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As regards the slave societies of the Americas, it is hard to imagine a more palpable example of social mobility than manumissions. The fact that exslaves were able to carve out a space for themselves within the larger slave societies attests to their resilience—a resilience that must have played a role in obtaining freedom in the first place—and demonstrates that a considerable measure of social and racial flux existed in at least some of those societies. Manumission and miscegenation, independendy or in association with one another, decisively contributed to the sometimes explosive growth of colored and mestizo populations, which came to characterize large parts of Latin America. Few better examples exist than Brazil, where it was not at all uncommon for ex-slaves to become slaveholders in their own right.

O artigo analisa a composição das famílias escravas em São José, comarca do rio das Mortes, hoje cidade Tiradentes, entre meados do século XVIII e meados do XIX. A partir de registros de inventários e de casamentos pretende reconstruir a composição das famílias de escravos. A conjugação das informações dessas duas fontes permite constatar a predominância de casamentos exogâmicos entre os cativos de São José, com uma baixa representatividade de casais compostos apenas de nativos. The article analyses the composition of slave families in São José village, in Rio das Mortes county of Minas Gerais captaincy - today Tiradentes - between the middle of the XVIIIth century to the middle of the XXth century. The sources used are inventories and marriage certificates. It indicates that there were the predominance of exogamic marriages among the slaves, with few couples of local natives.