Agregado
Agregado
Agregado, a term referring to a wide variety of dependent individuals or, literally, "retainers." In Brazil's colonial period agregados could be freed slaves, free servants, or poor relatives who resided with a host family of slaveowners or peasants. For peasants, agregados usually worked as servants or extra laborers; for slaveowners, agregados typically were dependent kin or the families of freed slaves. In the nineteenth century, agregados came to denote the following that supported a wealthy landowner in local elections. Such agregados received favors, such as land, in return for votes. This patron-client bond maintained the hegemony of the landowners after Brazilian independence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eni De Mesquita, "O papel do agregado na região de Itú—1780–1830," Coleção Museu Paulista 6 (1977): 13-121.
Richard Graham, Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (1990).
Additional Bibliography
Goldman, Marcio, and Moacir Palmeira. Antropologia, voto e representação política. Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa, 1996.
Alida C. Metcalf