Shortly after the Golden Law abolished slavery, Italian immigrants and former slaves lived together in the harsh routine of a farm in the interior of São Paulo state.
Large photograph of the Santa Thereza Farm with Italian immigrants.
Dimensions: 48 × 39 cm (stand) / 39 × 29 cm (image).
Interior of São Paulo, between 1890 and 1910.
Good condition; the bottom right corner has been restored by a professional.
Unique piece.
The photo shows a large group gathered in front of the chapel of the Santa Thereza Farm, with its simple facade, triangular pediment, and a cross on top. On the left, a man carries a wooden cross, suggesting a religious procession. There are workers in light-colored clothing and straw hats, as well as women in long dresses with children in their arms. A few men in suits contrast with the majority of rural workers. On the right, we see a Black woman and child. The ground is of packed earth, surrounded by trees and farm buildings. The composition is balanced and sharp, indicating the work of a professional photographer.
Fazenda Santa Thereza, in Limeira, is an old and famous coffee farm in the interior of São Paulo state, active from the slavery period until the beginning of Italian immigration. The image was probably taken between 1890 and 1910, a period when the farm replaced enslaved labor—abolished in 1888—with a sharecropping system using Italian immigrants. Despite being free, many of these immigrants lived in very difficult conditions: they arrived indebted, paid "rent," paid for the use of the land, and bought food at the farm's store, almost always on credit. This created a cycle of dependency that, in practice, was not very different from the exploitation experienced by the formerly enslaved. The chapel served as a meeting point for these communities, bringing everyone together for religious festivals and rituals, even with profound social inequalities. The Santa Thereza Farm ceased to exist as a large coffee plantation around the 1930s-1940s, and today its former area is part of the urban zone of Limeira, occupied by neighborhoods and new buildings. This photograph is important because it shows, in the same space, formerly enslaved people and Italian immigrants, both facing harsh forms of labor and economic dependence during the height of the coffee boom. L. Sampaio's professional record strengthens the documentary character of the scene and preserves a rare moment of the post-Abolition transition. The image summarizes a decisive period in Brazilian rural history, revealing how faith, work, and inequality coexisted at the beginning of the 20th century. The exceptional size of the image, rich in detail, gives additional value to this item.
