate 158 accounts of enslaved people in the archives of this public bank, which was created in 1861 for the poorest workers and is still one of the most important institutions in Brazil. The investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office began with a complaint from Quilombo, Raza y Clase, an organization that demands reparations for the descendants of the five million Africans who arrived in Brazil starting in the 16th century, more than to any other country, after surviving the Atlantic crossing.

The issue is current because it germinated the current inequality that still prevails in the South American giant, and because more than half of Brazilians descend from those enslaved people, according to the census, as 55% are mixed-race or Black. Having gained freedom, the enslaved were left completely helpless, without employment, education, or land, while the authorities encouraged immigration from Europeans, Asians, and Arabs, to whom they offered farmland. A two-for-one deal: they replaced the lost labor force with abolition and, incidentally, whitened the population. Afro-Brazilians continue to be poorer today, have worse jobs, and die earlier than their white compatriots.

Historians investigating how Brazilian institutions profited from slavery, a system intertwined with all structures, says Grinberg, estimate that the bank accounts discovered are only a small sample of those in existence, because many were opened in the interior, thousands of kilometers from the cities with the largest enslaved populations, such as Rio or Salvador.

That is why prosecutor Araújo calls on Caixa Econômica to undertake a systematic and in-depth investigation of the thousands of documents it holds in its archives and to make them available to the public. “The link of these accounts with past, present, and future generations of Brazilians is evident. And it shows the importance of debating reparations,” emphasizes the prosecutor. The investigation does not aim to put anyone on trial, but to shed light on the past and do historical justice. A proposal to create a reparations fund has been processed in Congress since 2024.

Prosecutor Araújo himself led another demand with historical background that in 2023 culminated in a powerful public gesture: Banco de Brasil apologized to the Black people for its complicity in slavery, which was in force for three and a half centuries.

“It is important to say that the money they managed to save was very little compared to what the alforría [the letter of freedom granted by the master] cost. They earned it by selling products in markets or as barbers, laundresses, seamstresses… They handed over most of the money to the master, and with the little that was left, they saved to buy their own freedom or that of their relatives,” recounts the historian in an exchange of messages from Senegal, where she is conducting research. This movement of vindication and historical revision in which Brazil is embarked was born from the activist impulse of the Black movement, joined by historians like Professor Grinberg.

The historian emphasizes that “it is important to know what happened, after abolition, to those savings that yielded an interest of 6% per semester, and what impact it had on the bank's capital.” “It is also important to know if their families have the right to be restituted and to understand the relationship of Caixa Econômica with slavery.” She maintains that all institutions of the time benefited in one way or another from forced labor.

The UN approved last April, with the vote of 123 countries, to declare the African slave trade and slavery as “the gravest crime against humanity.” Among the 52 abstentions in that vote were all the countries of the European Union. The only noes were those of the United States, Israel, and Argentina.

Slavery was a colossal industry that involved inhuman punishments, but it also involved institutions such as banks, investors, or insurance companies. Traffickers reduced food rations during the transatlantic crossing to save money and lighten the load. Those who succumbed were thrown overboard to the sharks. Upon approaching the coast, the slavers improved nutrition because healthy and robust Africans were sold at a better price afterward.

The normality with which human beings were offered in the Brazilian press of the 19th century is chilling. “For sale, a Creole Black woman, 25 years old, given birth ten months ago, with milk, without a child, cooks, makes sweets, irons, and sews,” said an advertisement in the Diario de Pernambuco in 1859, cited in the trilogy Escravidão, published in the last five years.

These books tell that, beyond forced labor, those Africans and their descendants served their masters in countless ways: as mortgage collateral, to settle debts, as a dowry for a daughter, as a gift for friends or institutions... And the women, as concubines when they were not directly raped. Upon the master's death, they formed part of the inheritance, like any other property.

Experts maintain that the possibility of earning some money and saving, with the desire to afford their freedom, is one of the reasons why slavery lasted so long in Brazil, the last Western country to abolish it. While in the United States buying freedom was almost impossible, in Brazil this dream reduced the risk of rebellions, divided Black people between enslaved and free, and contributed to consolidating and normalizing this inhuman system.